For today’s after class summary, write at least 250-words summarizing your reading of the “Introduction” from Lisa Gitelman’s Always Already New and the in-class discussion on the reading. Think about the connections to the previous readings that Gitelman references–Bolter and Grusin, McLuhan, and Kittler.
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In Lisa Gitelman’s article, “Always Already New”, she talks about media history. As suggested by the title, Gitelman believes that all media were once new. She first defines media as “socially realized structures of communication, where structures include both technological forms and their associated protocols, and where communication is a cultural practice, a ritualized collocation of different people on the same mental map, sharing or engaged with popular ontologies of representation.” When she defines media in social terms, one can compare it Donna Haraway’s belief. Media in social terms turns us into cyborgs, we become obsessed with it. Media soon becomes an addition to us, rather than an outlet used to get useful and helpful information. Gitelman then goes on to explain that in order to begin to understand media, we have to set new media, in reference to old media. Old media however is still meaningful. She then ties it into historical terms. “If history is a term that means both what happened in the past and the varied practices of representing that past, then media are historical at several different levels.” Media occupies the past, even the newer forms of media. All new media has to come from somewhere, whether it be entirely based off of an older form of media, or it just has a slight reference. Media is also historical because they are a practical component in learning. People learn through the different forms of media representations, such as books, films, articles and so on. Media provides an outlet for many forms of research and allows you to learn about the past as well as what’s currently going on.
In Always Already New, Lisa Gitelman explores the newness of new media while she asks what it means to do media history. Gitelman investigates these historical problems for media productions at the end of the nineteenth century and on the edge of the twenty-first century. To this end, Gitelman defines “media as socially conceived forms of communication, where structures include both technological forms and their associated protocols, and where communications a cultural practice, a ritualized collocation of different people on the same mental map, sharing or engaging with popular ontologies of representation.” Media in a social context is comparable to Donna Hardaway’s, a cyborg Manifesto; media becomes an extension of our humanity, and Gitelman defines media in social terms. Gitelman wants us to understand media history because it is important to the evolution new media. She is making the argument that any media has a sense of always already new. New media is always appropriating the media it replaces. Even though it is new, it has a historical trace that has all the different idea, which extends over time. Gitelman wants us to understand that history can be aware if we are not cognizant of it. In class, we examined Whig history which asserted that human progress is always moving towards better. Similarly, technology is always leading towards perfection. Gitelman challenges us to ask logical questions about technologies we use. We should not accept what these technologies are and what they do at face value. It is our job to always to return to them and to critique them, so that we understand the technologies we use, and understand our relationship with these technologies. We reflected on the concept of immediacy and hypermediacy. Immediacy erases the media and hypermediacy makes the media opaque. Immediacy is digital media’s attempt to operate translucently with its user, providing an immediate connection with images of the real world.
In Lisa Gitelman’s article, “Always Already New”, Gitelman examines the ways that media and particularly new media are experienced and studied. Gitleman defines media as ““socially realized structures of communication, where structures include both technological forms and their associated protocols, and where communication is a cultural practice, a ritualized collocation of different people on the same mental map, sharing or engaged with popular ontologies of representation.” She says that “when media are new, they offer a look into the different ways that their jobs get constructed as such”. Let’s think about this in the terms smartphones. When smartphones first were new they offered a look into the different ways that they get their jobs done like making phone calls, texting, listening to music and much more. Gitelman then goes on to say that all media has history and that old media has meaning even once it’s been outdated. New media is always mimicking the old media it’s replacing but it’s just making it better. New media doesn’t just pop up it comes from older media and makes itself better. Technology is always striving to become better. In class, we discussed the wig party and their view on how history works. They viewed that human progress is always going upwards, meaning that it’s always becoming better. This relates in the sense of our technology because we learn from the past and change but not by completely disregarding the past but by revamping it and making it better. People learn about the past through different medias, whether it be books, films, or recordings.
In the article “Always Already New”, by Lisa Gitelman she talks about media. More specifically she goes over media history on how all forms of media were all once new. She tells us how media is communication is basically organized into two separate thought where there’s one where people use technological forms and cultural practice. These two terms are social terms. Things like phones and other devices are technological forms. Books and others are once technological forms evolved. Media is constantly being used and Donna believes how media itself has started to make us cyborg which is half human and half machine. In a way with the constant updates technology has gotten we start to get completely overwhelmed with it. Media starts to be apart of us since we use it everyday and we realize that it’s very helpful since we get great information from it. In a way this obsession with technology has it chasing perfection. Human progression is another topic where we discussed how we always strive for better that’s why technology is getting closer and closer to “perfection.” In order to get closer we need to look at the new media and the old media and realize that old media has a very enriched history along with improvements. Media comes from other forms of media therefore the old recently becomes updated as the new with improvements. We should understand that technology itself is very helpful, but its our job to use them and assesses the technology we use. We should get a better understanding of these technologies.
Lisa Gitelman is a media theorist and professor at NYU whose interests lie in media studies and book history. During our last class we reviewed the introduction of Gitelman’s “Always Already New, Media History, and the Data of Culture”. According to Gitelman, the word media, as we know it, has become ambiguous over time due to its association as or with technology. For the sake of providing clarity, Gitelman offers us her definition of media. It is defined socially and culturally shaped by people’s lived experiences, and believes that it is important to also incorporate how people experience meaning and perceive the world when documenting media history.
Gitelman informs us that the purpose of her book is to challenge the notion that on account of today’s new media, the trace of media history has come to an end. As discussed during lecture media is always evolving. While on our quest for perfection, it seems we’ve lost sight of the fact that media history is not linear. Gitelman argues that any media is already new, but appropriated media from the past. In spite of old media seeming antiquated, it is still adequate and meaningful in its purpose.
Historical artifacts capture and represent the moment of their origins. Gitelman uses a photograph as an example to explain this. The photograph serves not only as a visual representation of its subject, but it also acts as physical evidence because it was created in the moment that it represents. Although the physicality of the photographic index is becoming a thing of the past, the timestamp on our images, and the digital footprint that we leave behind are not things that can be easily erased.