New Media Reader Introduction

There are a lot of hefty, heavy concepts laid out in the intro to the book detailing the intricacies of digital new media. The intro laid out the elements of which the book was going to cover which is everything from the earliest forms of communication to the most recent. The intro also talked about multiple perspectives that the book will cover about new media from its context to the media itself. I found it interesting that the artists working with new media were the real innovators and explorers of the medium. They had the "stones" to actually manipulate the new within their own context. It took much longer for the general public to accept and utilize the new media. I was also curious to why the American philosophers of new media were late on the uptake. What does europe have that we don't?