ABSTRACT
From today’s perspective it may be diffi cult to grasp the hype over videodiscs, audiovisual cassettes, and overhead projectors in the late 1960s and early ’70s, the moment when the term “new media” came into use.1 But Marshall McLuhan was not the only one expressing excitement about the participatory qualities that the media of the electronic age seemed to possess. According to McLuhan, television was the ultimate “cool medium” since it was low in defi nition and therefore required the audience to have high involvement with the televised message. At the opposite end were the “hot media” such as photography that left the viewer little to add from her experience or knowledge.2 Others were more interested in the effects of remediation on audience engagement: how new and old media could be combined and integrated in productive ways. Educational media producers, policy makers, and practitioners promoted the mixing of media as a dynamic tool for stimulating active participation in the classroom. Also, leaders and activists of social movements invoked all sorts of audiovisual media in their efforts to turn audiences into publics. A contemporary commentator even claimed that it was cool media that “made Woodstock, Vietnam protests, black revolution, and communes.”3
