Full Description
From the punch card calculating machine to the personal computer to the iPhone and more, this in-depth text offers a comprehensive introduction to digital media history for students and scholars across media and communication studies, providing an overview of the main turning points in digital media and highlighting the interactions between political, business, technical, social, and cultural elements throughout history. With a global scope and an intermedia focus, this book enables students and scholars alike to deepen their critical understanding of digital communication, adding an understudied historical layer to the examination of digital media and societies. Discussion questions, a timeline, and previously unpublished tables and maps are included to guide readers as they learn to contextualize and critically analyze the digital technologies we use every day.
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 - Why Study the History of Digital Media and How?
1.1. Contextualizing Digital in Contemporary Societies
1.2. Theoretical Paths
1.3. A Few of the Benefits of a Digital Media History
Chapter 2 - The Computer
2.1. The "Mother" of All Digital Devices
2.2. The Mechanical Computer Age and the Social Need for Calculation
2.3. The Birth of the Computer and the Mainframe Age
2.4. The Age of Personal Computers
2.5. The post-PC Age from a Global Perspective
Chapter 3 - Internet
3.1. What We Mean by the Internet
3.2. The Military Influence
3.3. The Academic Influence
3.4 The Counter-cultural Influence
3.5. The Public Service Influence
3.6. The Commercial Influence
3.7. The Social Influence
3.8. Re-reading the Internet in Historical Perspective
Chapter 4 - The Mobile Phone
4.1. The Origins of the Mobile Phone
4.2. Digital Rebirth and Growing up
4.3. The European Digital-Bureaucratic Miracle
4.4. The Power of Routine. A Concise History of Text Messaging
4.5. A New Mobile Phone Paradigm: 3G, Smartphones and Mobile Internet
4.6. The Global Mobile Phone Fever
4.7. Sociocultural Implications of Mobile Connectivity
Chapter 5 - The Digitization of Analog Media
5.1. Intermediality and the Digital Media Pattern
5.2. Music
5.3. Publishing: Books and Newsmaking
5.4. Cinema and Video
5.5. Photography
5.6. Television
5.7. Radio
5.8. Digitization and the Interweaving of Different Media
Conclusion
Myths and Counter-hegemonic Narratives in the History of Digitization
Chronology
Appendix: Statistical and Quantitative Data
Acronyms
