
On Manovich - karlheinz
http://www.publicseminar.org/2015/09/on-manovich/
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beerbajay
I was a student of Manovich at UCSD with high hopes for both his book, _The
Language of New Media_ , and the course I was taking, but I was incredibly
disappointed in both.

TLONM became an sort of "instant classic" in digital media circles mostly
because there was very little written on the subject and because TLONM came
out of MIT press. Just last week, I saw TLONM referenced in a Swedish article
written for digital archivists.

Unfortunately, people in digital media circles don't usually have a background
in computer technology or in any kind of formalized theory/philosophy, so
they're easily hoodwinked by misstatements about the nature of computers,
databases, file formats, etc. Manovich uses misstatements of this kind to make
his "theory of new media" sound plausible, while ignoring critical issues with
the examples on which he bases his reasoning.

I don't buy in to the (usually) right-wing claim that academics are trying to
trick people with overly complicated language; different disciplines require
their own terminology and the ability to take knowledge of the terminology for
granted when writing. But Manovich is the rare case where a writer does
actually use language as a way of obfuscating their own faults. TLONM is a
slog; it's dull, the language is needlessly obtuse, and many of the facts are
wrong. I say this as a person with degrees in both computer science _and_ art.

I read his book over 10 years ago and I'm still annoyed every time someone
references TLONM because it means they have been misinformed by Manovich and
unfortunately don't have the background/tools to understand why.

