Transcoding

Transcoding, according to Lev Manovich in his 2001 book The Language of New Media is an intrinsic quality to any new media object. It refers to the interpretation of the human “cultural layer” in computer ontology and the “computer layer” in human cultural terms. Manovich believes each layer influences the development of the other and are no longer separable. Manovich sees transcoding as the most substantial consequence of the computerization of media.

"Since new media is created on computers, distributed via computers, stored and archived on computers, the logic of a computer can be expected to have a significant influence on the traditional cultural logic of media......The result of this composite is the new computer culture: blend of human and computer meanings ... "

-Manovich, The Language of New Media p.63

Transcoding stems partially from Manovich's belief that new represent the convergence of two historic trajectories; computing and media, which, before the digital era, mirrored each other and are now combined inside the computer.

"We should not be surprised that both trajectories — the development of modern media, and the development of computers — begin around the same time. Both media machines and computing machines were absolutely necessary for the functioning of modern mass societies. The ability to disseminate the same texts, images and sounds to millions of citizens thus assuring that they will have the same ideological beliefs was as essential as the ability to keep track of their birth records, employment records, medical records, and police records. Photography, film, the offset printing press, radio and television made the former possible while computers made possible the latter. Mass media and data processing are the complimentary technologies of a modern mass society; they appear together and develop side by side, making this society possible."

-Manovich, The Language of New Media p.46

Examples

The mp3

The process of digitizing an audio recording is a method of generating data from music, a means of human expression. Once the audio recording becomes a computer file, it is imprinted with characteristics that are distinct from those of the recording itself (sound materials, environments, temporal structure etc.). Rather, an audio computer file exists in the context of other computer files, with different headers, sizes, formats, types of compression etc. The result is partially that music becomes something you can extract from a database, alter the volume of, rename, order in a sequence with other mp3's on your digital music player.

The Web

Much, if not all of what we see on the web is transcoded for our viewing. Without machines transcoding machine language into human language humans wouldn't have any idea what was being communicated to them. These two layers go together because without one the other means nothing. Machine language wouldn't exist if it wasn't for human language and ingenuity and machine language would just be gibberish if it was not translated into something that could be understood. This type of transcoding is possible thanks to a mediator of languages and in the case of the web, that mediator is the computer that is running the parse and interpret commands which then outputs something you can understand to the screen. Likewise, the great machine can't understand human language, so when I am typing this sentence into the Wiki edit box, the computer will then translate what I am saying into machine language and the connection is made in the opposite direction. This type of communication allows two different kids with different communication standards to play in the same sandbox without problems arising.

External Links

• Ray Kurzweil: How technology's accelerating power will transform us from the TED Talks series
• Jeff Hawkins: Brain science is about to fundamentally change computing from the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) Talks series