Five principles of new media

The readings on “The Five Principles of New Media” were a very confusing reading. I’m not sure if it was the style of presentation or the material. I get really confused when it comes to the technical terms of computers and technology, so I got really confused with the in depth look at the Five principles of numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability and transcoding.
I understood numerical representation as the way a computer is ran. It is run off of numbers and all the numbers and codes are equated to the pictures we see and run programs we use.
I understood modularity as the pieces of a computer that work together to form the big picture. I would think of it as a file saved in my documents. I save my homework in a certain file but the computer saves pieces of this files code throughout the computer and when I click to access that file at a later time, the computer pulls all these pieces from all over the hard drive into one piece that is my homework.
I understand automation to be the basic function of movement and our own creative edge on a file. Most common example of this would be the ability to add motion to a PowerPoint presentation with moving words and pictures that fly into the presentation from every angle.
Variability was a hard one for me to understand. I think I understood it as the ability to have a varying response to the same action. Each time I added a color to the paper, the squares would appear in different arrangements and different sizes. They never appeared in the same shape in the same spot two times in a row.
Transcoding seemed to be difficult as well. The overlying idea was that it was the merge of our culture with technology?!?!? The first thing to come to mind was as if I were to take a picture of a modern day pop star and used Photoshop or another editing program to warp the picture and create a shimmery, distorted, but still fully understandable picture or the same pop star.
Overall I didn’t understand exactly how this incorporated into the other readings we’ve had this semester. I thought it was kind of a throw-off to switch the subject and style of reading right before our mid-term evaluation. I was thinking we would be getting a great article with a story to dispute or an idea to argue, but this seems to be factual information on how computers work and a greater vocabulary lesson on its components.