New Media, 1740-1915 (Media in Transition) [Hardcover]

Lisa Gitelman (Editor), David Thorburn (Editor), Geoffrey B. Pingree (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0262072459 | ISBN-13: 978-0262072458 | Publication Date: April 8, 2003 | Edition: First Edition

Reminding us that all media were once new, this book challenges the notion that to study new media is to study exclusively today's new media. Examining a variety of media in their historic contexts, it explores those moments of transition when new media were not yet fully defined and their significance was still in flux. Examples range from familiar devices such as the telephone and phonograph to unfamiliar curiosities such as the physiognotrace and the zograscope. Moving beyond the story of technological innovation, the book considers emergent media as sites of ongoing cultural exchange. It considers how habits and structures of communication can frame a collective sense of public and private and how they inform our apprehensions of the "real." By recovering different (and past) senses of media in transition, New Media, 1740-1915 promises to deepen our historical understanding of all media and thus to sharpen our critical awareness of how they acquire their meaning and power.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This anthology will make a major contribution to the history of media by providing both new information and new models. In carefully prepared case studies-ranging from the employment of female telegraph operators to the use of sound recording to determine if apes had a language-this volume supplies new ideas about how media shape culture and how cultures shape media."--Tom Gunning, Chair, Committee on Cinema and Media, University of Chicago, and author of *The Cinema of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity*Please note: Second sentence may be deleted for space reasons. Name of endorser's chair may be omitted, but affiliation should remain as is. Thank you.

"In *Feedback*, David Joselit tackles the 800-pound gorilla of commercial television on both political and artistic grounds. Upsetting common dichotomies between artistic practice and commercial strategies, Joselit avoids either dismissing or embracing the commercial medium, offering a truly passionate critique that plunges into the intricacies of how the electronic image engages us, whether in our living room or a gallery floor. A bold work that seeks to generate argument and thought."--Tom Gunning, Chair, Committee on Cinema and Media, University of Chicago, and author of *The Cinema of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity*

About the Author

Geoffrey B. Pingree is Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies and English at Oberlin College.

Lisa Gitelman is associate professor in the Departments of English and of Media, Culture, and Communication, at New York University. She is the coeditor (with Geoffrey B. Pingree) of New Media, 1740-1915 (MIT Press, 2003) and the author of Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 305 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; First Edition edition (April 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262072459
• ISBN-13: 978-0262072458
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,021,201 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

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5.0 out of 5 stars Matthew Purdy in THE IOWA REVIEW says --, May 6, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: New Media, 1740-1915 (Media in Transition) (Hardcover)

"New Media, 1740-1915 traces a history of the dialogue between media and society that has continued into the present. The title alone is somewhat startling, pairing an emphatically contemporary coinage with a time frame well before the dawn of modern technology as we've come to think of it. But one of the goals of the volume is to establish a context for our own notion of new media and how its newness is constructed. . . . All of the devices in New Media, 1740-1915 were new media in their respective eras, and in a sense they are still new. They are- Gitelman and Pingree use Bruce Sterling's term- 'dead media,' media no longer used and, in many cases, long since forgotten.These devices never got the chance to become fully enmeshed in the fabric of everyday life; the telegraph and phonograph evolved, the rest faded away. As such, they appear to us today perpetually strange, embalmed in their own original novelty. The volume's central lesson, then, is not to become blinded by the promises of our own new media. Because it isn't new at all."