In this article Bolter and Grusin deeply explain the concept of mediation, remediation and its connection to hypertext throughout the years and while that was a very interesting read, the concept that stood out to me was constant remediation of old ideas. They mentioned that you can try to erase an old concept by improving the idea in a drastic way but that we are still confined by the general idea of the original concept. The way they explained a lot of the ideas was very confusing and wordy but I understood it as no matter how far we improve a concept the original design will still shape the final product. For example, the difference in accessibility to literature like reading a book 300 years ago VS. now reading an article online that has hypertext links. The original concept of reading was writing down your thoughts in a structured way for others to enjoy, originally this is done by hand through the use of scribes, then the world is introduced to the printing press, then books are mass produced in factories, then books and articles are readily available in almost every store and now everything is online. The original concept of writing down ideas for others to enjoy is still the main goal in all literature, so, the main idea is still there and is still shaping the entire game, but through years and years of remediation that media has become easily accessible; literature is no longer a luxury it’s an everyday casualty.
Literature has also gone beyond simple reading because of hypertext. In my opinion hypertext is the most groundbreaking remediation of literature since the printing press. No longer do we have to search through sources on scholarly articles trying to find other sources or further explanations because now we have hypertext links. In the 80’s if you had a research paper due for class someone would go to the library pick up a book that aligned perfectly with the research and then try to pick more books based off that original pick because they need multiple sources. But now, all those sources are not only at our fingertips but they are literally in the scholarly articles we are studying. For example, you pick an online article by Dr. Slinger who has a PhD in physics and find his reading to be easily understandable and see it as a perfect fit for your research paper. After finishing the article you try to find other piece by and find at the bottom of the article is a blue piece of text highlighting his name. You click it and boom you’ve been taken to a site full of his work as a scientist. This technological improvement has just saved you hours of rummaging through libraries and online forums trying to find more work by Dr. Slinger. Hypertext is a simple concept but will have forever changed the process of learning and obtaining information thanks to the impressive remediation of literature though the years.
Below is an article further explaining the history of hypertext and I found it very informative and supports my argument of just how influential hypertext was when it made it’s way into the world. LINK (<hypertext link hehe)