I had some trouble deciding what concept or object to choose, after all it seems like everything in our world today has been remediated in some form or another. While driving up to campus the other morning, I was annoyed with the GPS finder we had installed in our car. When I was growing up, my family and I would take many long road trips all over the country. These trips were extremely enjoyable, almost like an adventure, where we were forced to use those fold out maps to find our destination. With advances in technology over the past few years, we now don’t need to use those paper maps to find our final destination. After personal GPS technology emerged people stopped using paper maps. This to me is a sort of remediation. There is no need to ever look for directions on a paper map, when we can just download our travel plans on to the device and presto!-our trip has already been laid out.
I believe that the change in map usage would fall under the first part Bolter & Grusin’s explanation, where they discuss how “each new medium is justified because it fills a lack or repairs faults in its predecessor” I choose this because GPS systems are an improvement on the original paper map, and have many new abilities that a paper map doesn’t. They use the example of the World Wide Web because it has the ability to “repair” simple problems we have today.
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Ok, a good start...except you didn't explain what problem is being fixed or what the paper map lacks. I was getting ready for it, and then nothing. I was sad. :( What's the difference between looking on a map on paper and looking on a map on screen?
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong -- I _love_ my GPS. But to be a remediation along the lines that you say here, I'd need more support for that argument. Bear that in mind for future posts!