As a result of accepting a vacation offer to visit South Carolina a few months ago, my husband, Charlie, and I ended up sitting through a timeshare presentation. In effect, the entire sales pitch was designed to convince clients that it was in their best interests to invest thousands of dollars to acquire one week’s stay annually in one of this particular company’s vacation spots. Once we entered the sales building, we were assigned a presenter and shown to a booth which included two desk-mounted touchscreens and a TV-sized wall monitor. The presentation amounted to a persuasive rhetorical appeal, and included dialogue with a salesperson, who used one of the touchscreens to display text, photographs, videos, sometimes accompanied by music, through the wall monitor.

I was especially reminded of one aspect of this presentation while reading Configurations 4.3 in Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin’s Remediation. Bolter and Grusin refer to the idea of adapting qualities of one medium to use for another. Following her verbal and digital presentation, the presenter left us to proceed through a set of choices interactively on the touchscreen facing us. These were presented as windows on the touchscreen. One example consisted of geographical locations we would like to visit.  Upon progressing through a window for a particular destination, we were presented with a second set of windows displaying information about the location, such as timeshare accommodations, resort amenities, local restaurants, area activities, and area map. By opening any of these choices, the consumer could be presented with text, photos, line drawings, maps, or videos, but this was the end of the line. This approach seemed to be a repurposing of Microsoft’s Windows. However, while Windows can provide limitless connections throughout the internet, the timeshare company’s windows operated in a closed system.  And while Windows affords a user a wide choice, the sales presentation only permitted finite options. This mimicking of an operating system for the purposes of a sales presentation provided me as a consumer with a sense of familiarity and comfort, but at the same time I was very aware of how curated the images and videos were. For instance, every resort had perfect weather, and every vacationer was stylishly put together and exuding joy.

I realized that the text on the screen constantly reminded us of the company name, and this can be interpreted as making sure the consumer was aware of the mediator. The hypermediacy included items, such as area maps, music, and area information that were repurposed to be part of a sales device. Unlike Bolter and Grusin’s assertion that “the windowed interface does not attempt to unify the space around any one point of view,” this  particular windowed interface was designed to promote an overwhelming desire to buy. As to the effects of this presentation: yes those look like “nice” places to visit, but other considerations beyond the smooth presentation, such as signing away a small fortune, did not engage this couple.