THE EVOLUTION OF

TRADITIONAL TO
NEW MEDIA

BY: SETH OPENIANO

RONNIANE ESTONINA
OBJECTIVES
• Identify traditional media and new media
and their relationships;
• Editorialize the roles and functions of
media in a democratic society; and
• Identify the latest theory on information
and media.
MEDIA THROUGH THE AGES
The 20th century was a spectator to the birth of
what is conceivably the most well-known
device in history of mankind; the television.
TV is a communications technology that has
transformed the delivery of information,
entertainment and artistic expression. We
have also witnessed the birth of the internet.
Have you ever wondered what technological
inventions existed before these notable
modern ones? Let’s take a fieldtrip to the
history and evolution of media.
PRE-HISTORIC ERA
(200000BCE – 4000BCE)
PETROGLYPHS
Petroglyphs are rock carvings (rock paintings are called
pictographs) made by pecking directly on the rock surface
using a stone chisel and a hammerstone. These are
illustrations created by abolishing part of a rock surface by
incising or carving as a form of rock art. There are many
ideologies to construe their purpose, depending on their
location, age and appearance. Some are thought to be
astronomical indicators, maps and other forms of allegorical
communication including prewriting.

Some Petroglyph images probably have deep cultural and

religious significance for the cultures that created them.
CAVE PAINTINGS
Cave paintings, also known as parietal art, are painted
drawings on cave walls or ceilings, mainly of prehistoric
descent, to some 40000 years ago (around 38000 BCE) in
both Asia and Europe.
The paintings are exceptionally identical around the world,
with animals being common subjects that give the most
dramatic images.
A theory produced by David Lewis-Williams customarily
based on ethnographic studies of contemporary hunter-
gatherer societies stats that the paintings were made by
Paleolithic shamans. The shaman would evacuate into the
blackness of the caves, entered into a hypnotic state and
then painted the edges with their visions.
DANCE
In most ancient civilizations, dancing before the god was
fundamental in temple rituals. In Egypt, the priests and
priestesses, guided by harps and pipes, perform ceremonial
movements which mimed significant events in the story of a
god, or imitate cosmic patterns such as the cadence of night
and day.
It has been introduced that before the rise of written
languages, dance was an important part of the oral and
performances approaches of passing stories down from
generation to generation.
BODY ART
Unlike tattoo and other forms of permanent body art, body painting
was temporary, painted in the human skin, and lasted for one day, or
at most a couple of weeks.
Body painting with clay and other innate pigments existed in most, if
not all tribal cultures. Often worn during ceremonies, this ancient
form of interpretation is still used among many indigenous people of
the world today.
Body art is a momentous part of social, spiritual, and personal
expression. It can be a part of a culture’s rite of passage for when the
child becomes an adult, weddings, preparation for war or hunt, birth
of a child, spiritual rituals and death. It can also represent your
origin, position, symbol of power, what you have reached and
experienced, it can be like an identification card, it protects from evil
forces, it shows bravery and beauty, can be an act of transformation,
mourning, connecting with the spirits of animals or the earth, symbol
of fertility.
ANCIENT ERA
(3000 BCE – 100 CE)
CUNEIFORM SCRIPT

The Cuneiform is one of the

earliest schemes of writing.
It was carved on clay
tablets, built by means of a
blunt reed for a stylus.

It was in use for more than

three millennia, through
several points of
development, from the 34th
Century BCE down to the
second century BCE.
EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS

It was an orderly writing system of the ancient Egyptians that combined

anagrammed and alphabetic elements.
PHOENICIAN ALPHABET
It is called by tradition the
Proto-Cananite alphabet
for epitaphs older than
around 1050 BCE, the
oldest confirmed alphabet.
It contains 22 letters, all
consonants. It was
acquired from the
hieroglyphs and is one of
the most widespread
writing systems in the
Mediterranean world.
GREEK ALPHABET
By at least the 8th century BCE, the Greeks borrowed the
Phoenician alphabet and acclimated it to their own language,
creating in the development of the first true alphabet, in
which vowels were bestowed balanced status with
consonants. According to Greek legends addressed by
Herodotus, the alphabet was carried from Phoenicia to
Greece by Cadmos. The letters of the Greek alphabet are
alike as those of the Phoenician alphabet, and both alphabets
are organized in the same structure.
DRAMA
Drama is the clear-cut mode of
narrative, commonly fictional,
served in performance.
Western drama comes from
Classical Greece. The
theatrical culture of the city-
state of Athens generated
three genres of drama:
tragedy, comedy and the satyr
play. Their bases remained
obscure, though by the 5th
century BCE, they were
regulated in competitions held
as part of festivities celebrating
the god Dionysus.
PAPER
The word “paper” is derived from papyros, ancient Greek for
the Cyperus papyrus plant. Papyrus is a chunky, paper-like
matter produced from the core of the Cyperus papyrus plant
which was used in ancient Egypt and other Mediterranean
cultures for writing way before paper making in China.

In the Americas, archaeological evidence indicates that the

Mayans used a similar bark-paper writing material called
amatl, it was extensively utilized among Mesoamerican
cultures.
INDUSTRIAL ERA
(1440 – 1890)
PRINTING PRESS
A printing press is an apparatus
for administering pressure to an
inked surface recessing upon a
print medium, thereby
transferring the ink. The
invention and spread of the
printing press was one of the
most prominent events in the
second millennium.
It was invented in the Holy
Roman Empire by the German
Johanes Gutenber aroung 1440.
DRY PLATES
Thanks to the work of Desire van
Monckhoven, the Collodion dry
plates had been accessible since
1855. But it was not until the
contraption of the gelatin dry plate
in 1871 by Richard Leach Maddox
that the wet plate process could
be a match in quality and speed.
The discover that heating could be
a match in quality greatly
amplified its sensitivity finally
made so-called “instantaneous”
snapshot exposure practical
TELEGRAPHY
Telegraphy is a long-distance broadcast of textual or symbolic
messages. It is without the corporeal exchange of an object
bearing the message. It necessitates that the technique used for
encoding the message be known to both sender and receiver.
An electrical telegraph was self-sufficiently advanced and
patented in the United States in 1837 by Samuel Morse. His
assistant, Alfred Vail, developed the Morse code signalling
alphabet with Morse. The first telegram in the USA was sent by
Morse on 1838, January 11 across three kilometers of wire.
Though, it was only later, in 1844, that he was able to send a
message from Capitol in Washington to Baltimore. “WHAT HATH
GOD WROUGHT”.
TELEPHONE
Alexander Graham Bell, a Scottish emigrant, was the first to be
settles a US patent for the telephone in 1876. A telephone, or
phone, is a telecommunications device that allows users to
administer a conversation when they’re far from each other. It
transfigures sounds into electronic signals for appropriate
transmission via cables or other transmission media over
distances and reruns the signals immediately in audible form to
its users. It formed clearly intelligible replication of the human
voice.
PHONOGRAPH
• It was invented in 1877 by
Thomas Edison.
• A device designed for the power-
driven recording and
reproduction of sound.
• Later called as the gramophone.
• The sound waveforms are
recorded as conforming physical
deviations of a spiral groove
engraved into the surface of a
spinning disc called a “record”.
FILM
• Also called movie, motion picture, theatrical film or photoplay.
• It is a series of immobile images that, when shown on a
screen, generates the illusion of moving images. This optical
illusion causes the viewers to see continuous motion.
• The history of film started in the 1890s, when motion picture
cameras (Kinetograph) were invented (by Edison and his
contemporaries) and film production companies started
getting recognized.
• Because of the restrictions of technology, films were once
under a minute long without a sound.
• Its first decade saw film moving from a novelty to a reputable
large-scale entertainment industry.
INFORMATION ERA
(1906 – PRESENT)
RADIO
It is the technology of using radio waves to convey information,
such as sound, by modulating some property of electro-magnetic
energy waves transferred through space. Early uses were maritime
which was for sending telegraphic messages using Morse Code.
One of the most notable uses of marine telegraphy was during the
sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912.

Today, radio comes in various forms. That includes wireless

networks and mobile communications of all types, as well as radio
broadcasting. Before televisions, commercial radio broadcasts
included not only news and music but also dramas, comedies, and
variety shows. It was exceptional among methods of dramatic
presentations because it only used sounds.
TELEVISION
• Television or TV is a telecommunication medium used for
transmitting sound with moving pictures.
• These moving pictures can be in monochrome, in color, in 2D or
3D.
• It is a mass medium for entertainment, education, news and
advertising.
• It became obtainable in basic experimental forms in the late 1920s.
An improved form became popular in the United States and Britain
after World War II. Television sets became conventional in homes,
businesses, and institutions.
• During the 1950s, television was the primary medium for
influencing public opinion. Color broadcasting was then
introduced in the US and most other developed countries in the
mid-1960s.
PERSONAL COMPUTER
A personal computer (PC) is a
general-purpose computer. Its
size, capabilities, and novel
sale price make it beneficial for
individuals. It is envisioned to
be worked directly by an end-
user with no superseding
computer time-sharing models
that permitted larger, more
lavish minicomputer and
mainframe systems to be used
by many people, usually at the
same time.
MOBILE PHONES
A mobile phone is a portable telephone which can produce
and receive calls over a radio frequency carrier. Most
services use a cellular network manner, and therefore they
are often called cellular telephones or cell phones.
In 1973, the first handheld mobile phone was invented by
John F. Mitchell and Martin Cooper of Motorola. In 1983, the
DynaTAC 8000x was the first commercially available
handheld mobile phone. From 1983 to 2014, universal mobile
phone subscriptions grew to over seven billion. It penetrated
100% of the global population that stretched even to the
bottom of the economic pyramid. In 2016, the top mobile
phone manufacturers were: Samsung, Apple and Huawei.
THE INTERNET
The Internet is the worldwide system of unified computer
networks that use the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) that links
billions of devices across the planet.
Its uses are to access news reports, to plan and book vacations
and to pursue their personal interests, also to chat, message
and e-mail in order to stay in touch with friends globally.
Famous social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and
Myspace have created fresh ways to socialize. Users of these
sites are capable of adding a wide variability of information to
pages, to track mutual interests, and to link with others. It is
also possible to find existing friends. Sites like Linkedn
promote commercial and business connections. YouTube and
Flickr focus on users' videos and pictures.
WHAT DO
MEDIA DO
FOR US?
Media accomplishes several rudimentary roles in
our society. One obvious role is entertainment.
Media can act as a catalyst for our imaginations. It
is a source of the make-believe, and a passage for
escapism. In the 19th century, Victorian readers
disenchanted by the grimness of the Industrial
Revolution found themselves drawn into eccentric
worlds of fictitious beings. In the first decade of
the 21st century, television viewers could peek in
on an action-packed superhero universe in The
Flash; the violence-plagued seven kingdoms of
Westeros in Game of Thrones; a 1940s-Manhattan
spy agency in Agent Carter; or the last surviving
band of humans in the post-apocalyptic world
infested with zombies in The Walking Dead.
Through bringing us stories of all varieties, media
has the influence to take us away from ourselves.
Media can also provide information and education. For
example, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
and other colleges and universities have posted free lecture
notes, exams, and audio and video recordings of classes,
consenting anyone with an Internet connection access to
topnotch professors.
Similarly, media can be used to monitor government,
business, and other institutions. But tattlers of mass media
may be indebted to particular agendas because of political
slant, advertising funds, or ideological bias, thus coercing
their ability to act as a watchdog.
The following are some of these agendas:
1. Entertaining and providing a channel for the imagination.
2. Educating and updating.
3. Serving as a public forum for the discussion of vital
issues.
4. Acting as a watchdog for government, business, and other
establishments.
It's important to evoke, though, that not all media are created
equal. While some forms of mass communication are better
matched to entertainment, others make more sense as a site for
spreading information. In terms of print media, books are sturdy
and able to contain lots of information, but are comparatively
slow and expensive to produce; in contrast, newspapers are
relatively inexpensive and faster to create, making them a better
medium for the quick turnover of everyday news. Television
provides much more visual information than radio and is livelier
than a stationary printed page; it can also be used to broadcast
live events to a nationwide audience, as in the annual State of
the Nation Address given by the Philippine president. However,
it is only a one-way medium. In contrast, the Internet heartens
public discussion of issues and allows nearly everyone who
wants a voice to have one. Nevertheless, the Internet is also
immensely moderated. Users may have to paddle through many
absurd comments or misinformed incompetent opinions to find
quality information.
SOME THEORIES ON
INFORMATION AND MEDIA
Allocution
In media theory, allocution is the one-way distribution of
information through a media channel. It assumes that one
party has a limitless amount of data and can act as the
'information services provider' while the other one acts as
the information services consumer'.
The first party holds all control over the information. They
choose when, how and how much information to give to the
information services consumer.
The consumer has no control over it.
Examples of these include radio and traditional television
programs.
Character Theory
A character theory is used to understanding media, such as
print or electronic media texts or productions such as films
and plays it is beneficial for examining and understanding
media in which people take on the part of an actor. These are
prominent with academics teaching and researching media
and film studies. They assist in the recognition of the
construction different types of media and the roles of the
characters. Character theories are every so often grounded
on stereotypes, and the diverse features that make them up
can either be used for positive or negatives purposes.
ERVING GOFFMAN'S CHARACTER
THEORY PROPOSES THAT THERE
ARE FOUR MAIN TYPES
1. The protagonist (leading character)
2. The deuterogamist (secondary character) 3
3. The bit player (minor character whose specific background
the audience is not aware of)
4. The fool (a character that uses humor to convey
messages)
END