Table Of ContentDigital 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
