Well some who have grown up as digital children might have to do, I had to look up the definition of “digital media” . Through some wiki-talk and dictionary-blah, I’ve come up with what I believe is an accurate description of “digital media”.

Digital Media: Any information communicated digitally.

As a digitally engulfed adult, even the term digital might need to be defined.

Digital: information communicated with digits.

Isn’t that crazy! Well of course everyone has experience with digits in math class but when you really think about the ability to send a photograph through the air using WiFi or Bluetooth technology, it is totally mind-blowing. And, well, because my childhood progressed as the digital age progressed, technology is all I know. I have no time period in my life where computers did not exist.

So during my quest to define “digital media” I came across a definition saying: “Digital Media (as opposed to analog media)…” From there I had to define analog as: information communicated by a mechanical or physical change. Of course my next thought was how much I’d like to go bang on my analog synthesizer from the 80’s. So I did:


This complete distraction from trying to define digital media brought to mind this whole backlash against the digital age. For example: the synthesizer that I was grooving on is older than me. It has no USB port, no Liquid Crystal Display, no memory, it cant even play two notes at the same time, but a Moog Rogue is being sold for over 500 bucks! Why?

Those that believe digital photography cannot compete with film photography are slowly becoming fewer and fewer. But there is an influx of photographers who are buying up old, all-manual film cameras. They want that tactile sensation, they want the magic of watching an image appear in the darkroom, they want the romance of tweaking the knobs on a funky synth, they want the non-digital.

So yeah, there is a certain hip status associated with analog gear, but this crowd still trusts their iPhone and digital SLR camera. I believe that those who grew up in a digitalized childhood have a certain fascination for the non-digital.

Now in this digital age, information organization is crucial. Our senses are targeted by ads from all directions using sight, sound, smell and emotion. Digital media is organized and conveyed with much thought. As technology advances the complexity of digital media advances and requires better organization of information. For example: A website in the 90’s would generally consist of text, often times to spice up a page colored text in different sizes would be on the page. Nowadays websites automatically fill your entire monitor with a graphic image incorporating sound and video. Sites that solely consist of text are ignored or laughed at. It is no longer enough to learn one software program and think that it will be used for multiple years. For anyone organizing information to convey it is extremely important to constantly be learning new technologies and software. Additionally, I believe it is crucial to have a design ability to cleanly display information.