Re: [-empyre-] Opening remarks on new media history

[noah wardrip-fruin <noah@queeg.com>]

At 2:38 PM +1100 2/1/04, Anna Munster wrote:
>  >(2) new media has a
> > history, (3) this history's record is print and digital,
>
> Absolutely and yet we might also add that histories are also disciplines
> caught up with  *disciplinary* questions that creating new media as a field
> also poses....I'm interested in why a certain history at a particular
> moment becomes THE history of an emerging field. For example, why  *print
> and digital* ? and not electronic or visual perspectivalism or cinema? So,
> I'm interested to hear from Nick and Noah how they are thinking about the
> field of new media through the history they have conjured for it.

I know that Nick has already addressed this, and certainly I agree 
that there is more to this history's record than print and digital 
artifacts. This was an infelicitous transposition on my part from our 
specific thinking about the NMR project (the desire to have a book 
and a disk) to a more general discussion of new media.

If I were to attempt a better transposition, it might be from our 
thinking about the NMR to some thinking about new media in courses. 
It's interesting to me that some critical courses on new media focus 
on print readings almost to the exclusion of direct work with new 
media. I think we'd find this very strange in other areas - e.g., a 
film course that didn't expect the students to watch film. Certainly 
students could write passable essays on Vertigo or Intolerance 
without ever having seen a film of either era (given the wealth of 
secondary sources) but is this something we'd want to encourage? We 
included a CD with the NMR, and part of our motivation was to make it 
easier for new media courses to include direct work with (some 
version of) historically important new media artifacts. And, as Nick 
points out, the CD also includes video, which has certainly also been 
an important part of the record of new media's history, and which we 
also hope will find its way into new media courses.

Noah