Memory Bytes: History, Technology, and Digital Culture PDF
Preview Memory Bytes: History, Technology, and Digital Culture
Digital culture/Media studies ..........“Memory Bytes is an important contribution to M the growing body of scholarship tak ing the current moment of media change as an LAUREN RABINOVITZ AND E incitement to re-examine earlier moments in media history. The range of media, M historical periods, and disciplinary perspectives is spectacular, representing inter- ABRAHAM GEIL, EDITORS O disciplinary collaboration and con ver sa tion at its very best.”—HENRY JENKINS, coeditor of Hop on Pop: The Politics and Plea sures of Popular Culture .......“Anyone who R teaches courses in digital culture or media studies knows how diffi cult it is to fi nd Y MEMORY BYT ES scholarly essays on new media that consider these de vel op ments in re la tion to social and technological precedents. Memory Bytes fi lls this gap.”—BRIAN GOLDFARB, B ........ author of Visual Pedagogy: Media Cultures in and beyond the Classroom Digital Y culture is often characterized as radically breaking with past technologies, practices, T and ideologies rather than as refl ecting or incorporating them. Memory Bytes seeks to E counter such ahistoricism, arguing for the need to understand digital culture—and its S social, political, and ethical ramifi cations—in historical and philo soph i cal context. Looking at a broad range of technologies, including pho tog ra phy, print and digital media, heat engines, stereographs, and medical imaging, the con trib u tors present a number of different perspectives from which to refl ect on the nature of media change. While foregrounding the challenges of drawing com par i sons across varied media and eras, Memory Bytes explores how tech nol o gies have been integrated into society ....... at different moments in time. These essays from scholars in the social sciences and humanities cover topics re lat ed to science and medicine, politics and war, mass communication, phi los o phy, fi lm, photography, and art. Whether describing how the cultural and legal confl icts over player piano rolls prefi gured controversies over the intellectual property status of digital technologies such as mp3 files, comparing the experiences of watching QuickTime movies to Joseph Cornell’s “boxed relic” sculptures of the 1930s and 1940s, or calling for a critical history of electricity from the En light en ment to the present, Memory Bytes is a lively, enlightening examination Edited by ...... of the interplay of technology and culture. LAUREN RABINOVITZ is Professor Rabinovitz of American Studies and Cinema at the Uni ver si ty of Iowa. She is the author of For and Geil the Love of Pleasure: Women, Movies, and Cul ture in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago and Points of Re sis tance: Women, Power, and Politics in the New York Avant-Garde Cinema, 1943–1971 and coeditor of Television, History, and Amer i can Culture: Feminist Critical Essays, also published by Duke University Press. ABRAHAM GEIL is an instructor in media history at the New School University in New York City........ DUKE History, Technology, and Digital Culture Duke University Press ........................... Box 90660, Durham, NC 27708-0660 www.dukeupress.edu MEMORY BYTES History,Technology,andDigitalCulture LAUREN RABINOVITZ AND ABRAHAM GEIL, EDITORS MEMORY BYTES History, Technology, and Digital Culture DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS DURHAM AND LONDON 2004 ©2004DukeUniversityPress Allrights reserved PrintedintheUnitedStatesof Americaonacid-freepaper(cid:5) Designed byC.H.Westmoreland TypesetinCycles withVerdanadisplaybyTsengInforma- tion Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationDataappearon thelastprintedpageofthisbook. Excerpt from ‘‘Burnt Norton’’ in Four QuartetsbyT.S.Eliot,copyright1936by Harcourt,Inc.,andrenewed1964byT.S. Eliot,reprintedbypermissionofthepub- lisher. CONTENTS LAURENRABINOVITZANDABRAHAMGEIL Introduction 1 PART I IntellectualHistoriesoftheInformationAge LAURA RIGAL Imperial Attractions: Benjamin Franklin’s New Ex- perimentsof1751 23 DAVID DEPEW From Heat Engines to Digital Printouts: Machine ModelsoftheBodyfromtheVictorianEratotheHumanGenome Project 47 RONALDE.DAY The Erasure and Construction of History for the InformationAge:PositivismandItsCritics 76 PART II VisualCulture,Subjectivity,andtheEducationoftheSenses LAURENRABINOVITZ MorethantheMovies:AHistoryofSomatic VisualCulturethroughHale’sTours,imax,andMotionSimulation Rides 99 JUDITHBABBITTS StereographsandtheConstructionofaVisual CultureintheUnitedStates 126 SHARONGHAMARI-TABRIZI TheConvergenceofthePentagonand Hollywood:TheNextGenerationofMilitaryTrainingSimulations 150 PART III Materiality,Time,andtheReproductionofSoundandMotion JOHNDURHAMPETERS Helmholtz,Edison,andSoundHistory 177 LISAGITELMAN Media,Materiality,andtheMeasureoftheDigi- tal;or,TheCaseofSheetMusicandtheProblemofPianoRolls 199 SCOTTCURTIS Still/Moving:DigitalImagingandMedicalHerme- neutics 218 PART IV DigitalAesthetics,SocialTexts,andArtObjects N.KATHERINEHAYLES BodiesofTexts,BodiesofSubjects:Meta- phoricNetworksinNewMedia 257 THOMAS SWISS Electronic Literature: Discourses, Communities, Traditions 283 VIVIANSOBCHACK NostalgiaforaDigitalObject:Regretsonthe QuickeningofQuickTime 305 SelectedBibliography 331 Contributors 335 Index 339 vi CONTENTS LaurenRabinovitzandAbrahamGeil INTRODUCTION Discussions on the advent of digital culture now occur in most disciplinesinthesciencesandhumanities.Literarycriticsaddress digital culture’s radical challenge to book culture and print liter- acy.Sociologistsquerythequalityofcommunityandthestructure and shape of newly forming institutions in cyberspace. Feminists ponder whether disembodied identities will result in a liberation fromtheasymmetriesofgenderrelationsorinthecalcifiedlinesof privilegeandpower.Anthropologistsandhumangeographerscon- siderthedynamicsofcomputerizedcivilization.Communications and media specialists discuss both an ecology and political econ- omyofaworldorganizedaroundthedisseminationandreception ofinformation;andcomputerscientists,medicalprofessionals,and philosophers alike worry about the ethical consequences of digi- tal culture. All of these discussions share a larger, common con- cernforunderstandingrecentconsequencesofsocialandphysical change.Yet,theyalltoooftendisplacewhattheyhaveincommon ontoaduplicatedlanguageofrevolution:talkaboutdigitalculture hasbeeninvestedinthrowingoffthepastandemphasizingwhatis unique,radical,revolutionary. Discussionsaboutdigitalcultureassumethatnewcomputerized technologiesprovidesuchfundamentalrupturefromthepastthat therearenocontinuitiesor,worse,thattheywillfullyobliteratethe pastincreatingnewmodels.Suchahistoricismisproblematicbe- causeittendstoreproduceatthelevelofscholarshipwhatisoneof thehallmarksofdigitalculture—itsrhetoricofnewness.Itispain- fullyobviousthatthisisneitherthefirsttechnologicalrevolution inhumanhistorynoraneventindependentfromitsculturalheri- tagesandhistoricalroots,andsoarhetoricofnewnessisatbesta myopicone. Current discussions fail to take into account how digital culture hascomeintoitsown.Overthecourseofthenineteenthcentury, capitalistindustrializationdroveawiderangeofnewtechnologies —telegraphic, telephonic, phonographic, and photographic—that remadesocietythroughtremendoussocial,political,andeconomic changeandthroughradicallyreorganizingpeople’sperceptionsof time and space. These changes provided the cultural and techno- logical basis for the twentieth century—for mass production, for modernandpostmodernindustrialization,andforthesocietiesof consumption that have prevailed in the West during the twenti- ethcentury.Tounderstandthecurrentconsequencesofsocialand physical change—to understand digital culture—requires a philo- sophical and historical framework for a duration longer than the lasttwentyyears. Therhetoricofamnesiathatsurroundscurrentdiscussionsofdigi- talculturefacilitatesutopicaswellasdystopicvisionsoftherole ofcomputertechnologiesinthetwenty-firstcentury.Itprovidesa visionofthefuturethatrelievesanxietyoveranyimaginedlossof control;inthecelebrationofrevolutionanduniqueness,itprom- ises a new future rife with limitless possibilities. In its dystopian guise,therhetoricofamnesiaremovesallagencyfromsocialsub- jects:anewtechnologicallydeterministiccourseofhistorytakesthe futureoutofourhands.Ineithercase,therhetoricofamnesiaerases the complex interplay among the institutions—economic, juridi- cal,andpolitical—thatselected,authorized,anddeployedspecific technologiesoverotherpossibilitiesandsecuredtheirdevelopment in highly specific ways for explicit purpose over time. The rheto- ricofamnesiaerasesallthat—themultiplerelationshipsbetween cultureandtechnethathavealwaysbeengroundedinpurposeand specificsocialinterests.Byobscuringtherelationshipofcomputer technologiestooldermodesofcapitalistproductionanddistribu- tion,thestatusquobecomesnaturalizedandthematerialbaseof technologyinhistoryassumestransparency. 2 LAURENRABINOVITZANDABRAHAMGEIL This is not to say that all discussions of digital culture are ne- glectful of history. But among the discussions that are growing at atremendousrateofproduction—morethanadozenanthologies on digital culture have appeared in only the last five years—very few think historically or foreground the relationship of historical perspectivetothecurrentdiscussion.Mostoften,‘‘history’’stands apartandisrepresentedbyintellectualsofpreviousgenerationsfor theirroleasprophetsorarchitectsofwhatistocome(e.g.,Marshall McLuhan’sUnderstandingMedia[1964]andTheMediumIstheMas- sage[1967],VannevarBush’s‘‘AsWeMayThink’’[1945],AlanTur- ing’s ‘‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’’ [1950]). McLuhan forecaststheinformationsocietyofthe‘‘globalvillage’’;Bushpro- vides a prophecy of hypertextuality; Turing’s discussion of artifi- cial intelligence celebrates the future of disembodiment. One of thethingsthatdistinguishestheseself-proclaimedvisionariesfrom twentieth-centuryphilosophersconcernedwithtechnologyisthat bypopularizingtheveryconceptstheyproclaim,theychangedso- cialattitudesandvaluesaboutthenewtechnologiestheywerede- scribing.Inthisregard,theyaresomethingofself-fulfillingprophets becausetheymakepopularthevisionofsocietythattheyclaimwill resultfromnewtechnologicalinterventions.Thehistoryofprog- nosticationomitsdeadendsandvainpredictionsandisultimately historyasteleology. Anotherwaythathistoryoftencomesintoplayindiscussionsof digitalcultureisthroughtheideaofremediation.Thatis,thatnew technologies, media in particular, always reinscribe what was al- readypresentinprevioustechnologies.Thisworksbestinahistory of media technologies as technics of representation with little re- gardtotheirmaterialandinstitutionalbases,andithasresultedin alinearhistoryoftransitionsfromcinematotelevisiontohyper- media, the World Wide Web, and virtual reality. Such historical modeling suffers from two important narrowings of the field: it firstreducesdigitalitytocommunicationsmediaandthenreduces mediatechnologiestotheirinstantiationasvisualrepresentational forms.Thelatterespeciallyignoresthestatusofmovies,video,and thelikeasaudio-visualrepresentationssoastodistancethemfrom their intersection with telephonic, radio, and other communica- tionstechnologyindustries.Theresultisdigitalculturemerelyas a linear history of technological representation and of visual sig- INTRODUCTION 3
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