Characteristics of the Medium

Many people ask the question, “What is it?” and most people do not know the answer. In this article, Adams and Clark continue to explain to us the many characteristics of the medium that we have learned to call the Internet. The Internet differs from all other types of traditional communication categories because there are so many forms of interaction. (Adams & Clark) There are many ways to communicate on the interpersonal level, such as e-mail and videoconferencing, but there are also many ways to communicate on a large scale to the public. For example many companies use their corporate webpage’s to give product information or make their product available for sale to the consumer. (Adams & Clark)
Two key terms that we learned about through this article were macromedium and metamedium. Macromedium tells us about the internet’s immense size and that it reaches to all audiences on a global scale. The term metamedium means that it can operate from both ends meaning that it can both send and receive documents such as audio and video files. (Adams & Clark) Despite the internet looking extremely strong and functional to the naked eye, there are problems to this ever-changing medium. Like everything else reliability is always one of the first questions when coming to a product or service. The internet is no different. As the internet continues to grow in size to does the frailty of the internet. (Adams & Clark) Another problem that users of the internet once faced was the speed it operated at. Through the years it has made significant advancements and can send a few thousand pages of text per second. The third and final problem is the distribution of the internet. (Adams & Clark)
In 1996 Rafaeli and Newhagen defined the six key characteristics that help make the internet function as well as it does and how they continue to evolve for the future of communication on the internet. First is multimedia. This is the process of a wide range of media being displayed on the same page. The next is hyper textual. This is the ability to link any type of content to a different type of content. The third is the web being interactive. This means that while you are accessing the internet there is no direct path that you must take, but instead you have the choice and control over the medium. The fourth is it being synchronous, meaning that the internet can access information immediately but at the same time it can store information for later use. Another key characteristic is that the internet is packet-based. This means that all information that is sent via the internet is grouped in segments and will reach its destination as long as the address is correct. The final characteristic is that the internet is digital based. Digital has many advantages over analog which is the alternative way to store information. These advantages are that it is not easily distorted, and suffers less wear and tear because there is no direct contact. (Adams and Clark)
Reading this article was extremely helpful in understanding the basic principles and functions of how the internet that we use daily works. I feel that the article was necessary to understand how communication takes place via the internet and gave a good explanation on the ever-growing and constantly changing medium that we call the Internet.