When Old Technologies Were New

When Old Technologies Were New PDF Author: Carolyn Marvin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198021380
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
In the history of electronic communication, the last quarter of the nineteenth century holds a special place, for it was during this period that the telephone, phonograph, electric light, wireless, and cinema were all invented. In When old Technologies Were New, Carolyn Marvin explores how two of these new inventions--the telephone and the electric light--were publicly envisioned at the end of the nineteenth century, as seen in specialized engineering journals and popular media. Marvin pays particular attention to the telephone, describing how it disrupted established social relations, unsettling customary ways of dividing the private person and family from the more public setting of the community. On the lighter side, she describes how people spoke louder when calling long distance, and how they worried about catching contagious diseases over the phone. A particularly powerful chapter deals with telephonic precursors of radio broadcasting--the "Telephone Herald" in New York and the "Telefon Hirmondo" of Hungary--and the conflict between the technological development of broadcasting and the attempt to impose a homogenous, ethnocentric variant of Anglo-Saxon culture on the public. While focusing on the way professionals in the electronics field tried to control the new media, Marvin also illuminates the broader social impact, presenting a wide-ranging, informative, and entertaining account of the early years of electronic media.

When Old Technologies Were New

When Old Technologies Were New PDF Author: Carolyn Marvin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198021380
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the history of electronic communication, the last quarter of the nineteenth century holds a special place, for it was during this period that the telephone, phonograph, electric light, wireless, and cinema were all invented. In When old Technologies Were New, Carolyn Marvin explores how two of these new inventions--the telephone and the electric light--were publicly envisioned at the end of the nineteenth century, as seen in specialized engineering journals and popular media. Marvin pays particular attention to the telephone, describing how it disrupted established social relations, unsettling customary ways of dividing the private person and family from the more public setting of the community. On the lighter side, she describes how people spoke louder when calling long distance, and how they worried about catching contagious diseases over the phone. A particularly powerful chapter deals with telephonic precursors of radio broadcasting--the "Telephone Herald" in New York and the "Telefon Hirmondo" of Hungary--and the conflict between the technological development of broadcasting and the attempt to impose a homogenous, ethnocentric variant of Anglo-Saxon culture on the public. While focusing on the way professionals in the electronics field tried to control the new media, Marvin also illuminates the broader social impact, presenting a wide-ranging, informative, and entertaining account of the early years of electronic media.

The Media Reader

The Media Reader PDF Author: Hugh Mackay
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780761962502
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
This text is an essential sourcebook of key statements about transformations in media culture. Focusing on questions of democracy, technology and culture, it provides theoretical approaches to past and present media transformations; and case studies of a range of media, both old media in new times and emerging new media.

DOA

DOA PDF Author: John P. Davies
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810846944
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
Today's school student lives and learns primarily in an electronic culture, but the current model for teaching and learning is predicated upon a culture of print that has lasted 500 years. This book offers an understanding of how our emerging culture impacts learning particularly how the computer is radically altering the writing process as well as our understanding of what is text.

Old Books, New Technologies

Old Books, New Technologies PDF Author: David McKitterick
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107355613
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
As we rely increasingly on digital resources, and libraries discard large parts of their older collections, what is our responsibility to preserve 'old books' for the future? David McKitterick's lively and wide-ranging study explores how old books have been represented and interpreted from the eighteenth century to the present day. Conservation of these texts has taken many forms, from early methods of counterfeiting, imitation and rebinding to modern practices of microfilming, digitisation and photography. Using a comprehensive range of examples, McKitterick reveals these practices and their effects to address wider questions surrounding the value of printed books, both in terms of their content and their status as historical objects. Creating a link between historical approaches and the emerging technologies of the future, this book furthers our understanding of old books and their significance in a world of emerging digital technology.

The Media's Role in Defining the Nation

The Media's Role in Defining the Nation PDF Author: David A. Copeland
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9781433103797
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
In 1897, William Randolph Hearst said that his newspaper did not simply cover events that had already happened. «It doesn't wait for things to turn up», Hearst said. «It turns them up.» This book traces the close relationship between media and the United States' development from the colonial period to the twenty-first century. It explores how the active voice of citizen-journalists and trained media professionals has turned to media to direct the moral compass of the people and to set the agenda for a nation, and discusses how changes in technology have altered the way in which participatory journalism is practiced. What makes the book powerful is that its assessment of the influence and use of media encompasses many levels: it explores the potential of media as an agent for change from within small communities to the national stage.

Imagining 'America' in late Nineteenth Century Spain

Imagining 'America' in late Nineteenth Century Spain PDF Author: Kate Ferris
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137352809
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
This book examines the processes of production, circulation and reception of images of America in late nineteenth century Spain. When late nineteenth century Spaniards looked at the United States, they, like Tocqueville, ‘saw more than America’. What did they see? Between the ‘glorious’ liberal revolution of 1868 and the run-up to the 1898 war with the US that would end Spain’s New World empire, Spanish liberal and democratic reformers imagined the USA as a place where they could preview the ‘modern way of life’, as a political and social model (or anti-model) to emulate, appropriate or reject, and above all as a 100 year experiment of republicanism, democracy and liberty in practice. Through their writings and discussions of the USA, these Spaniards debated and constructed their own modernity and imagined the place of their nation in the modern world.

Iconic Designs

Iconic Designs PDF Author: Grace Lees-Maffei
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857853538
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
Iconic Designs is a beautifully designed and illustrated guide to fifty classic 'things' – designs that we find in the city, in our homes and offices, on page and screen, and in our everyday lives. In her introduction, Grace Lees-Maffei explores what makes a design 'iconic', and fifty essays by leading design and cultural critics tell the story of each iconic 'thing', its innovative and unique qualities, and its journey to classic status. Subjects range from the late 19th century to the present day, and include the Sydney Opera House, the Post-It Note, Coco Chanel's classic suit, the Sony WalkmanTM, Hello KittyTM, the typeface Helvetica, the Ford Model T, Harry Beck's diagrammatic map of the London Underground and the Apple iMac G3. This handsome volume provides a treasure trove of 'stories' that will shed new light on the iconic designs that we use without thinking, aspire to possess, love or hate (or love to hate) and which form part of the fabric of our everyday lives.

The House of My Sojourn

The House of My Sojourn PDF Author: Jane S. Sutton
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817317155
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Envisions the relationship between women and rhetoric as a house: a structure erected in ancient Greece by men that, historically, has made room for women but has also denied them the authority and agency to speak from within

Seeing by Electricity

Seeing by Electricity PDF Author: Doron Galili
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478009225
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
Already in the late nineteenth century, electricians, physicists, and telegraph technicians dreamed of inventing televisual communication apparatuses that would “see” by electricity as a means of extending human perception. In Seeing by Electricity Doron Galili traces the early history of television, from fantastical image transmission devices initially imagined in the 1870s such as the Telectroscope, the Phantoscope, and the Distant Seer to the emergence of broadcast television in the 1930s. Galili examines how televisual technologies were understood in relation to film at different cultural moments—whether as a perfection of cinema, a threat to the Hollywood industry, or an alternative medium for avant-garde experimentation. Highlighting points of overlap and divergence in the histories of television and cinema, Galili demonstrates that the intermedial relationship between the two media did not start with their economic and institutional rivalry of the late 1940s but rather goes back to their very origins. In so doing, he brings film studies and television studies together in ways that advance contemporary debates in media theory.

The Body Electric

The Body Electric PDF Author: Carolyn Thomas de la Pena
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 081471983X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
Between the years 1850 and 1950, Americans became the leading energy consumers on the planet, expending tremendous physical resources on energy exploration, mental resources on energy exploitation, and monetary resources on energy acquisition. A unique combination of pseudoscientific theories of health and the public’s rudimentary understanding of energy created an age in which sources of industrial power seemed capable of curing the physical limitations and ill health that plagued Victorian bodies. Licensed and “quack” physicians alike promoted machines, electricity, and radium as invigorating cures, veritable “fountains of youth” that would infuse the body with energy and push out disease and death. The Body Electric is the first book to place changing ideas about fitness and gender in dialogue with the popular culture of technology. Whether through wearing electric belts, drinking radium water, or lifting mechanized weights, many Americans came to believe that by embracing the nation's rapid march to industrialization, electrification, and “radiomania,” their bodies would emerge fully powered. Only by uncovering this belief’s passions and products, Thomas de la Peña argues, can we fully understand our culture’s twentieth-century energy enthusiasm.