I think I'm going to coin two schools of media criticism/theory. They already exist, but like all good "schools," they lack a taxonomy. So here they are:
- New Mediatism: This is a theory that looks for the progress and/or disaster inherent in any and all new media, precisely because of their newness and because newness wouldn't come about if not in response to some deficiency in the oldness or nowness. Examples of new mediatism can be seen in the work of those who say things like "video games are totally different, totally new than those media that came before them" or who blame new elaborate special effects for both ruining movies and for leading to sudden increases in violent tendencies.
- Old Mediatism: This is a theory that attempts to thwart any notion that new media are responding to gaps or deficiencies in old media. New media are in fact new clothes on a very old emporer, and do many of the same things that old media do, and simply attempt to update them in order to tap into consumer patterns and make some coinage. Sure, some things are newer, and even better, but old mediatism prides itself on a willful nostalgia that refuses to really take any of those differences seriously, and instead attempts to reduce those differences to the point of insignificance.
There they are, two new schools of thinking, or at least two new labels for old thoughts. I expect to be cited.