Let’s call this entry part two of three. I’m a bit behind (behind what? just
my own schedule), but I’m through the application chapters–the middle 140 pages
of B&G. In the paragraph opening into the final section, "Self," B&G write
that these middle chapters are applications of remediation as a process.
In their glossary, B&G define remediation this way:
remediation Defined by Paul Levenson as the "anthropotropic" process
by which new media technologies improve upon or remedy prior technologies.
We define the term differently, using it to mean the formal logic by which new
media refashion prior media forms. Along with immediacy and hypermediacy,
remediation is one of the three traits of our genealogy of new media. (273).
B&G discuss remediation as this logics-guided process involved with a variety
of media throughout section two: computer games (88), digital photography (104), photorealistic
graphics (114), digital art (132), film (146), virtual reality (160), mediated
spaces (168), the www (196), and ubiquitous computing (212). In the final
section, "Convergence," B&G offer an explanation for more various push-pull
relationships among media. Whereas remediation tends to describe a uni-directional
process of influence, convergences are akin to blends–multi-directional
shapings felt among media (where television flows into the www and the www flows
into television). Convergence rel. to remediation: a sloshing media
spillway, a complex subversion of remediation’s teleology.