Taylor Swift hates remediation and I’ll explain why in a few. Remediation is a part of our everyday life, more than we think. It’s the shift to a newer form of media that takes some of the characteristics the previous. (J.D Applen, p 14). It completely “refashions” the older one. Applen’s simple definition is so straight forward. It allows us to assume that most of the technology we use, has gone through a process of remediation. Even what I’m doing right now with this blog. From communicating these words to writing it. Writing these words with pen onto paper, to manually distribute it. From distributing it to the printing press. The early age of print to the late age of print. The late stage being writing digitally and distributing it as so.
The Telegraph
One example that Applen uses to demonstrate new age print, would be the telegraph:
“When telegraphs first came into being, they symbolized to us that people could send instant written messages to each other, a remarkable improvement over the speed of nineteenth century postal services: imagine the time it would take for a letter to get from America to Europe, or from New York to San Francisco before the telegraph. However, today we can answer emails from our home or our desks at work, whereas telegraph messages were sent to operators who had to decode the signal and then send it to the recipient by local courier.” (P.13)
That would mean that anything from the Industrial Revolution like steam powered trains to coal, would be considered remediated. Without the inherent idea to repurposed something, the world would constantly have to start over. The same goes for creative work. Imagine we were never allowed to create pieces of inspiration from another or simply refashion it. Ideas would never reach their full potential.
Your Favorite Popstar
Ok, back to Taylor Swift. I hated when she made Olivia Rodrigo give her songwriting credits and royalties. Olivia simply said she was “inspired” by her. Rodrigo’s song “Deja Vu” took inspiration from a cruel summer. I wouldn’t;t have even known that if Olivia didn’t say so herself. She remediated the hook. I’d assume Swift’s team hates the process of remediation because she didn’t ‘copy’, she repurposed it. Dare I say, did it better. Since the newer technologies remediates the latter, there’s debates on whether the newer one improves it. (P.14).
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