Technology: Fear Not!

In the text, Remediation, Mr. Grusin and Mr. Bolter make the claim that new and old media are not in competition, one trying to conquer the other, but are involved in a much more complicated relationship. The new media incorporates features of the old, to create a better media (14-15). They do not compete, but merge. The authors also mention that immediacy and hypermediacy are “mutually dependent” (6), and this combination of media is prevalent in history.
Cave paintings involved scenes of life at the time of the paintings, such as hunting and death, some more detailed than others, some conveying multiple meanings. Hieroglyphics retained the notion of using images, this time for the religious, political and general life around Egypt, but added their version of text to the images, and indicated by size and space the importance of the characters painted. Thus here was a multi-media document, as it were.
After the fall of Roman in the West, manuscripts included text and images, these being closely related to the text. As paper and printing took hold, the publishers saw for some time the importance of using illustrating specialists in the copy. Much later, there were multimedia posters, with text and image, presented to display a quick and effective message, such as World War I and II exhortations, as well as Nazi and Soviet propaganda. Yet the joining of the image and text remained, and the poster took advantage of the clarity of print. Newspapers retained this clarity, though the text often was smaller, and more words could be fit onto a page. As well, newspapers combined text and images, including drawings, and photographs. Putting the headlines on the first page and adding the photo of a public figure to relate to large text, is an echo to the letter illustrations in the manuscripts. The text mentions even postcards, which include images and text (14), again, a reflection of the manuscript.
Film involved the use of some text, but most importantly a series of virtually redundant pictures to produce the illusion of movement. Sound also combined with text and image. Also, the well-made films gave the viewer a sense of experiencing the moment on the screen, and even forgetting that the experience is only movie. Then, television had the advantage of images and text broadcast to distant areas, but still maintained the advantages of film. The multimedia website—uses the past advantages of the manuscript, the printing press, and the newspaper, but also the ability to broadcast and receive moving images, with the advantages of television. Now, the users can choose what to experience on the site, and some can take the users to explore ancient cave paintings as this class has done, or to take an in-depth look at the International Space Station. As well, there are web-cams, borrowing from the television, for the viewer to see Norway, the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, or even spots in the United States.
Next, they state that the newer media are forged not in a vacuum, but in the crucible of the surrounding culture (19). The manuscript came from a religious, political and economic on text, and printing, starting from the religious climate at the time, grew into an instrument of massive political implications, from the press came the handbills, and newspapers, later radio, television and the internet. The point is that all these came from the context of the society, and not invaders from without (19).