There are two areas where new media can claim be new:
- Access - while older (pre-internet) improvements continually improved access to writing, music, photos, etc., these changes were incremental. The advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web brought about readical changes in access to knowledge and art.
- Agency - Older technologies also incrementally moved toward providing agency of creation to the "people," but the advent of the Web and connected devices has had a revolutionary democratizing effect of granting creative agency (artistic, authorial, etc.) to the masses.
http://bit.ly/AgencyNewMedia