Transcript nmd 2007 history of media technologies

NMD 2007
HISTORY OF MEDIA
TECHNOLOGIES
DR. BURÇE ÇELİK
What is technology?
Technology is relatively a new concept, emerged
around 19th century to define the “knowledge of the
arts” – (Ruth Schwartz Cowan)
Communication technologies and/or media
technologies: any difference?
Conveying messages – audio, textual, visual, electrical,
digital – across time and space.
Annihilating time and space via communication
technologies – what are the possible implications?
Pre-historic communications
History begins with writing about 5000 years ago, what
about the pre-historic period?
Pech-Merle caves in France.
14.500 B.C.
Ice Age
Pre-Historic Communications
25.000 years before the development of writing and
arithmetic: an example of a record of some process or
series of events that could be read by the others.
Cro-Magnon bone tool. France. 28.000 B.C.
Writing
Writing and literacy: Sumerians, Egyptians, China and
Central America. Did writing diffuse throughout the globe
from Mesopotamia?
Many scholars think that writing developed independently
in the major civilizations of the ancient world. Is there a
solid evidence to prove that?
But how writing emerged out of no-writing?
Divine origin, conscious search for a technique of recording
due to the expanding demands of economy, accidental
discovery?
Writing, Language and
Thinking and Governance
“Language creates the social reality, makes the world
meaningful”. Can we think outside language?
What does the written language do to societies?
Harold Innis, Empire and Communication
“The profound disturbances in Egyptian civilization
involved in the shift from absolute monarchy to a more
democratic organization coincided with a shift in
emphasis on stone as a medium of communication or
as a basis of prestige…to an emphasis on papyrus”.
Papyrus and Clay
“writing on stone was characterized by straightness or
circularity of line, rectangularity of form, and an upright
position, whereas writing on papyrus permitted cursive
forms suited to rapid writing”.
“by escaping from the heavy medium of stone” thought
gained lightness.
“a marked increase in writing by hand was accompanied by
secularization of writing, thought and activity”.
To write is the ability to name and naming is mastering what
is named.
Papyrus and Clay
Each of them has a bias toward space or time and they
effect civilizations differently.
Clay, stone, parchment are time biased media and tend
to favor decentralization.
Papyrus, paper as space-biased media are easily
transportable and enable governors to control large
and centralized territories.