CS610
Media Archaeology
0.5 Credit

In the words of Lisa Gitelman and Geoffrey Pingee, all media, from clay tokens and quipus to email and instant messages, were once new media. This course focuses on traces of these moments in the historical archive, moments before the material means and conceptual modes of new media have become fixed, when such media are not yet accepted as natural, when their own meanings are in flux. Beginning with the tools that shape[,] store, and transmit our own ideas, such as word processors and presentation software, this course investigates and theorizes the social networks that emerging media technologies helped to shape, and the reciprocal roles that those same networks played in deciding which media, became obsolete, and what, if anything, was preserved for posterity.