Out of the five principles described in Manovich's chapter, I think our project fits the Transcoding principle the best. Our main objective in this project is to make the user visualize the internet as something familiar to them - planets, solar systems, and galaxies. We all learned about the planets and their differences in content, their rotations around the sun, at an early age, yet (for some of us) the internet came later. By showing webpages and how they can connect to each other, via HTML links or physical routers, it should begin to form an image that is a lot like our solar system, with large aggregates of links or major routers forming the suns.
The weakest is likely to be the Variability category. While our project could exist in several different views, based on the connections we make, the input to the program is still entirely dependent on the content generated by others. The best way to counteract this is to either add more variability in the way we display the content, by making different connections between the "planets" and "suns" and displaying them differently, or pulling different types of content from the webpages. Of course, the biggest barrier to variability will be what is technologically possible to compute, both in what is made available and what we have the computing power to do.
b. Do you agree or disagree with Manovich's definition, and why?
It is definitely a more thorough definition of what constitutes New Media, but a more technical definition that deals with the nitty-gritty parts and less of the overall concept of New Media. Unless, of course, he went over that in a section other than Principles of New Media, which I will freely admit is the only section I read, to save myself some time.
However, technically, his definition is beautifully thorough. He clearly separates new media from what people might mistake it for, such as old media converted to a digital format. It is a good breakdown of everything we think of as "new media."
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