After class, leave a comment on this blog post summarizing your reading and our discussion of Lisa Gitelman’s introduction to her book Always Already New.
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Lisa Gitelman is a professor at New York University in the departments of English, Media, Culture, and Communication. She was also a former editor at Rutgers University for the Thomas A. Edison Papers. Gitelmanâs ideas brings social and historical understandings of the media and as discussed in class, is connected to the works of Haraway, Bolter and Grusin, McLuhan and even Kittler. Gitelman defines media as âsocially realized structures of communication, where structures include both technological forms, and their associated protocols and where communication is a cultural practice, a ritualized colocation of different people on the same mental map, sharing or engaged with popular ontologies of representation. Their histories must be social and cultural, not the stories of how one technology leads to another, or of isolated geniuses working their magic on the world.â (Gitelman, p. 7) Gitelman did not believe that one person could create and develop something ingenious all by themselves. The idea could have started from this one person, but the creation would be completed with the help of many others. As mentioned in class, ontologies describes how we see the world, and how we make sense of things based on perception. Therefore, our ontologies as New Yorkers can differ vastly from people who are living in the Amazon, which means ontologies cannot be universal and depend on your experience. Philip K. Dick wrote about how ontologies can be destroyed through drugs, or psychopharmacology, as well the media and aliens. Gitelman believed that the media could influence how we see things, our language used to communicate, and that media is our technologies of representation. New media created ontologies for us, Gitelman believes that we need to be aware of how the new medias are creating a certain ontology for us which can affect the way humans act and interact with others. Echo chambers was also mentioned during our class discussion, which is the concept of interacting with others who may seem similar to you which reinforces what you think. Social media such as Twitter is influenced by echo chamber, by using this negatively reinforced media often, it can change how you see the world. We shouldnât stick to just one source, but explore other sources so that we donât easily get influenced by echo chamber.
Lisa Gitelman is a âmedia historian whose research concerns American book history, techniques of inscription, and the new media of yesterday and todayâ (NYU, 2018). With this background, her essay âAlways Already New Media, History, and the Data of Cultureâ has a very keen topic of bringing the social and the historical to our media. At the beginning of her essay, Gitelman states âWith the cold war over and capitalism ascendant, Fukuyama argued, the end of that History, with a capital H, was more clearly in sightâ (p. 3). After doing research about this âHistoryâ with a capital H, it was discovered that it was history being written down for the record; where anyone can access it at any moment in time. History with a lowercase âhâ is anything that has occurred, but hasnât been recorded; there is no hard evidence it happened.
Gitelman goes on to say “likewise, according to Peter Lunenfeld, the digital offers âthe universal solvent into which all difference of media dissolves into a pulsing stream of bits and bytesâ (1999, 7), effectively suggesting âan end to the end-games of the postmodern eraâ (2000, xxii). By these accounts, media are the disappearing subjects of the very history they motivateâ (p. 3). She speaks about how there is so much information that the media is giving off, and they all live in a digital form, accessible at anytime and anywhere in a hidden form. The media is merely hidden, and not invisible; because it is a medium of progression, allowing for advancements in history. This relates to the philosophical study of ontology which deals with how we see the world, and make a sense of things, based on our own embodied experience. As we said in class âwe cannot see around, its what we see through.â We cannot see around media, but we can definitely thank it for the historical advancements with it.
Lisa Gitelman is a media historian whose in the field of American book history and a professor at New York University. She is interested based on how data records or the data which doesn’t by discovering its trace. From Lisa’s article “Always Already New” rewinds the social and historical towards media comprehension. Similar to Donna Haraway, she defines media as socially realized structurally communications, where Donna relates to the feminist side of the issue. Lisa mentioned how technological forms and associated with protocols. She thinks communication is a cultural practice, a ritualized collocation of different people on the same mental map, interacts with popular anthologies of representation. Their history must be historical and cultural; not the stories lead technologies to one another. Anthologies provide different perspective based on how we control our technology. It creates a sense of things, different concepts towards our perception, which is different compared to someone else’s concept. When she focuses media, she reminds Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan indicates how we shape our tool and the tool sends the correspondence feedback to reshape us. Media are among ourselves, influences how we communicate and it signifies someone’s image. The technology causes anthology. Anthology could change how we interact by discovering the society point of view by using technologies. Echo chambers are the correlated terms to Anthology. Echo chambers influenced different kinds of social media, and it transforms how we view the world. Therefore, Lisa trying to give us the intention which the echo chambers would change our perspective.
Lisa Gitelman is a professor at NYU and has been appointed in the Department of English and the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication. She helped create the department of media studies at Catholic University and has received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in English and Comparative Literature. In Lisa Gitelmanâs âAlways Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture,â she talks about how her book will explore the different ways that media, specifically new media are looked at as historical subjects and how it isnât really new, it came from somewhere. She defines media as the following, âI define 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. As such, media are unique and complicated historical subjects. Their histories must be social and cultural, not the stories of how one technology leads to another, or of isolated geniuses working their magic on the world.â What she is saying is that a certain kind of technology could have not have been created by just one person. It had to be a team doing the planning, the building, the coding, etc. We believe that is was the one person who did all the work with the help of no one because it is what gets written down. As discussed in class, we can see that her work in this book is connected to the works of Haraway, McChluan, Bolter and Grusin and Kittler. We also discussed what the word ontology means, which she brings up in her book. Ontology is how we view the world based on our perceptions. Someone who is living in the Amazon has a different ontology than someone living here in New York City. Gitelman wants us to become more aware of how these new technologies are being created and not ignore it.
Lisa Gitelman is a professor in Media and English at NYU currently; she is an author and media historian who specializes in the research fields of inscription techniques, American book history, and old and new media. Her emphasis is on studying the patterns of new media in terms of how it compares and contrasts with old media. Like Donna Haraway, Dr. Gitelman is focused on bringing our attention to the social aspect of new media and technology. But she also brings to the fore the history of media in order to enhance our understanding of its impact on the world and us.
We read a portion of her book, âAlways Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture.â We discussed her definition of media as âsocially realized structures of communication where structures include both technological forms and their associated protocols, and where communication is a cultural practice, a ritualized co-location of different people on the same mental map, sharing or engaging with popular ontologies of representation.â What she is saying is that media is comprised of communication, one that is simultaneously structural and evident, but also social and subtle.
Ontologies are a large factor in Dr. Gitelmanâs research. Ontologies are how we see and perceive the world. They are built from our life experiences, our cultures, our values, our educations, our biases, etc. Weâre building and shaping and changing our ontologies all the time as we grow, learn, experience, and perceive new things. Media has a huge impact on our ontologies because they act as intermediaries between us and our interaction with the world. Dr. Gitelman is encouraging us to be cognizant of these technologies and media, much as Donna Haraway cautioned us to be aware of the tools and technologies around us. In Harawayâs case, she feared we might become oppressed by technology if not aware of its scope and power. In Dr. Gitelmanâs case, she is more concerned with the impact media and technology will unconsciously have on our world views, our ontologies, if we are not making a concerted effort to be aware of them.
She cautions against the perils of creating for ourselves an unintentional echo chamber, one in which we fashion an environment from which we only receive reinforcing feedback on our own biases. This kind of environment, while providing that confirmation bias we might seek, is also harmful in that it may instill within us a technological dystopianism wherein we only are fed negatives, and so our ontologies will become more negative, or dystopian, as a result. There is no doubt that media is an intermediary, a filter. It acts as a go-between for humans and directly impacts how they interact with their world now, in ways large and small, all the time. So Gitelman is saying itâs crucial that we be âmindful practitionersâ of media consumption in this virtual reality experience.
Her writing references directly many other authors we have discussed. For example, like McLuhan and Kittler, she draws a parallel between media and our perception of the world (ontology) as it relates to escalation and control. Media are technologies of representation, and as such, their immense influence over our lived experiences is vast and complex. As we read in Bolter and Grusinâs piece âRemediationâ, we are very aware of media in a hyperimmediacy capacity, its presence is evident. But more insidious would be the immediacy of media, the complete transparency, of it. I believe Dr. Gitelman is saying to not be lulled into being a passive consumer of these media, as is very easy to do when itâs invisible and yet ubiquitous in our lives. To do so would be allow media to dictate our ontologies in large part, and that can be a dangerous thing.
Lisa Gitelman is known as a âmedia historian whose research concerns American book history, techniques of inscription, and the new media of yesterday and today.â Gitelman has a Ph. D is English from Columbia University and has several books, the most pertinent âAlways Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Cultureâ. Her most prominent point is the opinion that one, sole individual cannot be the sole inventor or origin point for an idea or invention. That sentiment is echoed in her definition of media as a âsocially 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. As such, media are unique and complicated historical subjects. Their histories must be social and cultural, not the stories of how one technology leads to another, or of isolated geniuses working their magic on the world.â It is with the communication of multiple people: the back and forth of ideas, the expansion of ideas, and their implementation of ideas to create. Ontologies was a word used by Gitelman to lend itself to this point. Our perception and comprehension of the world is what forms our opinions , our ideas, our interactions with other people. The fault in ontology, however, is that it can lead to an echo chamber. The echo chamber is such a damaging occurrence since it is just the reinforcement of ideas held; thereâs no discourse to try and understand a opposing idea. Gitelman cites media as helping to claw away at that echo chamber. Global media helps to break away at that echo chamber by allowing people to share and discuss their ideas. Stagnation, in peopleâs beliefs, have no place for existing with our current medias allowing instantaneous communication. With a push of a button, we are linked to millions of people where the discourse should range so differently, person to person. Hopefully, people can shy away from their echo chambers and start interacting with people with differing view points. By doing so we can evolve our own ideas, which will help us better understand one another and expand as a society.
Lisa Gitelman educator in the Departments of English and MCC (Media, Culture, Communication) at New York University. Composed âAlways Already Newâ which looks at the social essentials of new media as subjects and instruments of history, by recounting the tale of how media write and are engraved. Gitelman inspects this persuasive procedure by breaking down the creation and memory of reports through documented histories of recorded sound and the Internet. The sections look at these media in their beginning structures when they were “new.” Paying sharp regard for the argumentative connections among generation and gathering, archive and confirmation, and media clients and media public, the parts investigate the developing phonograph, Internet, and World Wide Web. As Gitelman contends, investigating the “apples and oranges” of sound chronicle and computerized writings bodes well, on the grounds that both are “inscription media.” Both speak to and do as such in ways that are “critically material and also semioticâ.
As the title proposes, Always Already New investigates the absolute most critical components that stamp media as new. Vital among them is an absence of tons of utilization. At the point when media are new, standards of decorum, wrangles over authenticity, and portrayal have not yet been arranged. The “dramatization” that encompasses new advances has still to be played out. Gitelman contends that new media develop out of old practices and old media. Their “prosperity,” to be sure “the achievement of all media” relies upon a “‘visual impairment’s to the media innovations themselves” and a thoughtfulness regarding “the substance,” or the utilization and satisfactions media speak to clients.
Gitelman’s book is a delight to peruse. It is loaded with recorded goodies that are delightful and illustrative. Edison pronounced that the phonograph would “catch” “criminal sounds” and safeguard valuable discourse before it dispersed into insensibility. Edison’s phonograph in this way guaranteed a more profound fixity for words than the ephemeral of newsprint. Incidentally, be that as it may, no phonographic record of phonograph shows has survived. The ubiquity of the tinfoil phonographic records as keepsakes from early displays likewise underscores the representative heave of print culture, as the records were “quiet” without photographs on which to play them. They were huge as unmistakable images of the want for credibility. Gitelman’s cases point to her bigger decision, that media are “dependably effectively new,” that they are tied in with rising neighborhood requests of open life and memory.
Lisa Gitelman is a professor at New York University as well as a media historian.Her work includes book history in America, inscription techniques, and the new media. Her interpretations include viewing the media through diverse viewpoints. Having experience as an editor for Thomas A. Edison Papers at Rutgers University, Gitelman ensures her skills in technology are remarkable. Gitelmanâs âAlways Ready Newâ, explores the idea that new media affects media history.
Gitelman asserts that media is innate. Media is throw in our face the minute we step into the world. Media and the authority it contains can have on profound effect on the masses. Social and historical context has been regulated by society for numerous years. This distributed content has been controlled. Consequently, selective data has been used to represent history. For example, National Geographic has used their previous publications with images that have admired, yet they were categorized or misconstrued in a negative matter. National Geographic has recently recognized how their magazine has influence education for decades. Their recent issue addressed this negative connotation associated with their work. Gitelman concepts correlate to content introduced by Bolter and Grusin in which there is a tension among media and our perception. This tension can go unnoticed. As a historian, Gitelman recognized this idea as a social realized structure (page 7).
The term ontologies were also introduced to define how one perceives the world. This concept is how one arranges ideas and comprehends them. This perception is based on personal experience and learned values. An ontology is not the same for everybody. Therefore, just as McLuhanâs medium concept, this varies between people. Ontologies have a vital role when understanding Gitelman’s work. Ontologies can be created and learned. This work focuses on media it changes our perception.Hence, it is important to have a non-bias view of the world. However, in a world of social media, ideas can be a reinforced view among peers. This is known as an echo chamber. Gitelman work can agree that todayâs digital age, this can lead to a negative outlook of the world. It is crucial for one to be aware how media influences the way one thinks.
Wamsley, L. (2018, March 12). National Geographic Reckons With Its Past: For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist. Retrieved March 29, 2018, from https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/12/592982327/national-geographic-reckons-with-its-past-for-decades-our-coverage-was-racist?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20180312
Lisa Gitelman is currently a professor at New York University (NYU) in the English and Media department. She is a media historian who studies American print culture, techniques of inscription, and the new media of today and yesterday. In 2006, the M.I.T press published her book, Always Already New Media, History and the Data of Culture. The book examined the social and historical understanding of media, it also examined the way media is produced and how itâs used in our daily lives. Her definition of media, is an established modes of communication in a technological form and simplistic form that places people on the same mental map and encourage sharing or discourse about different ontologies. She argues that media has cultural and social stories not the fact that their stories are separate and they are about how the evolved into new innovations. As humans we have cultural and social stories and new media itself was created by us, the only thing new media has done that was different from media was change the medium we us to interact with each other daily. McLuhan said that the median do something to us and Gitelman pointed out that media is in between everything we do and it changes our ontologies. She pointed out the Eco chamber concept, people narrow their mindsets and only pay attention to people who have their views of the world this very concept stems from the aggressive nature people have over social media because of their ontologies they have on life.
Lisa Gitlman was former editor of the Thomas Edison papers at Rutgers university and a professor at NYU. In her essay Always Already New, she shows us social and historical understanding of media. Gitlman defines media as a â 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 diïŹerent people on the same mental map, sharing or engaged with popular ontologies of representation.â Gitlman also brings up Ontologies, how we see the world and how we make sense of things. With media it can show us many different things in different ways positive or negative. Media can influence things because media is a representative technology and we can alter mediaâs impact on ourselves through psychopharmacology. New media creates Ontologies for us and although me might not pay attention to new media as much we should because new media in turn changes technology ( which we are reliant on) and that changes the way we act and interact with others. Gitlman mentions McLuhan who we read in class and he ties in with his phrase âthe median is the message.â When Gitlman talks about the âmediaâ itâs the median and thas how we receive our information and also the media plays an important role in technological development
TO: Professor Dr. Jason W. Ellis
FROM: Ronald C. Hinds
SUBJECT: Always Already New Media, History, and the Data of Culture
DATE: April 08, 2018
Lisa Gitelman, Professor of English and Media, Culture and Communication at New York University and coeditor of âNew Media, 1710-1915,â and author of âAlways Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture,â both published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Press, brings to us the social and historical understanding of media. On the other hand Donna Haraway brings to us, through her mythical cyborg, political action. We have embraced some of these tools, i.e. the agents of technology, so tightly, like the laptop and other mobile devices, which seem to be an extension of us.
Lisa Gitelman defines media âas socially realized structures of communication, where structures include both technological forms and their associated protocols, and where communication is a cultural practice.â If one is not aware of cultural practices, in a particular foreign environment, it is easy to ruffle some feathers. For example, giving an âOKâ sign in one culture can be misconstrued as conferring the same meaning as a middle finger might in another culture.
It is rather popular in the current discourse to malign the media, and paint it with a brush, and call it âfake news.â The media is not monolithic. The word media, plural of medium, is used, in such a vague way, and that it has become synonymous with technology. Marshall McLuhan tells us that the medium is the message. And Friedrich Kittler writes that media determines our situation because the media defines what and how discourse is recorded.
The bourgeois media is the mouthpiece of big business and for the people who own the means of production. At the other end of the spectrum is the media that speaks for the forgotten people a segment of whom were recently referred to, by a politician, as the âdeplorables.â Our current era is one of âBig Dataâ and with its large storage capacities and constant collection of data we have come to realize that data is not actually a natural resource but a cultural one. The New York Times reported, in March 2018, that Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm, improperly acquired the private data of about roughly 50 million Facebook or FB users, and used this data to target voters on behalf of the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election. As we always suspected, data collected can be used by rogues for nefarious activities. We expect these entities to protect our privacy from intruders including the government. It is apparent that the social media behemoth, Facebook, failed us, and much earlier in the game than that which is now being hyperbolized by corporate owned news.
Gitelman makes us aware of our ontology (introduced in 1606) as the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence, or reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. Simply put ontology is how we see the world. Donna Harawayâs âcyborg worldâ stands out in my book as a different point of view than mine but this view aroused my curiosity. Haraway is the author of âA Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.â Philip K. Dick, a writer whose genre includes, science fiction and fantasy, wrote of many different worlds which he imagined in his dreams. He talks of alternative worlds in his stories. And Dorothy, when she lived in the land of Oz, smartened up and knew that it was the Wizard behind the curtain who was manipulating events.
Lisa Gitelmanâs âAlways Already New Media, History, and the Data of Cultureâ gives us a good understanding of media and the role that it plays. She takes us on a journey while exploring the newness of new media and she certainly has us thinking.
References
Gitelman, L. (2006). Introduction: media as historical subjects. In Always already new (pp. 1-22). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Retrieved from: http://composingdigitalmedia.org/f15_mca/mca_reads/Gitelman-Always-Already-New-Intro-excerpts.pdf
Keywords: Media, ontology, psychopharmacology
Lisa Gitelman is a professor in New York University. She is working in English, Media, Culture and Communication departments. Her research mainly focuses on American book history, techniques of inspection, and new media of yesterday and today. She looks at the new media patterns and tries to look if there is any trace against context of the old media. Her book titled, âAlways Already New Media, History, and the Data of Cultureâ, as well as her opinion is much connected to previous authors we had a chance to discuss in class, those are McLuhan, Bolter, Grusin and Kittler. Gitelman does not believe that a person could just make something on their own. Rather that a person could have come up with the idea but the final creation of this something would have to be done with a help of others. We discussed the word ontologies which means how people see the world and how they make sense of it based on perception. Her main idea of believing was that new media could influence the people and have they perceived and see the world. Moreover, we discussed the echo chambers, the definition is the interaction with others through new media which shows what one thinks. Different social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter can influence the echo chamber. When using those platforms negatively it can make one see the world differently, it might change once perception. What Gitemlan wants the people to know is that they should explore more platforms not only base on one there is so many different opportunities to be able to see different things and perceive them as well.
Lisa Gitelman is a media historian. Her interest are in American book history, techniques of inscription, and the new media of past and present.
She is particularly concerned with tracing the patterns according to which new media become meaningful within and against the contexts of older media. Her most recent book is entitled Paper Knowledge: Toward A Media History of Documents. She earned a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University. Formally, she was the editor at Rutgers University for the Thomas A. Edison Papers. She decided to apply and join Steinhardt after teaching at Harvard University and after teaching at The CUA.
LIsa Gitelmanâs âAlways Already Newâ bring the social and historical to our understanding of media. She defines media as âsocially realized structures of communication, where structures include both technological forms and their associated protocols, in where communication is a cultural practice. A ritualized prolocation of different people on the same mental map, sharing or engaged in with popular anthologies of popular presentation as such medi are unique and complicated historical subjects. There histories must be social and cultural, not one story about technology leads to another or of isolated geniuses working their magic on the world.â
Alot of connection with her and Kittler about how these things come about. They have complicated histories and complicated discourses to make this possible.
We need to focus on the complexity of the social and historical facts by and to media in order to understand it.
Media are complicated historical subjects.