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Technologies
Research into New Media
International Journal of
Convergence: The
DOI: 10.1177/135485650000600205
2000; 6; 62
Convergence
Michael Punt
Parallel Histories: Early Cinema and Digital Media
http://con.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/6/2/62
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Media Technologies
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Parallel
Histories
Early
Cinema and
Digital
Media
Michael
Punt
Abstract
:
This article
suggests
ways
in
which
research
into
a
nineteenth-
century
technology
such
as
early
cinema
might
be valid
in
understanding
digital technology.
It
identifies
a
number of
stylistic
resemblances between
early
cinema,
personal
computing
and
the
internet.
It
also claims that there
is
some
value
in
applying
one
analytical methodology
to
both
’old’ and
’new’
media.
By
looking
at
digital
technology through
the filter of
an
extremely
well
developed
discourse
in
early
film
history,
softer determinist
accounts
of
digital
technology
can
emerge
which
are
not
dependent
on
the
premises
of
progress
nor
those of
various
forms of Postmodernist
criticism. In
a
reverse
angle,
so
to
speak,
it
also
argues
that
a
close
tracking
of
digital
technology
and
its
critical discourses
as
they
unfold
in
various
entertainment
forms
can
tell
us
much about the
attractions
and
fascinations that
early
cinema
had
a
century
ago
had
for
its
audiences.
In
short
it
claims
a
continuity
in
audio-visual
history
and
criticism
which
is
a
valuable
addition,
even
antedote,
to
the
hyperbole
and
unsupportable
technological
determinism that
digital
media has
attracted both
in
academic and commercial
commentary.
Introduction
Over
the last
two
decades
we
have become accustomed
to
the
dominance
of the blockbuster
as
part of
Hollywood’s
’hit-driven’
marketing
strategy.’
We
also have
come
to
expect
that the
narratives
of
these
high
investment
products
directed
at
family
audiences will be
driven
by
spectacular special
effects,
often
only
made
possible
with the
advent of
digital
image
manipulation
technology. Hollywood
has
reinvented
itself
since
the
economic
lows of the
1970s
and
now
regards
its
products
(movies)
as
multimedia
products
that
simultaneously
target
a
range
of distinct niche markets.
This
approach
to
movies
by
the
industry
has
encouraged
a
number of
revisions in
film
theory,
especially
among
those
concerning questions
of
media
specificity.
As
No6i Carroll
has
argued,
the
eighteenth
century
Enlightenment
idea
of medium
specificity
still
exercises
a
tenacious
grip
on
the
imagination
in
the
arts.
It
proceeds
from
the
assertion
’that each
art
form should
pursue
those effects
that,
in virtue
of
its
medium
it
alone
-
ie
of all the
arts -
can
achieve.’2
In
this
intellectual
regime
the
task of
the
artist is
to
examine
a
medium
for those
messages
and
forms that
it
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63
alone
can
express.
As
Carroll,
points
out
however,
this
depends
on a
selective
viewing
of the evidence.
All
media,
he argues,
have
more
than
one
constituent
component, and the decision
to
assign
one
as
dominant
is
quite
arbitrary
and determined
by
history.
If
a
domain
of
expression
is
already
occupied,
then another
way
of
prioritising
the
constituent
parts of
a new
medium
is
necessary
in
order
to
find
a
’vacancy’.
Carroll’s
approach
owes
much
to
new
digital
technology,
which transfers data from
one
medium
to
another without
distortion,
and
New
Hollywood’s
response
to
the
business
opportunities
that this
offers. The blockbuster
movie
collapses (media specific)
expressive
forms with cultural
institutions
such
as
the cinema, fast
food,
and
games.
In
so
doing,
it
forces
us
to
rethink
our
critical
approaches
to
the
movies.
Whereas Carroll has focused
on
art
theory,
and Thomas Schatz
(among
others)
has
analysed
the
economics
of
Hollywood
in response
to
multimedia
products,
this article
proposes
a
reconsideration of film
history
(especially
the
history
of
early
cinema)
in
light
of
digital
technologies.
As
more
and
more
research
is
conducted
into
the first decades of the
movies -
especially
into
technological history -
the
cinema
no
longer
seems
to
be the inevitable
outcome
of
a
cultural
imperative
for
rendering
movement.
It
is
better
explained
as
the
intersection
of
a
complex
network of discourses and
as a
number of discrete devices and
technologies already
more or
less
perfected
for other
purposes.’
Consequently,
as
historical research
into
early cinema technology
has
discredited
teleological explanations
of the
process
of
invention,
it
finds
itself
more
and
more
involved with
general
questions concerning
the
history
of all
technologies.
This
historiographic
trend has
prompted
more
speculative
and richer
questions
about the
beginning
of
cinema.
For
example,
what other
possible
histories
might
there
be for
a
given
invention
such
as
the
Cinématographe
or
the
Kinetoscope?
How
might
more
symmetrical
accounts
of
technological change
that
acknowledge
those
inventions
which fail be
useful, and, given
that there
are
many
possible
uses
for
a
machine,
what
are
the
circumstances
that favour
one
use
of
technology
rather than another?
Increasingly
it
appears
that
to
answer
these
questions
is
to
suggest that
some
inventions
become
’technologies’,
and others do
not -
almost
by
accident.
In
orthodox
technological
histories,
for
example,
Thomas
Edison’s
Kinetoscope
is
frequently
cited
as
a
primitive
form
of the
cinema,
even
though
his idea
of how the
invention
might
be
deployed
was
vastly
different from
how
the
technology
was
eventually
used.
Kinetoscopes
were
peephole
machines
set
up
in
lavish
parlours
intended
to attract
high-class
passing
trade. The idea for this form of
exploitation
came
from the earlier
success
of
phonograph parlours,
which themselves
were
developed
by
salesmen
unable
to
shift
the
- merchandise
as a
business
machine.
Having
sold the
rights
to
the
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64
phonograph
before
its
financial
success,
Edison
attempted
to
recover
his
profits
with
a
new
attraction, and
developed
a
’phonograph
for
the
eye’
called the
Kinetoscope.
He
was
emphatically
not
interested
in
cinema
as a screen
experience,
and the
product
that he
seems
to
have
aspired
to
was
much
more
like the
VCR
than the
movies.
What
he
envisioned
was
volume sales
of identical low-cost
items
to
individuals
for domestic
consumption
(like
pre-recorded phonograph
drums).
What
he
got,
however,
was
the
movies -
the industrial manufacture of
a
high-cost,
high-risk product
that
is
repeatedly
sold
to
a
changing
group
of
consumers
in purpose
built
venues.
As
early
film histories
reveal,
the
processes
that caused
this
renegotiation
of
use are
difficult
(if
not
impossible)
to trace
conclusively.
Increasingly,
it
appears
one
important
factor
was
that
users
had
different
ideas and made their demands felt
in ways
that
producers
and
exhibitors
were
able
to
respond
with different kinds of
software/product
and
modes of exhibition. The
cinema
was
shaped
more
by
its
uses
than
by
the
technological
features
of
moving pictures.
In
this historical
approach,
early
cinema
has much
more
in
common
with
digital
technology (especially
the domestic
PC
and the
internet)
than
determinist
teleologies
can
readily
account
for.
Many
of the social and
economic
processes
that have
shaped
the dominant
stylistic
use
of both
technologies
as a
popular
expressive
medium have
many
strong
parallels - especially
in
the
renegotiation
of
an
invention’s
use once
it
is
in
the
public
domain.
Perhaps
the
most
obvious
parallel
between
cinema
and
digital technology
can
be
found
in
the
intersection
of
advertising
and
entertainment.
One
of
the
remarkable
insights
that the
paper
print
collection
at
the
American
Library
of
Congress
yields
is
the rich coalition
of commercial
interests
in
the
content
of
very
early
films. These
prints
reveal
not
only
the
extent to
which
entertainers
and theatrical exhibitors used films
in
the
pre-
nickelodeon
era
to
nourish
appetites
for their
products,
but also the
enormous
number of trade
names
that
were
incorporated
into
the
views.
Some
of this
advertising
was
obviously
coincidental
since
the
American
city
at
the
turn
of the
century
was a
melange
of amusement,
spectacle
and
commerce.
Much of it,
however,
appears
to
have been
quite
premeditated,
ranging
from
promotional films
for branded
products (such
as
cigarettes
and
alcohol)
to
the
pre-meditated
placement
of
frontages,
billboards,
placards
and banners
in
apparently
non-commercial
’views’.
Charles
Musser
estimates
that
’something
approaching
half of
the
Edison
films made between the fall of
1896
and the end of
1900
were
subsidised
by
transportation companies
or
other
organisations
seeking
publicity
Other
advertising
was
less
direct;
films of vaudeville
turns
were
often
’tasters’
for live
performances
in
the
locality.
Shots
of
the
Lumi6re
family
at
play,
or
of Thomas Edison
at
work,
were
to
a
large
extent,
an
advertisement for the
inventors.
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65
Even
the
highly popular
genre
of travel films
was
intended
to
encourage
tourism.
As Musser
argues
’[t]he
often stated claim that such films
were
a
cheap
alternative
to
travel def~ected
attention away
from the
fact that
the films
were
to
a
considerable
extent
mode and shown
precisely
to
encourage
tourism.’5
The
audiences
may
have been
poor
but
as
Edward Tannenbaum
points
out,
’in
the late nineteenth
century
the
tourist
mentality
was
not
restricted
to
the
small number of
people
who
travelled
abroad’.~ The idea of
tourism
which the virtual
flanerie of
travel
films have
promoted
stimulated
people
to
visit
strange quarters
of
the
city,
visit
museums
and
displays
and
even
to
decorate their homes
with
culturally
alien
objects.
This kind of ’travel’
is
the R,5nerie which
Giuliana
Bruno
suggests
is
the
experience
of the ’film
spectator
...
someone
who
sets
up
house amidst the
multitude,
as
a
spectator
at
home within the theatres crowd. ,..
sees
without
being
seen,
rejoicing
in
his
incognito: seeing
the
world,
at
the
centre
of the
world,
he
is
nonetheless hidden from
it.’7 To
this
kind
of travel
advertising
in
films
both decorated the
environment
and acted
as a
sign-post
to
other
pleasures.
In
the
past
two
years
many
of the films
Musser
refers
to
have been
available
via
an
internet
link
to
the
Library
of
Congress.
In
using
this
particular
form of
access users
cannot
have failed
to
notice
a
remarkable number of
correspondences
between the
two sets
of
image
environments
that
are
being negotiated - early
cinema
and
early
internet
(not
least
in
the dense
layering
of
overt
advertising
and
product
placement).
Not
only
are
web browsers
persistently
identified
by
animated
logos,
but search
engines,
the basic
access
tool for the ’web
surfer’
(and
even
academic
resources),
promote
their
own
products
as
well
as
providing
vacant
space
to
sell
to
sponsors.
To
follow
hyperlinks
on
the
internet
is
to
satisfy
a
specific
curiosity
through
a more or
less
sign-posted
shopping
mall of still and
moving images
intent
on
making
you
even more
curious.
As
with
early
cinema,
travelling
through
the
dataspace
involves
a
kind of cultural
tourism -
a
street
walking
or
flaneurie
in
which idle
curiosity
stimulates
an
appetite
for
products
and
places.
Aside
from the commercial
and
intertextual
content
there
are
formal
(that
is
compositional
and
structural)
resemblances between
early
cinema
and the
digital
environment
of the
internet -
not
least
in
the
digital
film
loops
(animated
GiFs)
which
appear
on
many
web
pages
as
lures for the fl6neur’s
eye.
Even
though
the Edison films and animated
GiFs
are
separated
by
a
century
in
which
the
graphic
arts
(not
to
say
moving
pictures)
have
undergone
some
quite
extraordinary
revisions,
there
are
remarkable similarities.
For
example
animated
Glfs
tend
to
be
single-shot
’scenes’ in
which the
action
is
centred
against
a
still
background.
The
most
ubiquitous examples
of
this
are
the
Netscape
and
Internet
Explorer
icons
that
move as
pages
are
loaded.
These,
like
© 2000 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
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66
many
other
GiFs,
describe
a
process
(eg
a
meteor
storm,
a
turning
globe,
a man
lifting
his hat
etc)
and
rely
on
medium
focal
lengths
which
Jean
Louis
Comolli
regarded
as
symptomatic
of
cinema
striving
to
’integrate
into
the
image
a
vanishing
perspective
on
the
one
hand, and,
on
the
other,
the
movement
of
people
and
things along
retreating
lines
(eg,
the
train at
La
Ciotat
station).&dquo;
As
with
many
early
films,
GiFs
are
structured
on
the
compelling
repetition
of the
palindrome.
This
simple
patterning,
identified
convincingly
in
early
Lumi6re
films
by
Marshall
Deutelbaum
(among
others)
has been attributed
by
Livio
Belloi
directly
to
the
process
of
filming
in
public.9
Belloi
notes
the
impact
of the
cameraman
(especially
the
Lumiere
operators)
as
flaneurs -
figures
who
are
both
participants
and observers
of the
metropolitan
scene.’°
The
narrative
structure
of these
early
actuality
films,
it is
suggested,
derives from
an
’intuitive
exploration
of
interpersonal
space
and
its
founding
rites ...
the observer
openly
bets
on
the
subjects observing
micro-social conventions, with the sole
intention
of
directing
and
regulating
their movements.&dquo;’
Put in
more
formalist
terms,
films that
provide
the
impression
of
reality
’reproduce
subject
matter
within
a
pattern
of
logic
consistent
with the
logic
of the
world that
it
records,
excluding
whatever elements
might
serve
to
break
the
narrative
flow’.’2
As
early
cinema
restructured
metropolitan
views
as a
social
interaction
of
viewer
and
subject
mediated
by
a
technological
representation,
so
the animated
GIF
similarly
engages
the
virtual flaneur
in
a
visual
repetition
of the micro-social
event
of the
city
advertisement,
which
temporarily
catches their distracted
attention
until
its
redundancy
drives them
on.
The
apparent
ease
with which
many
of the
analytical procedures
that
have been used
to
understand film
can
be transferred
to
digifialJelectronic
media
may
simply
confirm the claim that this
new
technology
can
replicate
all other media
experiences
without
loss,
including
the
experience
of
critically
engaging
with media.
Alternatively
they
may
suggest
that there
is
more
than
a
seductive
parallelism
here and
suggest
a
closer consideration of economic, social
and
technological
features of both the
cinema
and the
internet.
This
may
show that
in
many
important
ways
they
may
be
adequately
mapped
to
each other.
Perhaps
the
most
closely
matched
correspondence
is
in
the
popular
responses
to
new
inventions at
either
end of the twentieth
century.
Socio-economic
studies
of
the
nineteenth
century
have noted
how
displays
of
technology
were
almost
guaranteed
to attract
huge
and
profitable
audiences.&dquo;
The institutional
form of these
displays
include
cheap
theatres and
museums,
world’s
fairs,
amusement
parks (such
as
Coney Island),
organised
sport and
public
demonstrations of
particular
inventions
such
as
the
Cin6matographe.
The
economic
elegance
of
© 2000 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
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67
these
attraction
built
on
the
interdependence
of
service
providers
(traction
companies,
electricity suppliers,
and real
estate
interests)
and
particular
entertainments.
The
imperative
to
maximise
profits
in
response
to
technological change
stimulated coalitions
between utilities
and
leisure
in
unpredictable
ways.
David
Nye
has shown
how,
for
example,
the electrification of the
trailey-car
network freed land outside
the
city,
which
was
formerly
used
for horse
stables,
and
livery. 14
Moreover
with
a
short
extension
of these
transportation
lines
(to
power
amusement
park lighting
and
rides),
the weekend
surplus
in
supply
could be
exploited
for
profit.
As
a
consequence
companies
more
used
to
servicing
the
corporate
sector
became
involved
in
popular
entertainments
by
investing
in
parks
and
picnic
groves,
and
even
buying
National
League
baseball
teams.15
Many
providers
understood
that
the
trolley
ride
was
a
formative
part
of the
entertainment
experience
and
offered
’all
in’
tickets for
some
attractions
that included
the
entrance
fee
price
of the
trolley
fare.
Customers
used these
particular trolley
rides
in
quite
distinct
ways -
either
to
foreshadow
the
thrills of the white knuckle rides
to come,
to
provide
a
refreshing
breeze
in
open
top
trams,
or
to
produce
a
sense
of
gregarious
solidarity
as
the
crowd
converged
on
a
single
venue.
According
to
David
Nye,
rides
to
amusement
parks
eventually
accounted for between 30-50
per
cent
of
some
company’s
traffic. Whatever the
profits
and
pleasures
that
were
to
be
gained,
however,
they
were
dependent
on a
complex
financial
ecology
founded
on a
popular
curiosity
and
fascination with
technology.
This coalition of distributed business
interests
has been
duplicated
in
the
development
of
digital technologies.
The internet, like the
Cin6matographe,
owes
something
to
both scientific
and
military
research
originally
not
intended
as
a
public
resource.
Chronophotographic
research
in
the nineteenth century
was
intended,
among
other
things,
to
refine bloodstock
techniques
for the
cavalry
and
to
discover
less arduous
ways
for
men
to
march.
Similarly
the
ARPAnet,
which
forms the backbone of the internet,
was an
American
Cold
War
network intended
to
provide
the illusion that
communications
could
be
maintained
in
the
event
of
a
total nuclear
war.16
Quite
quickly,
an
academic
community
with
access
to
mainframe
computers
exploited
their
over-capacity
and built
an
informal academic network.
A
wider
curiosity
about the
possibilities
of electronic
communication
was
also
stimulated
by
business
providers
such
as
IP
Sharp,
and Prestel. Where
academics
were
interested
in
the
exchange
of
data,
the wider
community
saw
the
technology
as
broadening
the
possibilities
of wider
social
interaction
and
pleasure.
In
the
service
sector,
French Telecom’s
decision
to
provide
Paris
subscribers with
a
free ’Minitel’ information
system
(a
telephone
network
extension
which
replaced
the paper
directory), spawned
a
whole
new
infotainment
industry.
With both
’Minitel’
and
public
access
to
the internet,
telephone
and
cable
service
providers
found themselves
implicated
even
further
in
the
entertainment
© 2000 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
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68
industry.&dquo;
As
the
prospect
of
’convergence’
between
the
PC
and
television becomes
a
technological
and
economic
reality,
utilities will
once
again
need
to
consider their
relationship
with unaccustomed
partners
in entertainment
and
even
education.
In
addition
to
some
aspects
of
socio-economic
conditions,
the
complexity
of the culture of
technology
which
gave
rise
to
the
cinema
and
digital technology
also bear
comparison.
Undoubtedly
the
popular
attraction
of
new
inventions in
the
nineteenth
century
reflected,
to
some
extent,
a
widespread
perception
of cultural
(and
even
geographical)
transformations that
were
the
consequence
of
new
technology.
The
universal
imperative
to
regulate
nature
in
the
service
of
improved
conditions
for mankind
during
this
period
focused
inventors’
minds.
In
the
last decade of the nineteenth
century,
for
example,
221,500 patents
were
filed
in
America
alone.
Apart
from
enormous
civil
engineering
projects,
the
most
prolific
areas
in
which
inventors
worked
were
the
mechanisation
of
agriculture,
transport
and
communications
technology,
and medicine.
A
number
of
scholars,
dissatisfied with the
simplistic
determinism of
romantic
histories of the
invention
of cinema, have
responded
by seeking
to
show how the last
two
categories
in
particular
stimulated the scientific research that laid the foundations for
the
Cin6matographe
and
Kinetoscope.
There
is
a
temptation,
however
to
regard
the close of the last
century
and the end of this
as a
period
of
massive
technological change
in
which the
only
possible
response
to
bewilderment
is
excited confusion.
Whilst this
intriguingly explains
some
features of the
cinema
and
its
subsequent
uses
in
ways
that
we
can
understand
today,
it
defers
questions concerning
the
causes
of
technological change
to
the
questionable
idea
of
Progress.
The idea of
Progress does,
arguably,
account
for
why particular
devices
were
invented
at
a
certain
moment, but
it
does
not
explain
why
similar
cultural
imperatives
were
resolved
technologically
in
very
different
ways.
Bernard and Michael
Carlson have revisited the Edison archive
with
precisely
this
in
mind.18
Using
concepts
from
cognitive
psychology,
they
have tried
to account
for the
invention
of the
cinema
by
posing
the
broader
question:
’How
do
inventors
create
new
technologies?’ They
have
suggested
that
inventors
might
be
engaged
in
a
cognitively
impenetrable
process
of
representing
mental models that
come
to
them
through
various
means.
Carlson and
Gorman’s
study
owes
much
to recent
work
in
Technology
Studies.
One
of the
revisionist
approaches
in
the
field has considered
the
extent to
which
technology
can
be
regarded principally
as
a
social
construction.
Weiber
Bilker,
John
Law,
and
Trevor
Pinch,
among
others,
see
the
history
of
technology
as an
ongoing
interaction
between
individuals
or
socially
dominant groups
and
particular
inventions.
_ Their
position,
which
fundamentally
opposes
the
view
that
technology
is
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69
un
autonomous
agent of historical
change,
is
epitomised
in
David
Nye’s
account
of the electrification of
America.
Introducing
his
study
he
points
out
that
’electrification
was
not
a
thing
that
come
from
outside
society
and had
an
&dquo;impact&dquo;:
rather,
it
was an
internal
development shaped
by
its
social
nexus.
Put
another
way
each
technology
is
an
extension
of
human lives:
someone
makes it,
someone owns
it,
some
oppose
it,
many
use
it, and all
interpret
it.’19 His
position
in
respect
of electrical
distribution focuses
attention
on
the value of
symmetrical
economic
histories that
examine
the
causes
and
determining
effects of business
failure.
Ultimately
this
may
be
a
dangerously
ahistorical and idealist
position
which
cannot
be sustained without
nuance,
but
it
begins
to
suggest
that
some
of the
congruence
between
cinema
and
digital
technology
can
be accounted for
not
just
in
the
way
that
they
look,
but
in
the
processes
by
which
new
technologies
are
invented
and how
they
become
public
property.
A
revisionist
approach
to
the
emergence
of
cinema
technology
not
based
on
the
inevitability
of
progress
may
also
help
unlock
some
of the
mysteries
of the
origins
of the
personal
computer.
Robert
Cringely,
for
example,
takes the
view
that
technological
innovation is
shaped by
the
possibilities
of the
hardware,
the
imagination
of those who
come
in
contact
with
them, and,
most
important,
of the
accidents of the market
and
applies
this
to
digital technology_
In
Cringely’s history
of the
personal
computer
he charts a transformation from the fixed
bulky
machines
accessed
by
the
professional
elite
to
ephemeral, simple
and
cheap
software solutions which will
snap
into
television
sets
and the
phone
lines. The
causality,
as
far
as
he
is
concerned,
is
the
interaction
of
a
new
kind
of machine with ’disenfranchised nerds like Bill
Gates
who didn’t
meet
the macho standards
of
American
maleness and
so
looked for
a
way
to
create
their
own
adult world and
through
that
creation,
gain
the
admiration of their
peers.’2°
In
this seductive social
homology,
Cringely
suggests
that
personal
computers
were
not
inevitable but
are
the
fallout from ’nerds’
replacing
the
heavy-duty
muscle of the
corporate
hardware
giants
with
’brainy’
software.
Unlike
George
Gilder and
many
other
high
profile
media
gurus
who tell
the
story
of
computing
from the
point
of
view
of the
’winners’,
Cringely
provides
a
more
symmetrical
causality
for the
various
changes
in
hardware and software
technology.
He
traces
the realisation of
particular
personal
ambitions of
some
individuals associated
with the
industry,
as
well
as
the missed
opportunities
of
some
others.
He
shows
how
certain
people
with
particular
talents and similar social
inhibitions,
accidentally
met
others
(some
of
whom
had
venture
capital)
and
were
able
to
temporarily
challenge
the
hegemony
of the market leader
(IBM)
by developing
an
alternative
view
of the
computer
as a
personal (rather
than
corporate)
machine. With well~hosen
examples
of
spectacular
- financial
misjudgements by
major
players
in
the
industry,
he shows
a
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70
gap
between established
powers
in
the
industry
and maverick
entrepreneurs
(like
the
young
Bill
Gates)
who
were
closely
in
touch
with
an
alternative
view
of what computers and
computing
’meant’.
This
interpretative
group
was a
small,
but
obsessive, constituency
of
amateurs
who
were
interested
in
computing
relative
to
semi-recreatior~al
uses.
Once
equipped
with basic machines
many
cemented their
affiliation with the
community
of
other
enthusiasts
by
writing
inventive
software,
which
they
freely
shared.
Subsequently
the
more
personally
ambitious
(Bill
Gates
and
Steve
Jobs
for
example) began
to
exploit
this
commercially,
and
companies
such
as
IBM,
who
were
formerly
committed
to
the idea
of the
computer
as a
corporate
machine,
faced
competition
from
entrepreneurs
who
reinterpreted
it
as a
domestic
apparatus.
Ultimately Cringely
is
concerned with the
power
politics
of Silicon
Valley.
His
conceptual
premise
and
methodology yields
some
brilliant
insights. Although
he
begins
with
grass-roots
responses
to
computing,
his
account
remains,
predominantly
teleological
and
’top
down’. There
is, for
example,
little consideration of what the
personal
computer
meant,
or now
means,
for
’ordinary
users’.
Yet
as
is
clear from the
example
of the
phonograph
and
Kinetoscope,
when
new
technologies
meet
popular
audiences
they
can
be
significantly
transformed
beyond
the
inventor’s
recognition
(process
that
can
continue
long
after
product
development).
Over
the
century
it
has
migrated
from the
parlour
through
the
teen
bed-sitting
room
to
a
’middle brow’ cult
apparatus
and
(somewhat ironically)
has become
a
corporate
machine used
predominantly by
radio
stations
and
club DJs.
Similarly
in
the
history
of
cinema
technology,
the basic
apparatus
became the foundation of
a
mass
cultural
experience
as a
consequence
of the
interaction
of
technological,
economic, and social determinants which
changed
its
meaning.
The
power
politics
of Silicon
Valley
cannot
explain
fully
the
transmutation
of the
personal
computer
from the Altair
to
the
iMac
without
acknowledging
the
family politics
of restless
teenagers
and
anxious
parents.
Reading
through
Cringely’s
economic
history
with
the
benefit of
Technology
Studies
it
becomes
increasing
apparent
that the mistakes
in
product design
and
development
can
be attributed
to
a
misunderstanding
of the
processes
of
invention
and
innovation
by
established
(and
not
so
established)
corporations.
In
particular
the
cardinal
error
of
over
estimating
the control that the
innovator
has
on
the market
through subscribing
to
unsophisticated
ideas about
technology
and
history.
This
often
appears
to
drive
the
decision-making
of
commercial
developers
with
often disastrous results
as,
for
example,
in
the
development
of
CD-ROM.21
CD-based multimedia
technology
made
simple
low-investment
products possible
which could
have
- transformed
traditional
ways
the
public
interacted
with
both
textual and
© 2000 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
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71
visual data.
According
to
industry
’vapourware’,
interactive
CD-ROM
based
on
hypermedia
architecture,
was
going
to
alter education and
popular
entertainment in
unbounded
ways.
This
medium,
it
was
predicted,
would be
used
to
store
data
in
a
great
variety
of forms
(text,
image, sound,
graphics,
movies)
which would be accessed
associatively
to
provide
a
powerful
value-added
learning
tool.
CD-ROMs
would
transform libraries
by eliminating
the
costly
storage of volumes and
by
providing
different
modalities
of
access
to
data
would
ultimately,
it
was
claimed,
affect
scholarship.
In
short,
its
most
avid
promoters
insisted
that
the
CD
would be
a new
episteme.
None
of this
seems
to
have
happened
except
in
a
number of
highly
specific
applications, mostly
concerning
industry-training
programmes.
Instead,
a
technology-led
discourse
means
that
now,
even
at
the
entry
level
authoring
requires
high
investment
in
a
baroque
and
often unreliable
melange
of devices
ranging
from video and sound
cards,
scanners,
digital
cameras,
an
assortment
of
(incompatible)
storage
systems,
and
a
complex
array
of
memory
hungry
software.
Playing
them back likewise
now
requires
relatively high specification
equipment
far removed from the
original
vision
of
a
data
equivalent
to
the
Sony
WalkmanTM. The
revolutionary
possibilities
for
CD-ROM
appear
to
have been lost
to
a
deterministic
understanding
of the
relationship
between
culture
and
technology
while
the medium itself
appears
to
have been
eclipsed by
the
internet.
The
problematic
of
technological
determinism has
recently
become
something
of
a
topic
in
Technology
Studies.
Merrit
Roe
Smith and
Leo
Marx
have
attempted
to
bring
some
sequence
to
the debates
in
a
collection of
position
statements.&dquo;
Their
view is
that
technology
may
change
society,
but
not
in
a
regression
along
a
single
line
of
determinism.
As
they
point
out, ’Even
those who do
not
use
computers
have
had
to
accommodate
their
ways
to
some
of
its
requirements
in
supermarkets,
post
offices,
banks, libraries, schools, airlines,
hospitals,
or
the
military
services -
few
departments
of
contemporary
life
remain
unaffected
by
the
new
information
technology.’23
Nonetheless
they
are
attempting
to
reach
some
consensus
in
a
polemical
opposition
between
determinists and
constructivists.
At
its
most extreme
R.L.
Heilbroner
is
the
founding
proponent
of ’hard’
technological
determinism.
He
declares
unequivocally
that ’Machines
make
history by changing
the
material conditions of
human
existence.’24 For
some
this
is
far
too
reductive,
politically unacceptable,
or
simply
too
selective of the
evidence.
At
the
other
pole
(one
which
more
closely
resembles
the
orthodoxies
in
contemporary
film
studies)
is
the
view
that the
history
of
technology
cannot
be
independent
of human
actions.
Smith and
Marx
argue
that this
approach
leads
to
the
more
exacting
and
provocative
questions
in
the
historian’s
tool
kit.
Why
was
the
innovation
made
by
these
people
and
not
others?
Why
was
it
possible
at
this
time
and
in
this
place
rather than another
time
or
place?
Who
benefited,
and
who
_ suffered~ -
in
fact
the
very
questions
which have
driven
’New’
film
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72
history
since
the
1970s
are
informecf
by
this
actor
theory
of
technology
and social
change.
Between
the
two
a more
sophisticated
determinist
approach,
however,
also
points
to
the
influence such
a
widespread
(if
misplaced)
belief
in
the idea that
technology changes
culture,
has
on
the
way
that
technology
is
manifest
in
the
processes
of social and
economic
decision
making.
In
short the
widespread
credibility
of the
concept
of
technological
determinism
ensures
its
effectiveness.
At
stake
in
this debate
may
be the limits and
scope
of Modernist
progress
as a
useful
explanatory
concept.
It
severely
challenges
the
extent
to
which
it is
useful
to
regard history
as a
story
of
an
avant-garde
destined
to
change
perception
through
different kinds of
transgression.
The inclination here of
a
postmodernist
debate
is
supported by
Leo
Marx’s
argument,
which
suggests
that the decline of the idea of
progress
began mid-century.
He
upholds
the
notion
that before the
Second
World
War
there
was a
boundless
optimism
founded
in
part
by
technological
development.
It
was
challenged,
he
suggests,
by
Hiroshima,
and
more
recently Chernobyl, Bhopal,
Three Mile
Island,
acid
rain
and
global
warming.
These disasters shattered the belief
in
a
’technocratic idea of
progress.&dquo;’
The social
consequences
of this loss of faith has manifest itself
in
a
vigorous
political
opposition
in
the
’Green’
movement
and
nourished
a
postmodern
pessimism
which nonetheless has
to account
for
scientific
advances,
for
example
in
social
hygiene
and medicine. This
coexistence
of
oppositional
responses
to
new
technology
is
no
more
evident than
in
those whose lives
are
shaped by digital technology
and
yet
oppose it.
Marx’s
case
is
that
in
this
mixture
of
opposition
and
pessimism
the
credibility
of
technological
determinism
is
reinforced and
consequently
so
is
technology’s significance
as an
autonomous
agent
of
historical
change.
In
this
move
he
is
able
to
relocate
technology
in
postmodernism,
and
can
show how the
very
idea of
technology,
especially
as
it
was
manifest
in
the nineteenth
century
as an
abstract
notion is
substantially
the
same now as
it
was
then.
There is, however
some
evidence that what he has
identified
as
Postmodern
pessimism
has
a
much earlier manifestation.
As
the
history
of the nineteenth
century
unfolds
in
all
its
complexity
it
becomes
increasingly
apparent
that there
were a
great
many
different
responses
to
the
technology
even
at
the
moment
of
its
triumphal
conquest of
arduous
nature.
Both
Julie
Wosk and Rosalind Williams have shown
how
an
ambivalence
to
technology
and the
anxieties
caused
by large
civil
engineering projects
and industrial
processes,
can
be traced
in
salon
art
and literature of the
period.
Williams has
suggested
that the
boom
in
technology
as an
entertainment
in
the latter
part
of the century
marked
a
shift
away
from
active
engagement
in science
towards
a
more
passive
consumption
of
its
results
as a
spectacle;
that
is
as a
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consumer
product
for
its
own
sake.
In
this
consumption
the
new
contract
between
consumer
and
technology
was
both
complex
and
contradictory.
Nowhere
is
this
complexity
more
apparent
than
in
early
cinema.
We
cannot
fail
to
notice
that
time
and
again
it
is
the
cinema
which
is
the
cause
of
pain
and discomfort
as,
for
example,
’countrymen’
are
fooled
by
the
image
of
onrushing
trains,
men
and
women
caught
in
infidelities
by
the
unrelenting
eye
of the
camera,
and
endless
punishments
are
meted
out
for
voyeurism.
For
whilst audiences
may
have been
fascinated
by
the
technological
wonder
of the
seance,
these
viewings
were
frequently integrated
with other
pleasures.
Thomas Elsaesser
negotiates
this
paradox
through
his
reading
of
Siegfried
Kracauer.
Noting
that
Kracauer
focused
not
on
the dialectical
relationship
between
high
and low
culture,
but
in
the identification of:
...rootlessness,
physical
isolation,
emotional
insecurity
and
psychological
stress
as
the material conditions which
necessitated
a
new
life
style:
one
increasingly
dedicated
to
what
we
would
now
call
conspicuous consumption
and
conspicuous leisure,
and which
Kracauer
was
the
first
to
recognise
was
a
historically
new
phenomenon.
No
longer
did
those who made
up
the class demand from
art
and
entertainment
that
it
represent
them
in
an
idealised
form,
nor
that
it
should show their lives
as
individually meaningful
or
heroised
in
the attitude of
struggle,
as was
typical
of
a
bourgeois
form such
as
the
novel: but
simply
that
it
should be
able
to
aestheticise,
turn
into
play
what
was
experienced
as
the
primary
reality
of
everyday
life :
depersonalisation,
violence,
the
drill and
routine
of the
working
day.26
Kracauer
responded
to
particular
conditions
in
Germany
in
the late
1920s,
but the
extent to
which his
writing
can
be
mapped
onto
both the
immigrant
centre in
America
at
the
turn
of the
century
and the
pleasurable
use
of
digital technology
(in
all
its
subversive
guises,
e-mail
chit
chat,
net
surfing,
games,
hacking
and the circulation of
transgressive images
etc)
proposes
a
long-standing fragility
in
the belief
in
a
Modernity
based
on
the
technocratic idea of
progress.
If
early
cinema
was
used
as
an
aestheticisation of the drill and
dangers
of both
working-life
and the
city,
it
was
also used
as
an
implicit
criticism
of the scientific trend towards
instrumentation
in
a
postmodernist
sense.
In
both
America
and
Europe
popular
participation
in
scientific
enquiry
was
highly
regarded
until the middle of the nineteenth century. Indeed
little distinction
was
made between the
professional
and
lay
scientist.
Working-class
men
with little
disposable
income
would
spend relatively
large
sums
on
subscription
to amateur
science societies
and
journals
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74
and
actively
participate
in
the scientific
project.
Women
too
had
access
to
the books
and
journals
and
it is
well
noted that
in
America
teaching
of
science
in
schools
was
predominantly
done
by
women
(and
consequently
was
not
a
patriarchal
discourse until
relatively
late).
However
as
professional
scientists
sought
to
elevate their
social and
financial
status
with
a
career
structure,
so
increasingly
more
esoteric
and
costly
apparatus
was
used
to
confirm scientific
theory. Royal
Societies
imposed
conditions of
entry
that
excluded
not
only lay
persons
but
also
technicians who built demonstration machines for
public
lectures.
As
scientists
became
more
committed
to
instrumental
vision
(not
entirely
without
opposition
in
their
own
ranks -
including
Marey)
so
working
class
participation
in
the
Enlightenment
project
of the
acquisition
and
circulation of
knowledge
was
reduced and
finally
eliminated.
By
the
turn
of the century the
transition
was
complete,
and
it
is
possible
to
see
the
use
of
Kinetoscope
and the
Cin6matographe
used
as
entertainment
as
symptomatic
of the
professionalisation
of late
nineteenth-century
science
which
increasingly presented
its
findings
as a
spectacle
to
be
consumed rather than
a
project
in
which
all could
participate.&dquo;
However
once
in
the
public
domain these
spectacles
were
’used’
by
audiences
in
a
variety
of
ways,
some
serious
and others
quite
flippant
and subversive.
But
perhaps
more
significantly
the
dedication of scientific machine like the
Cin6matographe
to
frivolous
pleasure
was
in
some sense a
revenge
on a
science
and
technology
that
had abandoned them.
In
short,
by
the close of the nineteenth
century,
as
far
as
popular
audiences
were
concerned,
the
compelling
logic
of
Modernism,
in
as
far
as
it
was
based
on
the technocratic idea
of
progress
may
have
already
been
quite
weak.
The
question
that
emerges
from this
more
nuanced historical
approach
to
technology,
culture
and
digital
media
is
this:
to
what
extent
might
research
into
a
nineteenth-century technology
such
as
early
cinema
history
be valid
in
understanding digital technology?
After
all,
the
mapping
of
the
history
of
one
technology
onto
another
may
ultimately
prove
to
be
no more
than
a
rhetorical
strategy,
arbitrarily
imposing
pattern
on
chaos -
recognising
that
relying
on
coincidence
is
often
an
act
of
desperation.
There
are,
however
a
number of
stylistic
resemblances between
early
cinema
and
digital technology,
at
least
as
it
appears
on
the
internet
and
in
personal
computing.
There
is
also
some
value
in
applying
one
analytical methodology
to
both ’media’.
By
looking
at
digital technology through
the filter of
an
extremely
well
developed
discourse
in
early
film
history,
softer
determinist
accounts
of
digital
technology
can
emerge
which
are
not
dependent
on
the
premises
of
progress
nor
those
of
various
Postmodernisms.
Reciprocally,
if,
as
Carroll
seems
convinced,
media-specificity
is
a
fallacy
of
Modernism
(which,
as
I
have tried
to
show
here
may
well have
been
already
discredited
in
some
quarters
as
early
as
the
beginning
of
the
_ century),
then
perhaps
a
close
tracking
of
digital technology
and
its
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75
critical discourses
as
they
unfold
in various entertainment
forms
can
tell
us
much about
the
attractions
and fascinations that
early
cinema
had
a
century
ago
for
its
audiences.
There
is
no
inherent guarantee that this could be
valuable,
but
it
is
surprising
that
even
the
most
basic
methodologies
and
conceptual
models
in
film studies
are
unfamiliar
in
the
literature
on
digital
media,
especially
when
the
morphological
resemblances
between
early
cinema
and
digital
moving
images
in
the
public
domain
are so
suggestive.
Exploring
them
may
be
a
worthwhile
exercise.
Moreover
in
a
final
re~erse-angle
shot
it
may
also be
time to notice
that
as
the
debates
about Modernism and
technology develop,
it appears
that
the
early
cinema
may
yield
some
of
its
more
difficult
history
to
postmodernist,
or
at
least non-modernist theoretical models. This will
mean
looking
at
the
invention
and
innovation
of the
cinema
technology
as a
convergence
of
non-hierarchical
discourses which
produced
a
machine
open
to
plural
interpretation
and
constant
reinterpretation
through
history.
It may
even
mean
that instead of
regarding
the
cinema
as one
of the formative
experiences
in
the
making
of modern
life,
it
might
be
more
valuable,
at
this
point
in
the
historiography
of
early
cinema,
to
consider
it
as
the
beginning
of the
making
of
a
postmodern
life which
bourgeois
(and
academic)
culture has been slow
to
recognise.
Notes
1
Thomas
Schatz,
’The
New
Hollywood’,
in
Film
Theory
Goes
to
The
Movies,
eds.
J.
Collins,
H.
Radner,
A.
Preacher
Collins
(London:
Routledge
1993),
pp.
8-
36.
2
Noël
Carroll,
Theorizing
the
Moving Image
(Cambridge:
University
of
Cambridge,
1996),
p. 26.
3
See
for
example
Michael
Chanan,
The
Dream
That
Kicks
,
(London:
Routledge
&
Kegan
Paul, 1980);
and
Noel
Burch,
Life
to
Those
Shadows
(London:
BFI,
1990).
4
Charles
Musser,
Edison
Motion
Pictures,
An
Annotated
Filmography
1890-1900
(New
York: Smithsonian
Institute
Press,
1997),
p.
33.
5
Musser,
p.
33.
6
Edward
Tannenbaum,
1900
The
Generation
before
the Great War
(New
York:
Anchor
Press/Doubleday,
1976),
p. 201.
7
Giuliana
Bruno,
Streetwalking
On A
Ruined
Map (Princeton,
New
Jersey:
Princeton
University
Press,
1993),
p. 49.
8 Jean
Comolli,
’Techniques
and
Ideology:
Camera,
Perspective,
Depth
of
Field’,
in
Narrative,
Apparatus,
Ideology:
A
Film
Theory
Reader,
ed.
Philip
Rosen
(New
York:
Columbia
University
Press,
1986),
p.
443
9
Marshall
Deutelbaum,
’Structural
Patterning
in
the
Lumière
Films’,
in
Film
Before
Griffith,
ed.
John
Fell
(Berkeley:
University
of California
Press,
1983),
pp.
299-310.
10
Louis
Belloï,
’Lumière
and his
View:
The
Camerman’s
Eye
in
Early
Cinema’,
Historical Journal
of
Film,
Radio and
Television,
15,
no. 4
(1995),
pp.
461-474.
11
Belloï,
p.
472.
12
Andre
Gaudreault,
’Temporality
and
Narrativity
in
Early
Cinema’,
in
Film
Before
Griffith
,
ed.
John
Fell
(Berkeley:
University
of
California
Press,
1983)
p. 312.
13 For
an
overview
of
the
popular
entertainment in
America
during
the nineteenth
century
see
David Nasaw,
Going
Out
(New
York:
Basic
Books,
1993).
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76
14
David
Nye,
Electrifying
America
(Cambridge,
Mass.:
MIT,
1990), pp.11-12.
15
Nasaw, p. 97.
16 For
a
discussion of how
in
the
period
of nuclear
diplomacy
defence
strategies
were
developed
as
’weapons’
see
John
Goddis,
We
Now
Know:
Rethinking
the
Cold War
History
,
(Oxford:
Oxford
University
Press,
1997).
17
For
an
overview
of the
development
of the
internet
and
its
relationship
to
the
convergence
of the
PC
and
television
see
Michael
Punt,
’Accidental Machines:
The
Impact
of
Popular
Participation
in
Computer Technology’,
Design
Issues,
14,
no.
1
(1998),
pp. 54-81.
18
Bernard
Carlson,
and
Michael
Gorman,
’Understanding
Invention
as a
Cognitive
Process:
The
case
of
Thomas Edison and
Early
Motion
Pictures,
1888-91’,
Social
Studies
of
Science
,
no.
20
(1990),
pp.
387-430.
19
Nye,
pp
11-12.
20
Robert
Cringely,
Accidental
Empires;
How
the
Boys
of Silicon
Valley
Make Their
Millions, Battling Foreign Competition,
and
Still Can’t Get A
Date
(London:
Penguin, 1996),
p. 8.
21 See
Michael
Punt,
’CD
ROM,
Radical
Nostalgia,
Cinema
History,
Cinema
Theory,
and
New
Technology’,
Leonardo
,
no.
28
(1995)
pp.
387-394.
22
Merritt
Smith,
and
Leo
Marx,
eds
Does
Technology
Drive
History?
The
Dilemma
of
Technological
Determinism
(Cambridge,
Mass.:
MIT,
1996).
23
Smith and
Marx, p ix.
24
Robert
Heilbroner,
’Technological
Determinism
Revisited’,
in
Smith
and
Marx.
p.
69.
25
Leo
Marx,
’The Idea of
Technology
and Postmodern
Pessimism’,
in
Does
Technology
Drive
History?
The Dilemma
of
Technological
Determinism, eds.
Merritt
Smith and
Leo
Marx
(Cambridge,
Mass.:
MIT,
1996),
pp.
237-258.
26
Thomas
Elsaesser,
’Cinema -
The
Irresponsible
Signifier
or
"The
Gamble
with
History":
Film
Theory
or
Cinema
Theory’,
New German
Critique
,
no.
40
(1988),
pp.
65-89.
27
Michael
Punt,
’"Well Who
You Gonna
Believe
Me
or
Your Own
Eyes?".
A
Problem of
Digital
Photography’,
The Velvet
Light
Trap
no.
36
(1995),
pp. 3-20.
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