What is remediation?

A good number of the books published by the McSweeney’s publishing house are examples of retrograde remediation that not only adopt hypertexual structures familiar to computer users but also have a haptic, sensual quality that sets them apart from most texts read on computer screens. Consider, for instance, McSweeney’s Issue 16, which sports two slim books, a set of playing cards that tell a story written by Robert Coover and which changes whenever the cards are shuffled, and a comb.Animated films remediate computer graphics by suggesting that the traditional film can survive and prosper through the incorporation of digital visual technology. Full-length animated films, especially the Disney films of the past decade [1990s], are perfect examples of ‘retrograde’ remediation, in which a newer medium is imitated and even absorbed by an older one. (147)

References
Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: MIT Press, 1994.
Literature in the Digital Age: from Close Reading to Distant Reading

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