Media Studies 111B- Reading Questions

Kenneth Cmiel and John Durham Peters - Promiscuous Knowledge Is the culture of happy summary and its analog the culture of crystallized essence still part of our culture? Where do we see them most clearly?

-Collector's items -Luxury items -We even further distill information through shorter forms of media (e.g. Twitter)

Lisa Gitelman - Always Already New (WORK ON THIS QUESTION) Why did the Internet end up operating so differently from the initial plan for ARPANET? What goals and functions were emphasized in each network?

-ARPANET was the military-industrial precursor to the Internet. -To accomplish procognitive smart documents, ARPANET would ultimately need precise instructions and it needed to be able to understand what type of information it was to share and process and how it was to transmit and display such information. RFC's would establish the protocols needed. Believed that ARPANET would be solely used as a communication medium to link research universities and military. How internet was used: There was an informality of browsing, where users utilized it for games, but also connect and share the extraordinary investments of capital and labor

Kenneth Cmiel and John Durham Peters - Promiscuous Knowledge Cmiel and Peters suggest that we have returned, in certain ways, to the Victorian culture of copious facts. How can we see this in our culture today? What distinguishes our new cult of information from the Victorian culture of copious facts?

-As search engines and social media platforms track and accumulate user data to facilitate niche marketing and targeted ads, users themselves are disaggregated into their component parts: interests and desires -Not only have grand metanarratives of progress collapsed, so to have our own personal narratives, we now rely on information technology to construct knowledge of our very selves -While the Victorian culture of copious facts collected facts and constructed knowledge, today, people collect their knowledge and construct their own truths. -Also, people are more easily surveilled and become single data points

Kenneth Cmiel and John Durham Peters - Promiscuous Knowledge What features distinguished the early twentieth century culture of happysummary? What techniques did happy summarizers use to distill information into digestible forms of knowledge? What might have been inadvertently lost in the process?

-Bias and whoever is distilling the information can make certain aspects/nuances disappear (inadvertently lost) Features: -Happy because it makes things easier to understand, distillation or reduction in the amount of information. It ad the key claim that nothing was being lost, we distilled it perfectly -The thing we are using to represent a time period, culture, national essence of people; haven't lost any of the accuracy or richness (claim, not 100% accuracy) -Stereotypes emerge as a way to distill the most important information about a topic (way to organize information, but also reflects the society's morals and values). -There was the development of visual infographics and information to relay textual information. -Also, photographs and certain objects began to represent entire national characters.

Lisa Gitelman - Always Already New How did Vannevar Bush and J.C.R. Licklider's visions of the future of knowledge differ from traditional knowledge organization schemes (covered by Peter Burke) in terms of structure and function?

-Bush and Licklider both recognized the need to completely rethink how information might be stored, sorted, and accessed. They imagined a system where documents could read themselves. -Licklider: the "libraries of the future" were becoming dynamic information retrieval centers. Information was not really being organized, rather than being collected. He proposed that future libraries would adopt 'procognitive systems' that would contain smart documents which could read themselves, allowing users to easily locate and retrieve information using a Graphical User Interface. -Burke: believed in organization through rationalization and ordering of knowledge with alphabetical systems, branching trees/diagrams (But these decisions were conducted by humans and organized information.

Friedrich Kittler - Gramphone, Film, Typewriter How did the typewriter reveal the structure of language?

-By organizing and structuring language the very shapes and arrangement of words and sentences into discrete elements, typewriters reduce language to a mechanically reproducible formula. -The typewriter's arrangement of written language into a selection from a set of finite options. -Language can be shaped by technology, as writing became shorter, puns were being used, and aphorisms were being used (e.g. Nietzsche's writing was influenced) -Language and words can be commodified, as authors are able to produce more material.

Paul Edwards - The Closed World How were developments in cybernetics, the automation of battlefield command, and strategic military planning interrelated in the 1950s and 1960s?

-Cold War imperatives caused there to be a need for C3I (Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence), creating military strategic plans with automantion/computing. -Cybernetics seeked to model the world by reducing it to data points (in a Y/N format). This led to various iniatives, such as the create of SAGE (system of computers connected to a vast network of radar systems that allowed real time command and control of hemispheric airspace) and Operation Igloo White (where used sensors, computers, and relay aircraft to automatically bomb the Ho Chi Minh trail).

Thomas Mullaney - The Chinese Typewriter What new ways of thinking about language did typewriters encourage, inspire, and, to put it frankly, require?

-Combinatorial Typewriter: Can "shatter" the characters to its components. Cracking the language apart to rebuild/recompose it using technology. This allowed a typists to combine radicals together together using multi-key inputs. -Common usage method: organize and respatialize characters that are used frequently used together. This standardized language, but there were individual struggles depending on the personal goals. -Pinyin "Input" and Predictive Text: was inspired from the common usage system where it used romanized transliterations of Chinese characters and frequent character-word combinations in modern Chinese to organize character section into words.

James Beniger - The Control Revolution What new powers and capacities did electric tabulation and analog computing systems offer? What kinds of customers purchased these systems and for what purposes?

-Customers: accounting industry, Soviet government, marketing industry, insurance industry -Accounting Analog Calculation and Data Processing Charles Babbage, 1791-1871, British inventor, "Father of the Computer" 1822: The Difference Engine (used to calculate mathematical tables) 1837: The Analytical Engine (logic unit, control flow functions, integrated memory) Basically a giant mechanical calculator 1887: The Felt Comptometer First key-driven mechanical calculator, primarily used for accounting Binary code and boolean logic were great for punch cards (Hollerith) A powerful data processing tool, useful for multiple applications in many industries Punchcards: Can be used to store data or control programs I.e. scantrons, election ballots Used for censuses, registration for school Herman Hollerith 1860-1929, American, worked on the 1890 Census using electromechanical punch-card tabulation, founded the Tabulating Machine Company (later C-T-R, which became International Business Machines or IBM in 1924) 1890 Census - too much data! Data sorting and counting mechanism needed Hollerith's system vastly increased the calculating and tabulating capacity of the US government A huge boost for "statistics" (science of the state) Life insurance Actuarial tables, managing customer data Centrally Planned Economies Soviet five-year plans "statistics", government bureaucracies Militaries Procurement, body and psychological measurements, work assignments Corporations "Purchasing records, inventory, overhead allocations, payroll analysis, shipping costs, sales projections, market forecasting" (Beniger, 424) Women accepted in typewriting and accounting industries

Kenneth Cmiel and John Durham Peters - Promiscuous Knowledge What is an "object-based epistemology"? What might be an example of such today?

-Definition: It is the notion that knowledge was embodied in objects and by classifying them properly, the underlying order of the world might be revealed. -Everything is uniform, sorted. Examples: -Museum exhibits (period rooms) -Standardized tests by filling out information -Libraries organized in specific orders.

Lisa Gitelman - Paper Knowledge What effects did xerography have on the genre of the document?

-Documents are for "knowing"-showing, they are representations of how information is processed. How a document functions is highly context-dependent. -With the xerography, documents became flow and move (become shared) -There was the creation of "Xeroxlore", where there developed anonymous and semi-anonymous in-office publications often containing office humor in forms of jokes and cartoons.

Kenneth Cmiel and John Durham Peters - Promiscuous Knowledge What features distinguished the copious culture of the early Victorian period? What happened around 1870 that marked a shift in a new direction?

-During, the copious culture period, people were delighted about accumulating facts and information. Features of copious culture: -Exhaustive and boring minutia, fussing about details (they really liked this) -Elaborate description of a plow, textual description of a plow -P.T. Barnum: collecting information by displaying "oddities of the world", but placed them out of context and commodified people. 1870s Shift: -There was growing concern regarding the multitude of information collected without an organization. Thus, inductive scientists emerged (e.g. Charles Darwin and Social Darwinism) -Dewey created a library system to organization information (though highly Eurocentric) -Interpretive reporting emerged (e.g. New York Times and Reader's Digest) -Lippman's Stereotype emerged -Synecdoche and object-based epistemology emerged

Matthew Kirschenbaum - Track Changes What sort of perfection did the word processor promise? What sort of"perfection" did it actually create the conditions for?

-For Matthew Kirschenbaum, word processors promise perfection because they suspend inscription, allowing revision to go on forever. -Ironically, as many of you are doubtless aware, word processing opens up new possibilities for endless modification and revision --> allowed for flexibility, which threatened preservative powers of print and cult of personality. -Created the conditions, so digital text can be created, and thus e-books.

David Nye - Electrifying America What did each of Nye's four interest groups believe electricity to signify? How did the visions of professional engineers compare to those of the business interests they so often worked for? How did those business interests seek to advertise the new imagined powers of electricity?

-Genteel Anti-Modernist Intellectuals: Were the elite educated, who benefitted least -Public: Were people in the city, rural areas, and those moving in between that would potentially benefit from electricity. They were the most receptive to commodification of electricity. -Electrical Engineers: new technological elite that had had faith in technology to create a new world and utopian future. However, they were bought out by business elite through salaried positions and research opportunities. -Businessmen and corporate elites: They believed in creating a natural monopoly because it does not make sense to lay overlapping electrical lines (created GE/Westinghouse duopoly). They also did not any political referendums that would make electricity public, so they made state regulatory agencies with their group of electrical engineers.

Kenneth Cmiel and John Durham Peters - Promiscuous Knowledge Why do Cmiel and Peters call Google's search engine "a single portal to a churning mass of confusion" (252)?

-Google wanted to be a universal library (couldn't reach some countries with censorship i.e. China) -"Google absolutely thrives in the messy disorder of the internet, its tangle of hyperlinks, and is happy to profit from the flotsam of "clickstreams" and search terms. It takes the manure of our data trails and turns it into online gold. It is a service that sorts what we need but never frames the whole." (252) -Google takes the mass confusion of websites and information, and learns what its users want to see. Then, they customize which information is more prevalent depending on the user's preferences.

Seth Jacobowitz - Writing Technology in Meiji Japan What new powers and capacities did the telegraph and national postal service grant to the Japanese state?

-Hiragana and Katakana became a Japanese cultural purification (the use of kanji was anti-patriotic) -Communications was also standardized and regularized within Japan, then making it possible to integrate it with global communications networks. -Empowering the Japanese military and bureaucracy to surveil citizens and extend its internal colonial control over Hokkaido, the Ryukyu Islands, and from 1895, Taiwan

Gregory Downey - Telegraph Messenger Boys In what ways was the telegraph messenger boy himself produced and presented as a commodity?

-Humans became tied to message, and human interactions provide more value and emotion. -The use of uniforms provided a more professional messages and was a way to get the boys to act in a certain manner and be on time. -Because they were expected to be quick, they were in risky jobs, and there were high casualty rates.

Matthew Kirschenbaum - Track Changes Why were literary authors suspicious of word processors, at least early on? How might we compare this with the ambivalence displayed by intellectuals towards electricity (see Nye above)?

-In Track Changes, Matthew Kirschenbaum reveals the complex and deeply ambivalent responses of literary authors to word processing technology. Many thought the apparent perfection was a superficial trick that raised questions about authorial authenticity.

Kenneth Cmiel and John Durham Peters - Promiscuous Knowledge Expertise and authority may be under relentless assault, but hierarchies and power inequalities are very much still with us and part of our lives. In what ways might the logics of digital promiscuity secretly reinforce power structures? Hayles and Gitelman would certainly have things to say about this...

-In the internet age, People increasingly connected directly to sources of knowledge and arenas of knowledge production. When the intervening media are bypassed in this way, we call this disintermediation. -However, as the information became more accessible, corporations were gathering information about their users and their interests. Search engines and social media platforms and accumulate data to facilitate niche marketing and targeted ads --> This reinforced the power structure between users and corporations. -Gitelman: Bibliographic barbed wire (what we can't see underneath all the code) -Hayles: Procognitive (smart) machines: documents now read us as we read them

Thomas Mullaney - The Chinese Typewriter Why was the invention of the Chinese typewriter likely the greatest technolinguistic challenge ever?

-It brought up the question if the Chinese languge was inherently more anti-modern. -There was an existing (Kangxi system) that ordered Chinese using radicals, but it was not very useful for input. -The Chinese language was difficult to systemize, as exemplified by the Chinese Morse Code that made it more expensive and longer to code Chinese.

Alfred Price - Instruments of Darkness What actual effects did British radar jamming have on the German bombing effort? Why?

-It demoralized the German crew (large psychological impact). This psychological impact was greater than the technical impact. -The fear of knowing that the British were now aware of their attempts and locations for bombing dispirited Germans.

Vanessa Ogle - The Global Transformation of Time Why does Ogle argue that the global transformation of time took farlonger than historians previously assumed? What factors delayed theimplementation of uniform time schemes?

-It takes until the 1950s for all countries to adopt the Greenwich Mean Time -There was resistance among superpowers. For example, France and Germany resisted adopting the Greenwich Mean Time. -Colonized countries were also resistant because the introduction of standard colonial times would hurt local and national identity. This led to battles between colonizers and colonized (Britain and India) -Also, really had no use for uniform times because they utilized time in relative to their location to grow crops. By introducing a uniform time, this would alter what crops and how they would grow crops.

Lisa Gitelman - Always Already New What is "bibliographic barbed wire"? How do Eisenstein's paratexts compare with the "bibliographic barbed wire" identified and discussed by Gitelman? What might N. Katherine Hayles have to say about Gitelman's "bibliographic barbed wire"?

-Metadata and the "bibliographic barbed wire" of coding underlying and facilitating the display of electronic texts offer many benefits, but not all accrue to the users of those texts. Only the specialized could understand the underlying coding. -Eisenstein's paratexts, the viewer is able to see, but the bibliographic barbed wire contains paratexts that are hidden from view and strictly machine-readable. -Hayle would probably say that bibliographic barbed wire is part of "smart" (cognitive) technology, where the document reads us as we read them.

Armand Mattelart - The Invention of Communication What metaphorical discourses did Saint Simon and his followers employ while promoting industry and transportation? Can we view the Saint Simonians' celebration of global transportation as a form of modernist ideology? How so?

-Metaphor Used: the body. In particular, the circulatory systems (blood is representative of capital or money, and there must be a flow of these things). Capital and money lead to investment in industry and transportation that will ultimately lead to utopia and material harmony (technological utopianism) -For the health of economy, there must be robust transportation. Thus, this group heavily supported the Suez Canal. -While they were more imperial conflicts, they failed to catch that there would be potential for class warfare.

James Beniger - The Control Revolution In what ways did the control revolution contribute to modern afflictions such as anonymity, alienation, depersonalization, and dehumanization?

-People became a "set of numbers" in a punch card. -When people are pre-processing, only information that can be quantified is kept, while other information about the individual is "destroyed". -This determines important qualities of life. (e.g. Clothes size, intelligence, tax, insurance) -Even analog to digital is different: not an exact replica, rather a very closer representation. However, it was cheaper and digitization allowed predictive modeling

James Beniger - The Control Revolution Beniger identifies crises of control in production, distribution, and consumption, but shows that each crisis required a different form of re-organization and rationalization. What unifying logics did the control revolutions in each of these three sectors of the economy share in common? What special techniques or forms of organization distinguished each uniquely?

-Production → flow of the factory, making sure there is flow of produced goods -Distribution → railway and telegraph system, the Mail bag "drop-of" system -Consumption → advertising allows information to flow from company to the consumer and Mass feedback technology is crucial for the company to know if their advertising is working -Unifying logics → Information processing systems (formal rules and pre-processing information), Achieving Control of Information Flow through constant real-time awareness

Wolfgang Schivelbusch- The Railway Journey What is railway time and what does it represent? Why were railways inparticular so consequential for the global transformation of time?

-Railway time is where time is being standardized to align with one location. This was done to ensure the efficiency and safety of the train system. -This contrasted with mean solar time that was in comparison to where the sun was located. -Railways were particularly consequential to the global transportation of time because food and commodities were shipped and businesses had to keep track of the railway time to conduct business. It also modernized and standardized urban centers.

James Beniger - The Control Revolution Why were railways one of the first industries to experience crises of control? What solutions were devised to restore control over railway systems?

-Railways were faster than the existing process of information processing. -Solutions by needing to create rules and depersonalization of a bureaucracy. Feedback was key and information from the bottom needed to be collected to make sure that rules were working. Thus, the telegraph was extremely important. Information-processing and communications technologies include telephone switchboards, mass mailing by rail, mail order horses and catalogs, standard times and railway time.

James Beniger - The Control Revolution Why does rationalization require bureaucracy and vice versa? What did rationalization come to mean during the nineteenth century?

-Rationalization is the process to destroy and ignore other information to keep certain information. From rationalization requires bureaucracy because bureaucratic rules pre-process what information should be kept. On the other hand, rationalization achieves to decrease the amount of information in a system as it distills down information to keep only what is needed. Information-Processing Technologies: Punch card and time zones. -During the 19th century, rationalization was achieved primarily by decreasing the amount of information in a system by Finding something that can represent/stand in for larger categories and Distill things down to their basic elements (leaving out information)

Armand Mattelart - The Invention of Communication In what ways did the Saint Simonians differ from Karl Marx and his followers?

-Saint Simonians believed that the society was a single organism, and once capital and money is correctly applied, the entire organism would flourish and all people would receive utopian harmony and material plenty. -However, Karl Marx viewed society as an ecosystem with an environment that resembled a "survival of the fittest" with different species. Thus, there was class warfare.

James Beniger - The Control Revolution What roles did media technologies play in facilitating control over information and material flows?

-Telegrams in the past, Today: emails, social media -In the mid to late 19th century, increasing bureaucratization and rationalization benefitted from and simultaneously facilitated the emergence of a dramatic series of new information-processing and communications technologies -(Rationalization) preprocessing: defining ahead of time what kind of information will be required (I.e. recycling: when you recycle something, it should be ready to be processed or Standardized form: fill in relevant info - your student ID, name, date, class, etc) -Telephone switchboard 1880's -Multiple-rotary steam press 1890's -Mass mailing by rail 1860's onward -Mail order horses and catalogs

N. Katherine Hayles - Postprint Why was the Linotype a better product than the Paige Compositor?

-The Linotype Machine cast entire lines of type at once (hence "lin-o-type") -Unlike the technically amazing but logistically cumbersome Paige Compositor, this electromechanical device required a skilled operator to collaborate and make decisions (allowed for humans to interact and make many of the cognitive decisions).

Gregory Downey - Telegraph Messenger Boys How did Western Union attempt to market the telegram as a commodity? What new meanings did this marketing attach to telegrams as media messages?

-The Western Union had opposing marketing messages. First, there was a serous image as they advertised that businessmen should use it for communication. However, they also monetized emotions by offering separate services (e.g. flower, cards), which was a lighter message. -Colonizers and colonized used it to send messages and organize efforts New meaning -Western Union marketed the telegram as a way to connect back to people, and there developed a new normative expectation, changing what to expect from each other. -New deeper connection with others. -Also, can use telegrams to send social messages and not just use it for emergencies.

Kenneth Cmiel and John Durham Peters - Promiscuous Knowledge Cmiel and Peters argue that the 1970s marked a watershed for knowledge producers and consumers, after which expertise and authority experienced a long, deep, and ongoing fall from grace. How do they connect this with the rise of postmodern attitudes and stances? In what ways was the attack on expertise a positive corrective to the flaws of happy summary?

-The culture of happy summary, meanwhile, became as suspicious as the experts responsible for it. Thus, there was a mission to correct the happy summary. Now experts had to contend with activists, amateurs, and advocacy groups across the cultural and political in battles through communications media. -Also, the development of technology and internet allowed a new techno-utopianism where non-experts could dismantle existing powers by providing access to all. -Scholars challenged existing forms of happy summary (eg Feminist scholars, Watergate Scandal, AP and Tuskegee Institute and the Syphilis Infection Study)

Lisa Gitelman - Paper Knowledge How did xerography and photocopying alter the balance of power between employees and employers? Is the photocopier a potentially subversive tool? Why or why not?

-The function of the photocopier allows the employee tremendous new power → can create their own files, copy top secret documents, can change files -Can achieve suddenly personal uses, which shifts power balances (whistleblowers) -Indeed, bureaucracies are partly constructed out of documents (Now private citizens with phones can document things)

N. Katherine Hayles - Postprint The Lumitype phototypesetter marked several firsts for printing. Why should we remember it today?

-The inventors of the Lumitype phototypesetting machine inadvertently created a binary digital computer -First steps towards digital representation of text, instead of the text itself -Using lights for printing -Lumitype: the room is extremely bright, small room -Linotype: lead → not good for you, machinic, dark, molten lead

Friedrich Kittler - Gramphone, Film, Typewriter Why does Kittler claim that typescript amounted to the "desexualizationof writing" when many women found employment as typists,inaugurating a new era of feminized labor?

-The typescript was neutral compared to the male handwriting. As a result, many women found employment as typists, opening the information economy of all. -Women had the dexterity from playing the piano, which translated well into typing.

Friedrich Kittler - Gramphone, Film, Typewriter In what ways was the typewriter comparable to a gun?

-The typewriter was a mass produced device, which allowed its users "fire off' words at a rapid pace. It became known as a modern weapon of language and thought -It shot projectiles of speed, efficiency, and content. This allows women to use the typewriter as a weapon to target the elite and other forces (by the nature of writing and disseminating information)

Vanessa Ogle - The Global Transformation of Time What role did media technologies and genres play in the battle over Times?

-The watch was used so people could tell the time. It became a social statement that carried an ideological message. -The telegraph had time services that could send messages instantly, as well as coordinate clocks. By connecting places, it meant that to communicate, time had to become standardized. -Stock Ticker can keep track of a clock. -Weapons created after World War II that utilized time to deploy (e.g. bombing with computers in Vietnam)

James Beniger - The Control Revolution What specific needs spurred the innovation of information-processing hardware especially in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?

-There developed the culture of Happy Summary -Census Bureau needed help to complete its census and needed a new technology that manage and keep track of information (counting, processing, tabulation). Thus, they used the punch cards to preprocess information. -The largest bureaucracies had the larges need for the counting technologies (e.g. military, large corporations, insurance companies, statistical polling) -Museums: Museums needed dioramas to tell stories to capture the essence of cultures, environments, and natural systems

Alfred Price - Instruments of Darkness How might the personal experiences and strategic requirements ofWWII have influenced the later development of the military industrial complex (see Edwards)?

-There were 4 challenges from WWII (Cryptography, Secure Communications, Fire Control, Atomic Research) -This led to the Military-Industrial Complex: is when industry and universities come together to develop weapons for the military. -E.g. ENIAC (Hydrogen Bombing and Climate Modelling), Operation Igloo White (electronic warfare using sensors and computers, and relay aircraft to bomb the Ho Chi Minh trail)

David Nye - Electrifying America GE and Westinghouse largely succeeded in selling to Americans electricity as a commodity. What alternatives needed to be first undermined or dismissed?

-They first had to consolidate the industry through vertical integration, creating the GE/Westinghouse duopoly. -They had to use advertising and public relations to appeal to the interests of the general public and assuage the concerns of genteel intellectuals (e.g. Chinese lanterns) -They needed to undermine the utopia ideology by the technical elite by offering them salaried managerial positions and support for professional organizations and research. -They advocated for regulatory agencies, so they could forestall reform attempts. -Used demonstrations and PR campaign to chow that electricity is safe.

Kenneth Cmiel and John Durham Peters - Promiscuous Knowledge What was the ideological message of Victorian copious culture? How did it differ from that of Dutch Exotic Geography?

-Victorian Copious Culture: Ideological message: everything can be collected and eventually commodified (PT Barnum, museums, etc.) -In Dutch Exotic Geography, details were important, but there was an emphasis on text over visualization. In this context, images were presented to be true, which made images a series of commodities. -Also, Dutch Exotic, Geography had more organization (eg. paratexts, table of contents, marginal notes)

Kenneth Cmiel and John Durham Peters - Promiscuous Knowledge How did the long and eventual transformation of American museums exemplify all three periods covered by Cmiel and Peters?

-Victorian Copious culture: Collecting EVERYTHING: There was no organization, and rooms and exhibits were chocked full of various artifacts (eg. similar to the cabinet of curiosities) -Happy Summary: Organizing things (distillation). Information and artifacts were shrunk down/organized to represent entire time period or geographic locations (e.g. dioramas used to tell stories, period rooms, etc.) -Postmodern attack on happy summary: There was a questioning of expertise and authority. Advocacy groups or people in general could protest and create change (or prompt) museum exhibits to change the way things were represented in the museum.

N. Katherine Hayles - Postprint Why is an e-book different from a book with the exact same text? In what ways is an e-book a "smart" (that is, cognitive) text?

-We can own them, but not the content on them (license only) -An e-book is a cognitive, smart document. The document reads as you read it. -A great deal of cognition is done by the machine -Word processor makes you seek perfection (as opposed to typewriter which is analogous to a gun)

Lisa Gitelman - Paper Knowledge What new logics and patterns of use did xerography inaugurate?

-When the Xerox Photocopier was released in 1960, it provided new technological and labor conditions under which documents could become more accessible and more fluid (created new opportunities to how documents can flow). -It created Xerolore --> office humor. -Documents then implied accountability and can thereby invoke and participate in ethical and political frameworks. -Allowed employees new powers for archiving, accessing, and communicating

David Nye - Electrifying America Why were many Americans ambivalent about electrification? How did this ambivalence manifest in discourses about electricity?

-While businessmen saw electricity as a good investment, intellectuals viewed it as an ambivalent sign of modernity. Some of them wanted slow progress, and some wanted the pre-industrialization days. In the public, there were spoken fears about using electricity. -

Kenneth Cmiel and John Durham Peters - Promiscuous Knowledge Did the culture of happy summary encourage stereotyping? How so?

-Yes, it did. Topics are thought of in terms of stereotypes or frozen images and ideas that stand in for entire realms of existence. Assumptions are made about something even a person sees actual evidence/data -Stereotypes emerge as a way to distill the most important information about a topic (way to organize information as a map of the world, but also reflects the society's morals and values). -Photography and objects that were used to identify entire cultures contributed to the stereotyping.

Lisa Gitelman - Always Already New How do bibliography bodies relate to physical bodies?

1. In the aspect of Hospital vs. Official Birth Certificate. They both have the same context, but they are different in terms of authority, validity, and fixity. Thus, what is contained in the documents is not as important as the bibliographical body of the document. -When UC Berkeley students re-repurposed IBM punch cards, they were making a statement that the machine "processed" bodies. Thus, they were subverting norms by punching the cards differently than intended. -By burning draft cards, the Youth hoped to deny the state access to both their bibliographic and physical bodies.

Paul Edwards - The Closed World What new types of thinking did large-scale military investment in digital processing and automation produce? What key differences differentiate analog from digital computing?

1. The military began thinking in transforming analog to digital. Instead of using inductive reasoning and analog science, shift to deduction -This includes cybernetics, cognitive science, and artificial science. Differences between analog and digital: -Analog is the copy of something else in medium (i.e. photography, maps, etc), whereas digital is not a complete replica, but a very close representation that allowed for predictive modeling and probability. -Digital saved time and money, allowed relatability among incommensurate systems, and quantity can be quality (& vice versa)

Tom Standage - The Victorian Internet What material, technological, organizational, and ideological conditions were required for the "wiring of the world"?

Material Conditions -Gutta Percha was needed to insulate the wires -Massive ship to lay the wires in the Atlantic -Money/investments Ideological Conditions -Globalization was becoming increasingly important -Trade -As businesses and people were becoming more globalized, news were needed Organizational Conditions -Businesses needed to trade with each other. -Also, trade between governments -This led to a need in communication -News organizations needed information as well.

Seth Jacobowitz - Writing Technology in Meiji Japan What effects did new media systems, including the telegraph and the national postal service, have on the Japanese language?

Postal Service -At a higher level, Japan was able to secure more control by the regularization of language across internally colonized regions. -However, postal surveillance changes how people use language , and new linguistic expectations. It also changes what linguistic discourse is accessible. Telegraph -Telegraph changes what words are sent b/c it is extremely expensive to send telegrams. -The use of telegraph encouraged Japanese linguistic reformers like Baron Maejima Hisoka (first postmater general) to promote unification, standardization, and nationalized of the Japanese language to put it on par with European Languages.

Wolfgang Schivelbusch- The Railway Journey Under what technological and social conditions does panoramic perception appear?

Technological Conditions: -Development. of railways and department stores propelled panoramic perception. -The person becomes propelled and the landscape becomes a commodity. However, you lose depth and it leads to surface level viewing. Social Conditions -Viewing takes a new concept as people began perusing and viewing goods as commodities. -Passive viewing