Older electronic and print media are seeking to reaffirm their status within our culture, while digital media are challenging that status. Both new and old media are invoking the twin logics of immediacy and hypermediacy in their efforts to remake themselves and each other. Yet these same old and new media often refuse to leave us alone. Hollywood films, such as Natural Born Killers and Strange Days , mix media and styles unabashedly. As this webcam jukebox shows, our two seemingly contradictory logics not only coexist in digital media today, but are mutually dependent.
Immediacy depends upon hypermediacy.
At the same time, even the most hypermediated productions strive for their own brand of immediacy. The desire for immediacy leads digital media to borrow avidly from each other as well as from their analog predecessors such as film, television, and photography. Whenever one medium seems to have convinced viewers of its immediacy, other media will try to appropriate that conviction. At the same time the televised newcasts are coming to resemble webpages in their hypermediacy. Similarly, one of the most popular genres of computer games is the flight simulator.