The Great Remediator

I don’t know how she does it, but Hayles always blows me away with her writing.  In Writing Machines I really appreciated her contestation of Beaudrillard’s progression of the simulacrum and her ideas about “remediation” (5).  As she points out, this phenomenon can be seen time and time again in the multimedia millennium that is the current era.  Her book demonstrates remediation beautifully by offering an extremely well thought out and functional restructuring of the scholarly text; however the idea of remediation may give some people pause.  For instance, if the book is transformed into a multimedia conglomerate of text, images, video, audio, and interactivity it is possible that the activity of reading could become too far detached from actual reading and become more of a multi-variegated experience.  This would not be such a huge concern for more mature readers, but if child and adolescent literature were to all take this type of turn, it is likely that something get lost in the transition.

For instance, the interactive e-book Pat the Bunny manages to cram enough activities into every page that one is left to wonder how much actual reading experience a kid can gain from this title.  As can be seen in the image of the books cover, the book contains painting and easter egg hunts (on every page) that seem to me to be mild distractors that could possibly hinder the learning experience instead of activate it.  In the end, Pat the Bunny seems to be little more than a high-tech coloring book with a few words and phrases thrown in for good measure.  This is not to say that all interactivity fits into this category, but there needs to be a stable balance if learning how to read is going to remain the core goal of texts like these.  Then again, if a parent’s goal was only keeping the kids occupied for a bit, then Pat the Bunny is a true masterpiece.