New Media as Software

Abstract

Review of Lev Manovich, Software Takes Command: Extending the Language of New Media . London: Bloomsbury, 2013, 358 pp. ISBN 978-1-6235-6817-7. In Lev Manovich’s most recent book, this programmatic interrogation of our medial condition leads to the following question: do media still exist after software? This is the question that triggers Manovich’s dialogue both with computing history and with theories of digital media of recent decades, including the extension of his own previous formulations in The Language of New Media , published in 2001, and which became a major reference work in the field. The subtitle of the new book points precisely to this critical revisiting of his earlier work in the context of ubiquitous computing and accelerated transcoding of social, cultural and artistic practices by software.