Waves of Knowledge: Old Media to New

J.D. Applean’s Old Media and New Media knowledge invites us to explore the transformation of old media and new – and how knowledge moves through time, through bodies and through technology. The words we speak, to printed on a page, to being on a blog post. Beginning to shape not only what we know but how we communicate, how we think, and what we know. This is relevant to today’s society, especially depending on what field you are entering.

In the digital world, texts loses its transparency. While we see letters, and FUN font changes, hyperlinks – Applen links this with how new media can reanimate reading and writing as more engaging rather than being boring. It shifts us from being readers to becoming explorers. We click, scroll, and link our way through ideas that capture our curiosity. Digital texts invite us to interact with them; it’s different from the text itself.

Words are waves of vibration

This is where Applen names the modern blend of orality (a thought/ verbal expression in societies where technologies of literacy are unfamiliar to a population.) It is where stories and writing live through sound, gesture.

With writing, these waves become captured; it’s frozen into ink. The written word comes into the physical world and allows it to be recordable and reviewable. There’s a stillness that comes with it, as the movement of sound begins to transform into symbols and meaning. Within that stillness comes reflection, and our ability to analyze. Apple suggests that media keeps evolving, reshaping how knowledge circulates. Language is not just a tool for communication but an energetic art; an embodiment of sound and energy being expressed. While writing allowed language to slow down, digital accelerates it.

Ride the wave

As writers, we are always learning to ride the wave. We’re always balancing depth, speed, and creativity. The knowledge within all of us never sits still; it flows through different forms of expression, and each transforms what we know. To live and create in the modern era is to surf the gnarliest wave. To honor both the ink before and the glowing screen now. Every word is a wave you transmit, and you see the art in everything.