19th and 20th Century Technologies
In the Briggs & Burke chapter "Processes and Patterns," I found myself reflecting on how poorly I followed history of communications devices. From classes on Modernity in fiction, I expected the discussion about the central image of the railroad, (though that section did make me wonder if images of our technology today have every reached that iconic a level--are contemporary artists painting computers or internet cafes?), but I had never thought about what an impact "wireless" technologies had in their origins in the late 1800s. Also, I was surprised to note that Australia had a wired telegraph so early across its continent. "Even then, they had to make their way across central Australia where lonely telegraph operators might live more than a hundred miles from their nearest neighbours"(Briggs & Burke, 2002, p.110). This seemed like an enormous sacrifice in the name of technology. I cannot imagine living in the outback around the 1870s all by myself, and perhaps with my family and deadly Taipans. (I think 2nd or 3rd on the most deadly poisonous snakes list, behind Gaboon Vipers.) Talk about the original setting for "The Shining." This also struck me especially as the cost of these telegraph operators living in isolation was necessary in order to unite a continent in communication where most people lived on the coasts. Finally, I was interested in how the then new technologies developed with their own "creation myths" of sorts and how people said of the telegraph "Anything more perfect than this is scarcely conceivable, and we really begin to wonder what will be left for the next generation upon which to expend the restless enterprise of the human mind"(Briggs & Burke, 2002, p. 115). I point to this quotation not to make fun of or downplay the magic of the telegraph or imply "wow, we would really blow their minds," but because I feel like this is a fundamental difference between then and now. While the technologies of the 19th and 20th century were so phenomenal as to occasion the belief that nothing new could ever compare, I think we are in a phase of just the opposite. As we've mentioned about VR, I think in comparison there are fewer people now saying "wow, the internet, just watch out future-people, there is nothing left to invent" and almost a restlessness among the tech elite that we can't move around seamlessly in hybrid VR or (as David has pointed to coming) download our brains to computers, or information directly into our brains. I wonder if this has to do with our "revolution" being a "short/fast" one or stemming from a knowledge of all the incredible inventions in the past that have "changed everything." I hesitate to say that it is the former, because, although the industrial revolution and the print revolution might have been "long," the period of 1890/the turn of the century seemed to witness just as much genuinely earth-shattering changes, as per this chapter.
In "Dazzling the Multitudes," Marvin (1988) begins by reminding us about our prejudices in "reading history backwards," and "Assuming that the story could only have concluded with ourselves, we have banished from collective memory the variety of options a previous age saw spread before it in the pursuit of its fondest dream"(p.154). It is true in looking back from the vantage point of "knowing," we automatically see other futures as impossible and incompossible with our own. This breeds the danger for what we have been combating in ourselves and each other in belittling the achievements of past technology that seems to us as inevitable and no longer wondrous. It also seems that the Red Tacton might have its origin in the totally gross skin grafting experiment about how to remain in contact and have skin-based open channels of communication. Also, in relation to what Foucault talks about in Discipline & Punish, we have moved from a society of the spectacle to one of surveillance in terms of punishment, the same seems to be true of electricity. While electricity first held this potential Marvin shows to "dazzle the multitudes" with incredible spectacles of light, we seem more likely to see electric light today in the framework of allowing us to see and see others. (Finally, are lazer light shows at cheesy rock concerts hold-overs from light spectacles of the 1800s?)
In "Panoramic Travel" Schivelbusch discusses how the train "ruined travel" in much the way that the Transcendentalists claimed. "The speed and mathematical directness with which the railroad proceeds through the terrain destroy the close relationship between the traveler and the traveled space. The space of landscape becomes. . . geographical space"(Schivelbusch, 1986, p.53). This reminded me some of the space/place discussion in that before we had developed technologies like "thick skins" we actually did perceive traveling in an (often painful) personal way thus making every place we traveled in a "place" in the meaningful constructed sense of the word. For instance, someone traveling by foot was dynamically making space into place as he or she put in each footfall. I also thought it was very interesting (in terms of things forgotten about the past) that people had to develop a new means of seeing or observing in order to realistically look at anything out of a moving train. This seems so foreign to me as we are already familiar with how to look off further in the distance of a plane, train or car, in order to get the chance to actually see some objects. Also, the idea that "aloneness in togetherness" started when our technologies of physical mobility got to be "faster or easier" seemed telling. Also, in terms of "The Compartment," I was reminded of the idea of equality as posed in Andy Warhol's "What's Great About this Country," where he argues that equality is knowing that Liz Taylor or the President of the US can't get a better coke than you-- that all the cokes are equal and all the cokes are good. The truth though, is that Liz Taylor or the President might be drinking their cokes in a private jet, or drinking them with top shelf liquor. Also, I thought the section on isolation was interesting in the showing the train as a liminal space between empowerment (in efficient mobility) and frightening, Freudian images of powerlessness. (Perhaps this is the reason why trains figure into images of murder and the uncanny.)
Finally, Stubbs "Telegraphy's Corporeal Fictions" discusses the representations of gender in the world of the telegraph operator and how "the problem of females" was addressed through fictional encounters that depicted female operators as weak and sometimes hazardous to the technology itself. What was really interesting to me in this piece was the discussion of Thayer's story Wired Love, where Nattie and Clem actually feel hamstrung in their corporeality when trying to talk face-to-face but must instead beat out Morse code messages with household objects. When "C" from the telegraph becomes embodied in the "real-life" "Clem" Nattie is disappointed. What this first reminded me of, was 1-900 lines where the in-person experience would almost certainly be disappointing. However, what Stubbs says is important-- the telegraph divorces the message even from the sound of the senders voice and therefore seems even more disembodied. Also, in terms of the opportunity for illicit telegraphing, unlike telephones or chatroom discussions, there is no voice, but there is also no message recorded visually on the computer screen. If the receiver is decoding the dots and dashes on the fly, it must seem like telegraphy reaches a much more intimate level of telepathy in that there is no auditory or visual stream, just disemboddied dialogue. In relation to the last story, "Playing with Fire," when Herbert and Rena are each disappointed by the other's gender, I saw some relation to amatory fiction of the early 1700s, like that of Aphra Behn, where women more often achieved real passion or dignity in the rejection of heterosexual relationships, especially in a time where letters were passed by hand by many different people. Therefore, I was more surprised by the treatment of Rena's death instead where it was emphasized that her "brave heart stopped beating," which seems to project more of an audience feeling of loss or disappointment that they were not instead happy that their mistake was reciprocal. Also, I thought it was telling that "Isaac" could no longer be lovable fully as a female, nor Miss D. as a male, showing how much gender construction plays into attraction.