The Vector Medium
David M. Berry In The Philosophy of Software (Berry 2011: 10), drawing on Kittler's (1999) argument that the digital causes an implosion of previously distinct media forms, I argued that code functions as a super-medium, a medium that does not merely contain the fragmented media of the twentieth century but radically reshapes and transforms them into a new unity. Manovich made a similar argument that software simulates all prior media whilst adding properties native to computation itself constituting what he calls a metamedium (Manovich 2013). [1] This followed from Negroponte's claim that we were in the middle of a transition from atoms to bits (Negroponte 1996). With the turn to artificial intelligence and the rise of a different form of storage, if we can call it that, we have what we might term a vectorial turn which produces a new substrate and I am calling this a vector medium. If the digital transformation created a medium which was interoperable ac...
