Week 8 (19th-20th C. media)
Briggs & Burke, Processes and patterns
B&B identify the hammering of the golden spike as ?the most dramatic moment in the story of American railroads.? They later note how the event was photographed and a wood engraving of the photograph was circulated around the US. It's funny how the event was documented using new technology but then circulated using this older-more durable-technology of the wood engraving. The invention of the postcard brought with it questions about public vs. private: why would someone write private info on something that was publicly visible? B&B note that the content of postcards became increasingly standardized, which is an interesting way of dealing with lack of privacy. With the introduction of the postal system in the UK, we can already see the equating of the success of a country with its ability to / amount of communication. This article is a really funny follow up to our discussion in 702 the other day about deliberative democracy in online spaces. A lot of these technologies were hailed as bringing unprecedented amounts of democracy (the telegraph, the telephone).
Neat trivia: Reuters news agency began after the telegraph was introduced. B&B note that, in the mid-late 1800s, ?the stock market accounted for half the traffic and 'family affairs' for 13 per cent. By contrast, the press accounted for only 4 per cent and government for 2 per cent.? According to B&B (through AD Chandler, author of The Visible Hand), ?the competitive telegraphic companies then formed were the first modern business enterprises to appear in the United States? (p. 143). There is an interesting tension between allowing competition in the tele- system and providing universal service. Multiple phone companies operating in one municipality did not necessarily guarantee the residents universal access. With the rise of the radio and ham operators, the US military branches stepped in to push regulation of ham operators and this new technologies, a move which was not supported by Congress or by the public. Development of cinema from the daguerrotype and multiple photographs (which were originally taken to help with sketches). Development of gramophone.
Marvin, Dazzling the multitude
The Paraclesian example is really interesting, since it portrays communication and communication technologies as literally inscribing our bodies. Marvin argues that the telephone is our most intimate form of communication, while the TV is impersonal but perhaps more like the grand electrical dramas. I think the authors Stubbs cites would agree with Marvin that certain technologies (okay, they're talking about the telegraph) are more intimate than others. Marvin uses his discussion of intimacy to begin his analysis of electric light shows. He describes the festive environment created when the public gathered around this technology and points out that the electric light spectacles provided the public a grammar with which to understand the TV. The interesting thing is that the TV was a private medium, driving people apart, as opposed to the electric light display, which brought people together in public. Also, it seems only natural that these electric light spectacles lent themselves best to advertising, be that commercial. Lastly, I wanted to in reading this essay, I was reminded of the Great Gatsby, which seems to use light to symbolize mystery, spectacle, newness.
Schivelbusch, Panoramic travel & The compartment
I like Straus' observation that the railroad instituted a type of systematized geography. This geography was likely also shaped by the spread of the telegraph that accompanied the spread of the railroad. The telegraph helped temporally collapse this geographic space through synchronous communication.
It's interesting to read people's impressions of train travel. It seems almost as if they couldn't yet cognitively handle the experience of riding on a train, seeing so many stimuli rush by them. Notably, discourses around this began shifting to suggest that the railroad did not destroy the landscape but in fact recreated it. Is it now worth mentioning the technologies we use and how we argue over the extent to which they remodel our sense of space/place?
Another suggestion here is that the train encouraged a certain interiority in the traveler: that the exteriority of the landscape was not something the traveler could look to anymore for stimulation. Now, the traveler turned inwards, to the interior of the train and the book: the ultimate private experience. This also connects with Simmel's ideas of the wanderer in a city who will turn inwards rather than outwards when confronted with the intense stimulation of the city.
This concept is extended through the discussion of the compartment of the train. Whereas travelers would perhaps use the external environment as a medium for socialization / interaction (in other words, communicating by reflecting on the environment), travelers could no longer reflect so easily on an environment that was rushing by so quickly. Indeed, now that they couldn't talk to each other about the outside world, they resorted to reading as a source of entertainment.
As the notion of isolation became normalized, it seems to have brought with it negative consequences, such as mistrust between the passengers. Passengers, no longer socializing with each other, began mistrusting each other.
Stubbs, Telegraph's corporeal fictions
Stubbs locates the telegraph as a point of struggle over gender, labor, and productivity. The struggle over gender came about in part as a result of WU looking to create a more productive industry. The struggle over labor seems to have risen out of the gender struggles coming out of the productivity struggles. Ultimately, this gender struggle was fought out in the discourses (Shakespearean plays, per David) that surrounded it.