Introduction/ The Real and the Ideal

The Intro to this entire book begins by explaining that its introduction will differ from most intros to new media literature. Lunenfield identifies his reasons for naming the intro "Screen Grabs", which the ability to capture and print everything on the computer screen. The only issue with this fast and effective way of capturing information is that one must go through all the unnecessary things that were also captured on the screen. In a way I suppose New Media is like a "screen grab". The Internet has made all our lives so much easier, but at the same time how much more time do we sit sifting through junk just because we have the Internet. Lunenfield also touches on the name of the book The Digital Dialect. He begins by giving the different views on dialectic starting with Socrates going to Marx. Dialectic: A thesis is opposed to an antithesis which then creates a synthesis. I'm not sure if New Media has met its antithesis, but it continues to synthesize itself and transform into something similar to the original and yet wholly new and advanced.

In "The Real and the Ideal" the author identifies the first dialectic as the contrasting of the real and the ideal. In later essays authors delve more deeply into this battle between the real and the ideal. This small opening also alludes to some of the essays that follow. The author introduces his essay and the concept of the "unfinished" within new media, seems it never seems to be finished.