You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Reading this week's book, Remediation, was a little bit more difficult than the previous readings. It caused what I like to call "brain fuzz," where you get to the end of a paragraph and think, "wait, what did I just read?" I think this is partly because Bolter and Grusen have a nasty habit of making up words which they do not explain, and then proceed to use them juxtaposed against one another in sometimes ambiguous ways. At least the difficult words in the other readings could be looked up in the dictionary.

This being by far the most current of our readings, having been written not only in a time when I was alive, but also cognizant of and actually using the technology described in the book as it was being written, I was a little surprised to not know or understand a lot of the references. The movie Strange Days and the music video, Telecommunications Breakdown were used ad-nausium throughout the book, but I have never heard of either of them. And I'll be honest, I had NO idea what a MUD was, and the context clues were about as clear as mud. Multiuser Dungeon? Really? So, it's basically World of Warcraft meets chat room. (Do they even have chat rooms anymore?) Well, I guess as much as things change they stay the same. So, after discovering that this book was a weird kind of time capsule, I decided to look past the dated material and look at the content.

Bolter and Grusen argue that media continues to grow upon itself as it evolves from one medium to another. It takes part of that old medium and "remediates" it, or uses the old thing in a new way, to show how the new technology improved on the old. One way in which they contend media tries to improve on itself is the ever present, ever unattainable quest for immediacy, or reality to be captured and experienced through media. For example, a photograph is a more realistic version of a painting, and a movie (short for "moving picture") is a more realistic version of a picture, and a "talkie" is a more realistic version of a movie, and so on. Each medium builds upon the last to fulfill the previous medium's broken promises of realism. This is reminiscent of McLuhan's rear view mirror theory, in which we can only understand our current media in terms of past media. Bolter and Grusen take it one step further in contending that new media IS old media, with a face lift (which, by the way, they contend is a remediation of the self).

They also contend that media is both trying to be immediate (feel so real that it disappears) and hypermediate (to constantly remind the viewer or hearer of itself). One of my favorite types of media is the theme park, and not just any theme park, Walt Disney World! Walking down Main Street USA, one is submerged in the sights and sounds of Disney's "make believe" world. In this sense the theme park is very much immediate, it reaches every one of your senses and brings you in to its fantasy. Even the lines bring you into the story of a Mission to Mars or a journey back to time. However, a quick trip inside for some air will jolt the vacationer back to reality as he is bombarded with food and souvenirs for sale, at quite a hefty price tag. Or, when walking from one "land" to another, the park guest hears a change in music, costume, and architecture and is again reminded of the media surrounding him. The whole park is full of remediation everywhere one looks. At the end of every ride is a gift shop with souvenirs for that ride. Chances are that the ride was based on a Disney movie, which was probably based on a book. The park itself is a remeidation of Disneyland, which was remediation of the TV show Disneyland, which then again, was a remediation of the theme park Disneyland. Disney doesn't call it remediation though, they call it Synergy.

This back and forth remediation is also seen in television and the web, mostly by TV stations that now have websites. In a world where information is free and immediate, channels like CNN use their website to not only send viewers back to the TV station, but also use the TV station to send viewers back to the website. Both mediums are full of hypermediated material with multiple boxes of scrolling information and pictures, each is a veritable wealth of information and stimulation. I believe CNBC is the station responsible for the "octobox" and the "decabox" showing 8 or even 10 "live" people at once talking with each other about the day's news. Although it is in some ways immediate, because the people are "live" and talking to each other in real time, it is also extremely hypermediated with not only the sheer quantity of talking heads, but also the graphics and music along with them, one can not help but remember that she is watching TV.

Although technology (especially the web) has moved forward by leaps and bounds in the last ten years since Remediation was written, its examples can still be seen in the new (and let's face it, remediated) generations of technology available today.