In Remediation: Understanding New Media, authors Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin argue that new media is only new in the way it presents old media. They use the terms immediacy, hypermediacy, and remediation often throughout the book, and despite their claim that you don't have to read the book front to back, you absolutely have to read the chapter that defines said terms or you'll be very lost.
Immediacy refers to media that immerse you so much in the media that it feels like real life. You forget that you are using the media. One example is virtual reality. The user is so immersed in the media, interacting with it in a such life-like way, that the interface is forgotten, becoming "transparent." It is difficult to have complete immediacy, but in the end it is what all media strives for: to transport us into the world of the media and give a sense of verisimilitude.
Hypermediacy refers to media where you are constantly brought back into contact with the interface. You cannot forget that you are using the media, and it feels less real. Windows on a computer screen are a great example of this. The experience feels less real because the user sees frames, a multiplicity of images, and interacts with a keyboard or mouse. However, this form of media is no less important than transparent immediacy. As the authors note, "Transparent digital applications seek to get to the real by bravely denying the fact of mediation; digital hypermedia seek the real by multiplying mediation so as to create a feeling of fullness, a satiety of experience, which can be taken as reality" (53). The user can have many windows open, and this kind of multitasking creates a sense of immediacy because the user is doing and seeing and hearing so much at once.
Remediation takes one medium and represents it in another. Photography on a computer screen is one example. Although the medium of a digital image may seem new, in fact it is only representing an old media (that is, the photograph) in a new way.
The authors take a good section of the book examining various forms of remediation and demonstrating how all "new" media "are doing exactly what their predecessors have done: presenting themselves as refashioned and improved versions of other media" (14-15). As I read the book, I came to realize that all media is just that: mediation. A painting mediates between reality and the viewer; the viewer sees a market or a beach or a dog, etc., and the painting is merely trying to represent the truth. It is trying to be immediate. However, this does not change the fact that the viewer is not really seeing a market or beach or dog. The media is mediating the experience for them.
Therefore, because media has only ever been mediation, digital media should not make us feel that we are becoming less connected to reality just because digital media seeks to represent that very reality. That is all media has ever tried to do. Digital media just does it better than any previous kind, whether through immediacy or hypermediacy.
Bolter and Grusin take a very objective voice in the book, which I like. They don't seek to convince that digital media is good or bad, immoral or not. They only argue that digital media is doing the same thing that previous media have done, which is to represent old media in a new, improved way. Despite their objective view, however, I came away feeling much better about my digital culture.
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