A presentation for RMIT Games Program's Media Cultures class (2010) that looks at technological innovation in communications.

1. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
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S H I R A L E E . S A U L @ R M I T. E D U . A U

2. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
NOT evolution
BUT ‘remediation’
Bolter & Grusins’ theory of media evolution that contested the myth of
the ‘newness’ of new media and the linear destruction and succession of
older media by newer ones.
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3. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
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4. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
So products may supercede each
other... but do mediums?
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5. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
“Each new medium is justified because it fills
a lack or repairs a fault in its predecessor,
because it fulfills the unkept promise of an
older medium. (Typically, of course, users did
not realize that the older medium had failed in
its promise until the new one appeared.) The
supposed virtue of virtual reality, of video-
conferencing and interactive television, and
of the World Wide Web is that each of these
technologies repairs the inadequacy of the
medium or media that it now supersedes.”
Bolter and Grusin, Remediation: The meaning of new media
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6. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
“What is new about new media
comes from the particular ways in
which they refashion older media
and the ways in which older media
refashion themselves to answer
the challenges of new media.”
Bolter and Grusin, Remediation: The meaning of new media
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7. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
Remediation
Old and new media influence each other, each succeeding media
enfolding the styles, techniques and content of earlier media,
‘re-mediating’ them and forming a new identity from old
components. In turn, older media attempt to retain their currency by
adopting the stylistic and conceptual paraphernalia of new media: eg
multiple windows, fast edits, etc.
• New media begin by incorporating many of the stylistic and
other conventions of traditional media, however their
popularity is often due to their ability to provide an experience
of greater realism.
• Traditional media start using the new conventions and styles
typical of the new media , maintaining market currency.
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8. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
Remediation is driven by the dynamic
between ‘immediacy’ and ‘hypermediacy’.
‘Immediacy’ describes the transparency of a
medium - its sense of realism.
Hamlet on the Holodeck
Author: Janet Murray
http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~murray/hoh/
tablecontents.html
Cornelis Gijsbrechts (1659-1675)
Seventeenth Century Trompe L’Oeil :
http://www.students.sbc.edu/clarke04/
trompe.htm
Trompe l’oeil http://www.artlex.com/
ArtLex/t/trompeloeil.html
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9. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
‘Hypermediacy’ describes the awareness of the media object itself -- it calls
attention to its own construction, is conscious of its own artificiality.
anamorphosis in art.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphic_format
Anamorphic Perspective & Illusory Architecture
http://www.generativeart.com/salgado/anamorphic.htm
The Ambassadors (1533)
Hans Holbein the Younger
http://en.wikipedia. 9
S H I R A L E E . S A U L @ R M I T. E D U . A U org/wiki/The_

10. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UilTOWo1M6Y
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11. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
Harold Innis
Before digital technology, media
either extended communication
through space or through time.
Space – e.g megaphone,
telephone, television and radio
Time -- eg alphabetical writing,
movable type printing, musical
notation, painting.
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12. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
Communication models
Traditional technologies allow
• One-to-many
• One-to-one
Digital technology adds
• Many-to-many
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13. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
“[Hypermedia aka multimedia] was
born from the marriage of TV and
computer technologies. Its raw
ingredients are images, sound, text,
animation and video which can be
brought together in any
combination.”
Cotton and Oliver, Understanding Hypermedia
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14. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
TEXT
Writing developed between the 7th
millennium BCE and the 4th
millennium BCE, first in the form of
mnemonic symbols which became a
system of ideograms or pictographs
through simplification. The oldest
known forms of writing were thus
primarily logographic in nature.
Nearly everything that could be
written upon—stone, clay, tree bark,
metal sheets, wax —was used for
writing.
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15. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
ALPHABET
Alphabetic writing
emerged in Egypt around
1800 BC. The words
weren’t separated from
each other and there was
no punctuation or vow-
els. Texts were written so
that alternate lines read
in opposite directions
(‘boustrophedon,’ literally
‘ox-turning’ for the way
a farmer drives an ox to Papyrus, a thick paper-like material made by
plough fields.) weaving then pounding the stems of the papyrus
reed was used for writing perhaps as early as
the First Dynasty. Lengths were stored rolled in
SCROLLS. 15
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16. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
According to Herodotus (History 5:58), the Phoenicians brought writing
and papyrus to Greece around the tenth or ninth century BC.
The Greek word for papyrus as writing material (biblion) and book
(biblos) come from the Phoenician port town Byblos, through which
papyrus was exported to Greece.
Whether made from papyrus, parchment, or paper in East Asia, scrolls
were the dominant form of book in the Hellenistic, Roman, Chinese and
Hebrew cultures.
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17. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
Huge libraries, such as that in Alexandra,
stored thousands of scrolls.
The Royal Alexandrine Library was
founded in the 3rd century BCE and was
destroyed sometime in the 1st century
CE. It contained 500,900 volumes (in the
Museion section) and 40,000 at the
Serapis temple.
All books in the luggage of visitors to
Egypt were inspected, and could be held
for copying. The library attracted scholars
from around the ‘known world’ and made
Alexandra an international cultural
centre.
The Library of Alexandria http://www.shekpvar.net/~dna/Publica-
tions/Wonders/Wonders/Selected/AlexandriaLibrary.html
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18. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
THE BOOK
Julius Caeser is credited with being the
first person to fold a scroll into pages,
to send dispatches to his troops, thus
creating the CODEX.
It didn’t REALLY catch on.
It wasn’t until the early
Christians, who perhaps
wanted to diffferentiate themselves
from the ‘pagans’ and who needed to be
The codex form improved with the
able to easily hide their holy books, that
separation of words, capital letters, and
the codex became
popular (circa 3-4 century CE.) punctuation, which permitted silent
reading. Tables of contents, page numbers
and indices facilitated direct access to
information (developed 3-9th CE.)
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19. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
MANUSCRIPTS
The fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century A.D. saw the decline of the
culture of ancient Rome. Papyrus became difficult to obtain due to lack of contact
with Egypt, and parchment became the main writing material.
During the turbulent periods of the ‘Dark Ages’, it was the monasteries that
conserved religious texts and some works of antiquity for the West.
Reading was an important activity in the lives of monks, which can be divided into
prayer, intellectual work, and manual labor (in the Benedictine order, for example).
It was therefore necessary to make copies of certain works -- particularly sacred
texts. Monks copied and decorated manuscripts in monastery scriptoria.
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20. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
The Arabs revolutionised book production
and binding in the medieval Islamic world.
They were the first to produce paper
books after they learnt paper production
from the Chinese in the 8th century.
They introduced paper production
technologies to Europe through their
Spanish empire. Paper was a necessary
technology for the mass-production of
books.
Before the invention (in Europe) of
movable type, paper and woodblock
printing was used to make cheap
broadsheets, playing cards and even
pictorial Bibles.
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21. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
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22. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
Around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg
invented movable type in Europe,
along with innovations in casting
the type based on a matrix and hand
mould. This invention gradually
made books less expensive to
produce, and more widely available.
By c. 1500 Estimated 30,000 titles
were printed (250-1000 copies
each) since Gutenberg’s first printed
book in 1455
A person born in 1453, the year of the fall of
Constantinople, could look back from his fiftieth year on a
lifetime in which about eight million books had been printed,
more than all the scribes of Europe had produced since
Constantine founded the city in A.D. 330.
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23. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
The printing press led to
• Democratization of knowledge : Within fifty or sixty years of the invention of
the printing press, the entire classical canon had been reprinted and widely
promulgated throughout Europe.
• Literacy : cheaper books meant more were available outside religious
institutions.
• The Enlightenment : the establishment of a community of scientists who could
easily communicate their discoveries through the establishment of widely
disseminated scholarly journals, helping to bring on the scientific revolution.
Because of the printing press, authorship became more meaningful and
profitable.
• Copyright : book production was a commercial enterprise and the first copy-
right laws were passed to protect intellectual property rights.
• Nationalism : the decline of Latin as the language of most published works, to be
replaced by the vernacular language of each area, increasing the variety of
published works. This rise in importance of national languages as opposed to
pan-European Latin is cited as one of the causes of the rise of nationalism in
Europe.
• Reformation : Personal access to the Bible led to a huge growth of diverse (non-
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24. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
Steam-powered printing presses
became popular in the early 1800s.
These machines could print 1,100
sheets per hour, but workers could only
set 2,000 letters per hour.
Monotype and linotype presses were
introduced in the late 19th century.
They could set more than 6,000 letters
per hour and an entire line of type at
once.
In mid-20th century, Europe book
production had risen to over 200,000
titles per year.
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25. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
TELEGRAPHY
By the early 19th century, all of the essential
components necessary to construct an electrical
communications system had been discovered.
Late 1830s, Samual Morse invented the
telegraph system. Morse’s telegraph was:
• The first technology to bridge spaces greater
than the throw of the human voice.
• Initiated the birth of the ‘skin of electric
communications’ which now wraps the entire
globe and is exemplified by the Internet.
Morse’s code plus transmitting/recieving equipment
• The first electronic medium. replaced previous systems because of its:
• The first industrial use of electricity • simplicity (both code and equipment used few
omponents and were easy to learn)
• The most abstract form of
communication ever invented. • reliability (worked on inferior quality lines)
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26. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
TELEPHONY
Telegraphy not only made the telephone
conceptually possible, it laid the material grounds
for its dissemination.
Telephony was an ‘accidental’ invention.
Graham Alexander Bell, was actually trying to
develop an hearing aid for his deaf wife. He had
seized upon telegraphy as a paradigm, seeking a
‘harmonic telegraph’ to transform speech into
electrical signals which could be written visually as
in a telegraph.
Telephony was far more publicly popular than the
telegraph despite being derided by experts as sim-
ply an ‘electric toy’. By the turn of the century tele-
phone calls outnumbered telegraph messages by
50:1 and it provided the catalyst for the invention
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27. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
RADIO
1895 Guglielmo Marconi sent the first radio
signal.
Marconi originally intended the radio to be a
‘telephone without wires for the populace’ --
a ‘many to many’ communications device. He
was stymied in this intention by the high cost of
transmitters compared with the relatively low
cost of receivers which ensured, instead, its
development as a ‘one to many’ mass
communications device.
• Democratic media/propaganda tool for all
Goebbels’s great passion was radio, the most
• Radio music box modern and effective medium of propaganda. He
• Social educator arranged for the production of low-cost radios, and
• Live medium until the ‘50s the National Socialist revolution was supposed to
put one of them in every German living room. By
• The threat of TV 1942 sixteen million households, that is, about
70% of the population, had
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radio reception.

28. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
RECORDED SOUND
Audio recording and storage technologies developed more or
less independently of audio transmission.
The phonograph was invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison. He
initially saw its chief commercial potential as being a telephone
recording device.
However, despite improvements in recorded sound quality
due to improvements in storage medium (from wax cylinder to
wire to Bakelite disc), the phonograph remained essentially
unchanged for 70 years in that once a series of sounds were re-
corded they could not be reconfigured.
It was not until the 1940s that audio-tape, invented in 1928,
became available and allowed editing first via splicing, and then
multitracking and overdubbing.
Nothing much changed until the 1970s when the audio cassette
sparked a home recording boom which, at the time, seemed to
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29. M E D I A C U LT U R E S I I : O L D M E D I A | N E W M E D I A | r e M E D I A
SOUND CINEMA
Synchronised sound for cinema was
not commercially possible until the
1920s and at first was only applied to
shorts called ‘talkies’.
The first feature film originally pre-
sented as a talkie was The Jazz Singer,
released in October 1927.
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