When asked about what the core concepts are for understanding what made "new media" possible, I talk about two things:
- the movement away from communications technology where the network was smart and the terminals were dumb (radio, television, telephone), towards a design where the network is dumb and the terminals are smart (also known as the end to end principle)
- the movement away from communications technologies being expensive and only owned by large media companies, to technology being owned and controlled by private citizens
Combined, these two features enable innovation since any two persons can communicate with each other in any way they want simply by making agreements between those two parsons, and configuring their 'smart terminals' to communicate in this manner.