The first question we should ask ourselves is what is 'old media' and 'new media'. If 'new media' is recent technology that has been developed and built upon on 'old media', why to we see the two as completely different types of media? 'New media' or 'Digital media' has developed in certain ways which allow us to think of it as a completely new media rather than it being recent. Digitisation is one of the most drastic changes that have occurred in recent media, green screens is a good example as it is now used in worldwide media to present information to its audience such as the weather report and news reports. With this 'improved' media technology comes disadvantages such as a loss of information, "digitisation inevitably involves loss of information in contrast to analogue representation, a digitally encoded representation contains a fixed amount of information" (Lev Manovich (2001), The language of New Media). By using analogue media such as books and papers we can access a larger source of information than we are able to from digital, examples of this would be information that are able to be accessed from book while digital media are programmed to only give out as much information as it is told to give out. This can be argued and that that the internet (being a form of digital media) can supply its reader with as much information as they want through the world wide web.
Convergence in media is the combination of older and newer media or two institutions coming together in order to keep up with the needs of its audience. This falls under four categories which are technological, institutional, professional and cultural. Technological convergence combines technology considered to be older media and new media together in order to create a new product. This could be taking a telephone (old media) and a computer (new media) and combining the two to create a more up to date product e.g the latest phone (iphone 4).
Institutional media is similar to convergence in terms of combining in order to create something new. This focus' more on media companies and putting two different institutions together so that something more modern and up to date with technology as well as possible. Time Warner and AOL are good examples of how two institutions can combine in order to produce something new.
If convergence is a combination of 'old media' and 'new media', can we present the two to be binary opposites or is it all one media as the two media aid each other in order to present something recent.
Remediation can view older media and newer media as not binary oppositions but the same, only separated by the time thy were done. Many would argue that "new media are doing exactly what their predecessors have done: presenting themselves as fashioned and improved versions of other media" (Bolter and Grusin, Remediation 1999).
I think that multimedia is never finished and is always developing in many ways technologically and how they user is able to interact with it. Without the use of older media, new/digital media would have nothing to build on, therefore making the advancements on multimedia develop far longer than it should.
'I love bees' is an alternate reality game created by '4orty2wo Entertainment', "during of 2004 they launched the website www.ilovebees.com and it was used as a publicity site for Halo 2". By using this site viewers could use it as a game to unlock online content that would further lead to the location of the game release. This method of virtual marketing is interactive as well as markets the game Halo 2 (http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/I_love_bees). Bolter and Grusin "call the representation of one medium in another remediation...we argue that remediation is the defining characteristic of the new digital media (Remediation).
So by using one type of media to promote another it shows that media hasn't really changed in terms of being two different media. In my opinion it has only developed in such a way that we don't see the two as being similar but completely different.
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