Dr. Paul Levinson is a Professor of Communication & Media Studies at Fordham University in New York City. He was recently listed in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Top 10 Academic Twitterers” and is part of the GradeGuru Academic Advisory Committee.

My latest book, New New Media , was published by Penguin Academics on September 5, 2009.  As I point out on the first page, the book is about media so new that some of them – such as Twitter and YouTube – did not even exist five years ago.   I wrote the book as close to the bone of current events as possible.   The use of Twitter by protestors in Iran in June 2009, for example, is prominently included in the book’s Twitter chapter.

But I turned the book’s final revisions into the publisher in July, and the pace of important developments in the world of media has of course not slackened in the slightest.   This blog post is the first of a running series I will be posting here, there, and everywhere about these newest of new developments.

One of the most significant of such developments occurred in mid-July, when Amazon abruptly reached into the Kindles of every Kindle owner and removed George Orwell’s 1984, which Amazon discovered it did not have the legal right to sell.   Kindle owners and the online world at large were furious, especially because annotations which Kindle owners had made on their purchased copies of 1984 were removed with the book.   If Amazon had wanted to demonstrate that the Big Brother information control in 1984 was alive and kicking in our digital age, it could not have put forth a better example.

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos soon apologized , calling its solution to the copyright problem “stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles.”  Amazon offered to either refund the $30 which the Kindle edition cost, or re-deliver the copy of 1984, along with any absconded annotations.

But this series of events provides an instructive example of the difference between new media and new new media, which I discuss throughout the book.  “New” media exist on the Web, alongside of new new media.   But “new” media often operate in accordance with older, top-down principles of information control.   In the case of a newspaper online, such as The New York Times, the older approach is manifest in the selection of stories by editors.   In true new new media, stories are selected and even written by readers – that is the case in any personal blog.   In the case of iTunes and Amazon, consumers are charged for the content.  In new new media such as Twitter and YouTube, the content is free.

Amazon took a huge step into the past by not only charging for its Kindle books, but removing one of them after it had been purchased.   Its apology was certainly welcome.   But the lesson endures that there is a very big difference between older ways of doing business on the web, and the newer more liberated ways of new new media.

Disclaimer: This post does not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of GradeGuru or McGraw-Hill Higher Education. It is solely the opinion of the author.

We’ve assembled a group of education technology and new media experts to help shape the GradeGuru community and build out our value proposition for college students. The GradeGuru Academic Advisory Committee will help us determine what students need most out of a collaborative learning platform and advise us on key development decisions. Tune-in to our blog throughout the semester for guest posts from our advisory committee members on issues regarding open access learning, the academic social web, digital publishing, and various perspectives surrounding emerging media trends.

Jonathan Becker, J.D., Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at the Educational Leadership Department at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Prof. Becker teaches courses in school law and educational research methods. His research agenda includes continued study of digital equity in education, legal issues in education, and the intersection between educational technology and educational leadership. Prior to beginning his professorial career, he served as Research Director at Interactive, Inc., an educational research and consulting company based in Huntington, New York.

Keith Hampson, Ph.D is the Director of Digital Education Strategies at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. He is co-author of Mastering Digital Research: A Guide for Students and founder of LinkedIn’s “Higher Education Management Group” with more than four thousand members. Dr. Hampson is an experienced higher education consultant who has worked with companies such as Flat World Knowledge, Eduventures, Pearson Education, WebCT, Ninthhouse Communications, Digital Learning Interactive, Nelson Education, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Convergence Management Consultants, Canadian International Development Agency, NEXTMove Communications and has served on the advisory boards of Flat World Knowledge Inc and EdTek Services Inc. He is a regular speaker at higher education conferences on topics including content development models, productivity strategies and competition between institutions.

Paul Levinson, Ph.D is a Professor of Communication & Media Studies at Fordham University in New York City. His eight nonfiction books, including The Soft Edge (1997), Digital McLuhan (1999), Realspace (2003), and Cellphone (2004), have been the subject of major articles in the New York Times, Wired, the Christian Science Monitor, and have been translated into ten languages. New New Media, exploring blogging, Twitter, YouTube and other “new new” modes of communication, will be published by Penguin Academics in the summer of 2009. His science fiction novels include The Silk Code (1999, winner of the Locus Award for Best First Novel), Borrowed Tides (2001), The Consciousness Plague (2002), The Pixel Eye (2003), and The Plot To Save Socrates (2006). His short stories have been nominated for Nebula, Hugo, Edgar, and Sturgeon Awards. Paul Levinson appears on “The O’Reilly Factor” (Fox News), “The CBS Evening News,” “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” (PBS), “Nightline” (ABC), and numerous national and international TV and radio programs. He reviews the best of television in his InfiniteRegress.tv blog, and was listed in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Top 10 Academic Twitterers” in 2009.

David Parry, Ph.D is an Assistant Professor of Emerging Media and Communications at the University of Texas at Dallas. His research focuses around digital literacy and networked culture within universities. He has taught classes at The University at Albany and Simon’s Rock College in philosophy, literature and new media.

Chris Penny, Ph.D is a Professor of Educational Technology at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Pr. Penny is an Apple Distinguished Educator and a Google Certified teacher. His research focuses on technology integration into education. In his most recent research project, Pr. Penny embarked on an e-reader pilot program using the Kindle DX electronic reader. The goal of the pilot was to determine if the convenience and features of an e-reader are more useful than the physical qualities of a print book.