Learning To Work in a New Medium

 The following was a "mock-up" of how to take notes on evaluating websites in the "infantile" period of development (late 90's) and in their current state of development. We asked students to use the Wayback Machine to compare a current popular website to an earlier version of itself to discover how early sites remediated content and communication practices from previous media.

 FROM CLASS NOTES: In their book, Remediation, Bolter & Grusin point out that new media develop literacies “by paying homage to, rivaling, and refashioning such earlier media as perspective painting, photography, film, and television.” This process of “remediation” is seen in earlier media which refashioned one another: writing remediated orality, photography remediated painting, film remediated stage production, and television remediated film, etc.

McLuhan explains that each new medium contains the previous medium as content.

• Reading was the content of early Stage.
• Stage was the content of early Movies.
• Film or Stage is content of infantile TV.
• Chalkboard is content of infantile PPT.
• Print ads were content of infantile Websites.

While the Pepsi exercise below was intended only as a skeletal example, I was struck by the immediate evidences of how technology dictated literacies (monitor screen sizes) and how much social media and user-generated content has been incorporated into current websites!
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I explored the Pepsi Website from 2001and found a few interesting things:

• What's with all the empty space on the right? (Computer monitor resolutions dictated a smaller viewing area - 400x600 or 600x800 - PLUS the HTML coding didn't allow for scalable websites.)
• etc. Britney!
• etc. Games!

But the New Pepsi site is quite different!

• It has tons of photos!
• It has contributions from users!
• It is social media driven!
• etc.
• etc.