Instructor: Joerg Blumtritt
From the earliest traces of art to technologies existing only as speculative design, this course will explore the development, reaction, and impact of developments and inventions in communication. Did techniques like painting, music, or writing, and "inventions" like the printing, the telegraph or television shape people's lives, or have they been formed by the existing cultures? How do forces of economics and culture promote or inhibit inventing, accessing, and profiting from technology? Can we envision technologies beyond the norms defined by the factual conditions of our present?
This course will focus on the role and application of communication technologies with a transnational cross-cultural lens. Beginning in ancient times and making our way to the present, we will analyze how, why, and to what effect innovations were adopted both geographically and culturally and deconstruct how this history is told to us. Readings and discussion will cover history and historiography, the philosophy of technology, science and technology studies, media theory, and creative application. Weekly writing assignments will traverse a variety of media forms and contexts.
You may find recorded lectures of a previous version of this class on youtube: videos.md Unless stated otherwise, pdf files for the readings can be found in this Google Drive folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1QTE-LNoBto6VDJ6Majes_LZ9A2kqfk7D?usp=sharing
Please see the page Administrative Matters
- Briggs, Asa, and Peter Burke. A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet. 3rd ed. Cambridge, UK & Malden, MA: Polity, 2009.
- Crowley, David, and Paul Heyer. Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society. Old Tappan: Taylor & Francis Group, 2010.
- Douglas, Frederick. ‘Pictures and Progress: An Address Delivered in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 3, 1861’. Boston, 1861. https://www.loc.gov/item/mss1187900521/. Transcript with annotations: https://frederickdouglasspapersproject.com/item/9106
- Dumas, Alexander. ‘The Telegraph’. In The Count of Monte Cristo, translated by Anonymous. Chapman and Hall, 1846. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo/Chapter_60.
- Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby. Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London: The MIT Press, 2013.
- Dusek, Val. Philosophy of Technology: An Introduction. Malden, MA %3B Oxford: Blackwell Pub, 2006.
- Errington, Joseph. ‘Colonial Linguistics’. Annual Review of Anthropology 30 (2001): 19–39. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3069207.
- Evans, Claire Lisa. Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet. New York, New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2018.
- Galison, Peter. ‘Ten Problems in History and Philosophy of Science’. Isis 99, no. 1 (2008): 111–24. https://doi.org/10.1086/587536.
- Grosswiler, Paul. ‘Dispelling the Alphabet Effect’. Canadian Journal of Communication 29, no. 2 (2004). https://doi.org/10.22230/cjc.2004v29n2a1432.
- Robinson, Andrew. Writing and Script: A Very Short Introduction. Writing and Script: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, n.d. Accessed 26 April 2020.
- Sebeok, Thomas A. I Think I Am a Verb More Contributions to the Doctrine of Signs. Topics in Contemporary Semiotics Ser. New York, NY: Springer, 2013.
- Sebeok, Thomas, A., and Hilmar M. Pabel. Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics. Toronto Studies in Semiotics and Communication. Toronto ; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2001.
- The J. Paul Getty Museum. ‘The Making of a Medieval Book’, 2003. https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/making/.
- Tufekci, Zeynep. Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. New Haven, UNITED STATES: Yale University Press, 2017.
The specific readings will be assigned for each week. The readings are generally provided as pdf files in this Google Drive folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1QTE-LNoBto6VDJ6Majes_LZ9A2kqfk7D?usp=sharing Further readings for each week can be found here:
Bibliography of all literature used
Subject to modification and clarification
Spreadsheet with the dates and assignments
What is communication? What is technology? How to study the history and theory of communication and technology? Semiotics: Language and other signs.
The methods of science and technology studies (STS) applied to the history of communication technologies.
From talking to writing: From prehistory to history; signs that last: The Voyager record and nuclear semiotics. Look at the material here: /files/nuclear.md
Early writing systems: cuneiform, Indus Valley, Proto-Chinese, Hieroglyphs, Mayan writing system; deciphering early scripts and undeciphered sign systems.
Some useful tools how to find literature, cite papers, and use the software app Zotero
Scribes and the scriptorium; paper and parchment, scrolls and codices, manuscripts and palimpsests; margins and maculature; the great libraries; paleographic exercise. Look at the material here: /files/books.md
Movable type and the printing press; fonts and typesetting; markup; technologies: Jaquard's weaving loom, fountain pen, stencils, matrices, displays, typewriter, Monotype, Linotype; reproduction; printed art.
The idea of progress; technological determinism; semaphore competition.
Linguistic turn, iconic turn; the publishing industry; new monopolies; dead media; photography and cinema; telegraph; radio; television.
What is "digital"? The digital machine: Processor, code, memory, output; the protocol: TCP/IP and HTTP; output technologies.
Mobile apps; social networks; business models of interactive media publishers; ethics and politics of digital media.
Digital media as creative tools; a short art history of interactive, digital and conceptual art.
Techniques to understand change and make predictions; futurism; speculative design; science fiction.
Information and Communication Technologies by Joerg Blumtritt @jbenno@mastodon.social - Other classes I teach: github.com/jbenno