|
|
 |
The birds trend has even found its way into
contemporary commercial culture, actually not too surprising, as television and the web
are in head to head competition presently to win out the public's love and dedication.
Even though the industries have already shown that ultimately there will be some sort of
joint solution (an early example being WebTV), both television and the web come closer and
closer to presenting themselves as the same medium on their own, as they both want to claim the advantages of the other medium as their
own, and ultimately they turn themselves more and more into each other. In Remediation, a text about understanding new media, Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin notice that "producers of television are busy exploiting digital technology to enhance their medium's claim to immediacy" (Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. Remediation. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999. p. 185.) and that "television news and information shows are increasingly willing to use digital technology in the service of hypermediacy without giving up their claim to be live. In commercials, news shows, and sports broadcasts, television is borrowing the windowed and multimediated look of the computer screen." (Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. Remediation. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999. p. 189). Motorola, an electonic powerhouse, has recently introduced a new line of technology, "WEB W/O WIRES", a line of digital wireless phones, pagers, and two-way pagers that allows wireless access to the web "all while you're getting a little fresh air!" as they put it. (http://www.mot.com/GSS/CSG/direct_promotions/webwithoutwires/ [Accessed 11 November 1999].) Part of their promotion for this technology is a television commercial that shows a scene where several country roads intersect. There are telephone poles lining the roads, but no cables wired from pole to pole. Thousands of crows fly towards this area and land on the absence of these cables. The viewer is shown a view of the birds in line perched comfortably on nothing and a close up of the birds' feet closing around the air. Once again these birds are some sort of connection to human and the bodily, but also something other that we're trying to reach. The crows have always perched on these cables that transfer information and allow communication. Even in the absence of the wires, the crows still feel some kind of affinity to them and comfort in that place; they do not find something else to sit on. Furthermore, they do not seem to even notice the fact that the wires are missing. They are completely at ease with this new technology as if it has always been natural to assume that one day the cables would dissappear. |
