And lead us not into thinking the new is new: a bibliographic case for new media history
Benjamin Peters
New Media Society 2009 11: 13
DOI: 10.1177/1461444808099572
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Abstract
Must the concept of the study of new media seem so thoroughly ordinary? What does it mean to study new media other than to study media that exist now? Prompted by the 10th anniversary of New Media & Society, this article aims to help rethink and elongate the history of new media studies by merging new media studies and media history literatures. The recursive definition and use of the term ‘new media’ are reviewed. New media need to be understood not as emerging digital communication technologies, so much as media with uncertain terms and uses. Moreover, by recognizing that new media studies quickly become history and that most media history is already new media history, this article calls for a use of both literatures to focus on the renewable nature of media in history. It reflects on a complementary attitude toward history meant to help usher in a sounder future of the study of the past.
Conclusion
In summary, this article has reviewed some of the terminological potentials, problems and literature surrounding the historical study of new media. While in many ways much of the reviewed literature is exemplary, it also relies on digital processing power as the defining constraint of new media. Further, while it is natural for the bulk of media history scholarship to treat only one period (usually the first) that a given medium appeared new, this article has suggested that the renewable quality of media presents a richer yet significantly underdeveloped framework for understanding media in history than is widely adopted. That is, media history can bring perspective to new media studies, but the study of new media as renewable phenomena can also improve media history. What ‘renewable media history’ might look like – or the kind of work that follows the long march idea of a medium through its many forms (e.g. telegraphy from hand gesture to computers) – is an open question for further discussion. The thrust of this article has been less to invoke a new topic (i.e. renewable media history), and rather to signal, rename and reappraise a tradition of new media history already long in the making.
The case for intersecting media history and new media studies has both advantages and caveats. Among the short list of advantages is the fact that history provides a set of lenses, such as the five stages of media renewability suggested earlier, through which to pique and sustain intellectual interest in new media for more than the fact that media matter now. In addition, once applied, the renewable, historical nature of media inoculates the ‘new’ part of new media against the near-instant obsolescence of studying new media in a world of torrential technological change, offering in its place a conceptual constancy in the idea of novelty with which to elongate and synthesize the study of new media history.Thus new media scholars may perpetually postpone awkward constructions such as new new media and old new media that otherwise the successor to digital communication will force upon our studies.
New media history also reminds scholars that by explicitly stating our interests in writing on the subjects, our work can find its fit in both the present and the stories that future generations of historians will tell about our times. Scholars have the privilege of leisure time to contemplate and take seriously our responsibility to become self-conscious stewards of the record of modern times. All of what we write will become history, although little of it may make the historical record. Future generations of historians will appreciate whatever candor we may muster.
Whatever the virtues, historical scholarship remains an irreparably demanding and cautious enterprise. At best, it provides ambiguous evidence and uncertain answers to almost any question, whether past, present or future. In any case, by comparing the amount of new media studies oriented toward the future and the past, we must admit that at the moment, the future of new media appears longer than the history of new media. This is not the proper balance.
Benjamin Peters
New Media Society 2009 11: 13
DOI: 10.1177/1461444808099572
Abstract
Must the concept of the study of new media seem so thoroughly ordinary? What does it mean to study new media other than to study media that exist now? Prompted by the 10th anniversary of New Media & Society, this article aims to help rethink and elongate the history of new media studies by merging new media studies and media history literatures. The recursive definition and use of the term ‘new media’ are reviewed. New media need to be understood not as emerging digital communication technologies, so much as media with uncertain terms and uses. Moreover, by recognizing that new media studies quickly become history and that most media history is already new media history, this article calls for a use of both literatures to focus on the renewable nature of media in history. It reflects on a complementary attitude toward history meant to help usher in a sounder future of the study of the past.
Conclusion
In summary, this article has reviewed some of the terminological potentials, problems and literature surrounding the historical study of new media. While in many ways much of the reviewed literature is exemplary, it also relies on digital processing power as the defining constraint of new media. Further, while it is natural for the bulk of media history scholarship to treat only one period (usually the first) that a given medium appeared new, this article has suggested that the renewable quality of media presents a richer yet significantly underdeveloped framework for understanding media in history than is widely adopted. That is, media history can bring perspective to new media studies, but the study of new media as renewable phenomena can also improve media history. What ‘renewable media history’ might look like – or the kind of work that follows the long march idea of a medium through its many forms (e.g. telegraphy from hand gesture to computers) – is an open question for further discussion. The thrust of this article has been less to invoke a new topic (i.e. renewable media history), and rather to signal, rename and reappraise a tradition of new media history already long in the making.
The case for intersecting media history and new media studies has both advantages and caveats. Among the short list of advantages is the fact that history provides a set of lenses, such as the five stages of media renewability suggested earlier, through which to pique and sustain intellectual interest in new media for more than the fact that media matter now. In addition, once applied, the renewable, historical nature of media inoculates the ‘new’ part of new media against the near-instant obsolescence of studying new media in a world of torrential technological change, offering in its place a conceptual constancy in the idea of novelty with which to elongate and synthesize the study of new media history.Thus new media scholars may perpetually postpone awkward constructions such as new new media and old new media that otherwise the successor to digital communication will force upon our studies.
New media history also reminds scholars that by explicitly stating our interests in writing on the subjects, our work can find its fit in both the present and the stories that future generations of historians will tell about our times. Scholars have the privilege of leisure time to contemplate and take seriously our responsibility to become self-conscious stewards of the record of modern times. All of what we write will become history, although little of it may make the historical record. Future generations of historians will appreciate whatever candor we may muster.
Whatever the virtues, historical scholarship remains an irreparably demanding and cautious enterprise. At best, it provides ambiguous evidence and uncertain answers to almost any question, whether past, present or future. In any case, by comparing the amount of new media studies oriented toward the future and the past, we must admit that at the moment, the future of new media appears longer than the history of new media. This is not the proper balance.
Considering two somewhat counter-intuitive claims: first, since each medium was new before it was old, the history of new media extends farther into both the past and the present than the history of old media. In other words, new media history is older than old media history. Second, the historical record itself is a product of new media history, beginning with written script. In the beginning, media were new. History came only later. Thus, how new media keep history is a key subject for further study.
Even in its flights of imagination, history is an engagement with, not an escape from, the present: we may note with Walter Benjamin how history reanimates the present as today’s version of the past. New media must be understood historically especially (and not even) if we are discussing the present. Historical study complicates prognostic arguments; the uncertainties of the past combine as a negative check against the future. Perhaps best thought of as a defensive maneuver, a strategy for defusing the powder kegs of prediction and a gauge of how little we know about ourselves, history cannot teach us to avoid past mistakes or to predict the future. It is not, as George Santayana said, that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. Rather those who do history well are condemned to admit its ambiguity.
The cautious case for new media history rests on a tension between the profound sense of ignorance to which all scholars must admit before the ever-incomplete record of fact, and the equal depth of insight found in the exercise of the human imagination. Of the many insights to which the past points, only one is certain: that history is an ever-renewable resource for discovering our own ignorance. Yet, as the epigraph suggests, the many gaps in the recording, transmission, translation and interpretation of the historical record provide the space necessary to re-examine the stories we modern humans tell about ourselves. In short, the balance of the future of new media studies lies in the return to the communicative past. The past at least has happened, while the future has not; and if we sometimes enjoy the imaginative character of prognostication, we need not forget that historical study enjoys the same plus ample (if incomplete) data. The historical record and continual rethinking of the path to the present await such a refreshed attitude – at once imaginative and cautious, literary and literal – of the new media historian.
Even in its flights of imagination, history is an engagement with, not an escape from, the present: we may note with Walter Benjamin how history reanimates the present as today’s version of the past. New media must be understood historically especially (and not even) if we are discussing the present. Historical study complicates prognostic arguments; the uncertainties of the past combine as a negative check against the future. Perhaps best thought of as a defensive maneuver, a strategy for defusing the powder kegs of prediction and a gauge of how little we know about ourselves, history cannot teach us to avoid past mistakes or to predict the future. It is not, as George Santayana said, that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. Rather those who do history well are condemned to admit its ambiguity.
The cautious case for new media history rests on a tension between the profound sense of ignorance to which all scholars must admit before the ever-incomplete record of fact, and the equal depth of insight found in the exercise of the human imagination. Of the many insights to which the past points, only one is certain: that history is an ever-renewable resource for discovering our own ignorance. Yet, as the epigraph suggests, the many gaps in the recording, transmission, translation and interpretation of the historical record provide the space necessary to re-examine the stories we modern humans tell about ourselves. In short, the balance of the future of new media studies lies in the return to the communicative past. The past at least has happened, while the future has not; and if we sometimes enjoy the imaginative character of prognostication, we need not forget that historical study enjoys the same plus ample (if incomplete) data. The historical record and continual rethinking of the path to the present await such a refreshed attitude – at once imaginative and cautious, literary and literal – of the new media historian.
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