Topic 20 of 42: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Sun, Nov 8, 1998 (10:49) |
Paul Terry Walhus (terry)
Dead Media Project started by Bruce Sterling. Read Bruces concept document
in response 1.
28 responses total.
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 1 of 28: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Sun, Nov 8, 1998 (10:53) * 194 lines
Bruce Sterling
bruces@well.sf.ca.us
The DEAD MEDIA Project: A Modest Proposal and a Public Appeal
by Bruce Sterling
Ever notice how many books there are about the Internet these days?
About 13,493 so far, right? And how about "multimedia?" There are 8,784
books on this topic, even though no one has ever successfully defined the
term. CD-ROM -- is there a single marketable topic left that hasn't been
shovelwared into the vast digital mire that is CD-ROM? And how about the
"Information Superhighway" and "Virtual Reality"? Every magazine on the
planet has done awestruck vaporware cover stories on these two consensus-
hallucinations.
Our culture is experiencing a profound radiation of new species of
media. The centralized, dinosaurian one-to-many media that roared and
trampled through the 20th century are poorly adapted to the postmodern
technological environment. The new media environment is aswarm with
lumbering toothy digital mammals. It's all lynxes here, and gophers there,
plus big fat venomous webcrawlers, appearing in Pleistocene profusion.
This is all well and good, and it's lovely that so many people are
paying attention to this. Nothing gives me greater pleasure as a
professional garage futurist than to ponder some weird new mutant medium
and
wonder how this squawking little monster is going to wriggle its way into
the interstices between human beings. Still, there's a difference between
this pleasurable contemplation of the technological sublime and an actual
coherent understanding of the life and death of media. We have no idea in
hell what we are doing to ourselves with these new media technologies, and
no consistent way even to discuss the subject. Something constructive
ought to be done about this situation.
I can't do much about it, personally, because I'm booked up to the
eyeballs until the end of the millennium. So is my good friend Richard
Kadrey, author of the COVERT CULTURE SOURCEBOOK. Both Kadrey and myself,
however, recently came to a joint understanding that what we'd really like
to see at this cultural conjunction is an entirely new kind of book on
media. A media book of the dead.
Plenty of wild wired promises are already being made for all the
infant media. What we need is a somber, thoughtful, thorough, hype-free,
even lugubrious book that honors the dead and resuscitates the spiritual
ancestors of today's mediated frenzy. A book to give its readership a
deeper, paleontological perspective right in the dizzy midst of the digital
revolution. We need a book about the failures of media, the collapses of
media, the supercessions of media, the strangulations of media, a book
detailing all the freakish and hideous media mistakes that we should know
enough now not to repeat, a book about media that have died on the barbed
wire of technological advance, media that didn't make it, martyred media,
dead media. THE HANDBOOK OF DEAD MEDIA. A naturalist's field guide for
the
communications paleontologist.
Neither Richard Kadrey nor myself are currently in any position to
write this proposed handbook. However, we both feel that our culture truly
requires this book: this rich, witty, insightful, profusely illustrated,
perfectbound, acid-free-paper coffee-table book, which is to be brought
out,
theoretically, eventually, by some really with-it, cutting-edge early-21st
century publisher. The kind of book that will appear in seventeen
different
sections of your local chainstore: Political Affairs, Postmodern Theory,
Computer Science, Popular Mechanics, Design Studies, the coffeetable
artbook
section, the remainder table -- you know, whatever.
It's a rather rare phenomenon for an established medium to die. If
media make it past their Golden Vaporware stage, they usually expand wildly
in their early days and then shrink back to some protective niche as they
are challenged by later and more highly evolved competitors. Radio didn't
kill newspapers, TV didn't kill radio or movies, video and cable didn't
kill
broadcast network TV; they just all jostled around seeking a more perfect
app.
But some media do, in fact, perish. Such as: the phenakistoscope.
The teleharmonium. The Edison wax cylinder. The stereopticon. The
Panorama. Early 20th century electric searchlight spectacles. Morton
Heilig's early virtual reality. Telefon Hirmondo. The various species of
magic lantern. The pneumatic transfer tubes that once riddled the
underground of Chicago. Was the Antikythera Device a medium? How about
the
Big Character Poster Democracy Wall in Peking in the early 80s?
Never heard of any of these? Well, that's the problem. Both
Kadrey and I happen to be vague aficionados of this field of study, and yet
we both suspect that there must be hundreds of dead media, known to few if
any. It would take the combined and formidable scholarly talents of, say,
Carolyn "When Old Technologies Were New" Marvin and Ricky "Learned Pigs and
Fireproof Women" Jay to do this ambitious project genuine justice. Though
we haven't asked, we kinda suspect that these two distinguished scholars
are
even busier than me and Kadrey, who, after all, are just science fiction
writers who spend most of our time watching Chinese videos, reading
fanzines
and making up weird crap.
However. We do have one, possibly crucial, advantage. We have
Internet access. If we can somehow convince the current digital media
community-at-large that DEAD MEDIA is a worthwhile project, we believe that
we may be able to compile a useful public-access net archive on this
subject. We plan to begin with the DEAD MEDIA World Wide Web Page, on a
site to-be-announced. Move on, perhaps, to alt.dead.media. Compile the
Dead Media FAQ. We hope to exploit the considerable strengths of today's
cutting-edge media to create a general public-domain homage to the media
pioneers of the past.
Here's the deal. Kadrey and I are going to start pooling our notes.
We're gonna make those notes freely available to anybody on the Net. If
we
can get enough net.parties to express interest and pitch in reports,
stories, and documentation about dead media, we're willing to take on the
hideous burdens of editing and system administration -- no small deal when
it comes to this supposedly "free" information.
We both know that authors are supposed to jealously guard really
swell ideas like this, but we strongly feel that that just ain't the way to
do a project of this sort. A project of this sort is a spiritual quest and
an act in the general community interest. Our net heritage belongs to all
netkind. If you yourself want to exploit these notes to write the DEAD
MEDIA HANDBOOK -- sure, it's our "idea," our "intellectual property," but
hey, we're cyberpunks, we write for magazines like BOING BOING, we can't be
bothered with that crap in this situation. Write the book. Use our notes
and everybody's else's. We won't sue you, we promise. Do it. Knock
yourself out.
I'll go farther, ladies and gentlemen. To prove the profound
commercial potential of this tilt at the windmill, I'll personally offer a
CRISP FIFTY-DOLLAR BILL for the first guy, gal, or combination thereof to
write and publish THE DEAD MEDIA HANDBOOK. You can even have the title if
you want it. Just keep in mind that me and Kadrey (or any combination
thereof) reserve the right to do a book of our own on the same topic if you
fail to sufficiently scratch our itch. The prospect of "competition"
frightens us not at all. It never has, frankly. If there's room for
19,785
"Guide to the Internet" books, there has got to be room for a few useful
tomes on dead media.
Think of it this way. How long will it be before the much-touted
World Wide Web interface is itself a dead medium? And what will become of
all those billions of thoughts, words, images and expressions poured onto
the Internet? Won't they vanish just like the vile lacquered smoke from a
burning pile of junked Victrolas? As a net.person, doesn't this stark
realization fill you with a certain deep misgiving, a peculiarly postmodern
remorse, an almost Heian Japanese sense of the pathos of lost things? If
it doesn't, why doesn't it? It ought to.
Speaking of dead media and mono no aware -- what about those little
poems that Lady Murasaki used to write and stick inside cleft sticks? To
be
carried by foot-messager to the bamboo-shrouded estate of some lucky
admirer
after a night's erotic tryst? That was a medium. That medium was very
alive once, a mainstay of one of the most artistically advanced cultures on
earth. And isn't it dead? What are we doing today that is the functional
equivalent of the cleft sticks of Murasaki Shikibu, the world's first
novelist? If we ignore her historical experience, how will we learn from
our own?
Listen to the following, all you digital hipsters. This is
Jaqueline Goddard speaking in January 1995. Jacqueline was born in 1911,
and she was one of the 20th century's great icons of bohemian femininity.
Man Ray photographed her in Paris in 1930, and if we can manage it without
being sued by the Juliet Man Ray Trust, we're gonna put brother Man Ray's
knock-you-down-and-stomp-you-gorgeous image of Jacqueline up on our
vaporware Website someday. She may be the patron saint of this effort.
Jacqueline testifies: "After a day of work, the artists wanted to
get away from their studios, and get away from what they were creating.
They all met in the cafes to argue about this and that, to discuss their
work, politics and philosophy.... We went to the bar of La Coupole. Bob,
the barman, was a terrible nice chap... As there was no telephone in those
days everybody used him to leave messages. At the Dome we also had a
little
place behind the door for messages. The telephone was the death of
Montparnasse."
"*The telephone was the death of Montparnasse.*" Mull that
Surrealist testimony over a little while, all you cafe-society modemites.
Jacqueline may not grok TCP/IP, but she has been there and done that. I
haven't stopped thinking about that remark since I first read it. For
whom
does the telephone bell toll? It tolls for me and thee -- sooner or later.
Can you help us? We wish you would, and think you ought to.
Bruce Sterling -- bruces@well.sf.ca.us
Richard Kadrey -- kadrey@well.sf.ca.us
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 2 of 28: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Sun, Nov 8, 1998 (10:53) * 154 lines
Dead Media Working Notes 00.5
Subject: Dead Personal Computers
Source: Historical Computer Society's "Historically Brewed" magazine
Historically Brewed: Our First Year, $14.95
editor David Greelish
Available from:
HCS Press, 1994
2962 Park Street #1
Jacksonville Florida 32205
The staggering speed of technological obsolescence in personal
computing makes this perhaps the single most challenging area in dead media
studies. The following list, garnered from several issues of "Historically
Brewed," a computer collectors' fanzine, does not even begin to count the
casualties. There is no pretense of accuracy or exhaustiveness here,
although this is the best list I've seen to date. These machines were
created for the American, British, and Japanese markets, with no mention at
all of, for instance, Soviet Bloc computers. Nor are there any listings
of
workstations, mainframes, dedicated game computers or arcade console
machines. The lacunae here are very obvious and I hope that knowledgeable
Dead Media Illuminati will help to close those gaps.
I was deeply disquieted to learn that the Historical Computer
Society has a sister group known as IACC which specializes in collecting
defunct calculators.
A further wrinkle suggests itself when one surmises that the true
"dead
medium" in dead computation is not dead platforms (such as those listed
here) but dead operating systems (for which I have no list at all).
An editorial note: The Dead Media Mailing List is now emanating from
fringeware.com, who were kind enough to offer us their services gratis.
The
Dead Media Mailing List is not an interactive list or discussion group.
That may come at some later time -- I welcome advice on the subject of a
possible "alt.dead.media." Currently this mailing list is solely a means
of distribution of edited articles and research minutiae. Only the most
sober, lugubrious, and scholarly commentary will pass the eagle eye of the
DMML editor, ie. bruces@well.com. Hopefully this will keep traffic down
to
the point where we can all actually get some work done.
Dead Personal Computers (the first draft):
Altair 8800
Amiga 500
Amiga 1000
Amstrad
Apple I, II, IIc, IIe, II+, IIgs, III
Apple Lisa
Apple Lisa MacXL
Apricot
Atari 400
Atari 800
Atari 520ST
Atari 1200XL
Basis 190
BBC Micro
Bondwell 2
Cambridge Z-88
Canon Cat
Columbia Portable
Commodore 128
Commodore C64
Commodore Vic-20
Commodore Plus 4
Commodore Pet
CompuPro "Big 16"
Cromemco Z-2D
Cromemco System 3
DOT Portable
Eagle II
Epson QX-10
Epson HX-20
Epson PX-8 Geneva
Exidy Sorcerer
Franklin Ace 500
Franklin Ace 1200
Gavilan
Grid Compass
Heath/Zenith
Hyperion
IBM PC 640K
IBM XT
IBM Portable
IBM PCjr
IMSAI 8080
Intertek Superbrain II
Ithaca Intersystems DPS-1
Kaypro 2x
Linus WriteTop
Mac 128, 512, 512KE
Mattel Aquarius
Micro-Professor MPF-II
Morrow MicroDecision 3
Morrow Portable
NEC PC-8081
NEC Starlet 8401-LS
NorthStar Advantage
NorthStar Horizon
Ohio Scientific
Oric
Osborne 1
Osborne Executive
Panasonic
Sanyo 1255
Sanyo PC 1250
Sinclair ZX-80
Sinclair ZX-81
Sol Model 20
Sony SMC-70
Spectravideo SV-328
SuperBrain II QD
Tandy 1000
Tandy 1000SL
Tandy Coco 1
Tandy Coco 2
Tandy Coco 3
Tano Dragon
TRS-80
TI 99/4
Timex/Sinclair 1000
Timex/Sinclair color computer
Vector 4
Victor 9000
Workslate
Xerox 820 II
Xerox Alto
Xerox Dorado
Xerox 1108
Yamaha CX5M
Possible sources of further insight:
A Collector's Guide to Personal Computers and Pocket Calculators
by Dr Thomas F Haddock $14.95
from: Books Americana, Inc
P O Box 2326
Florence, Alabama 35360
History of the Personal Computer
by Stan Veit $16.95
from: Historical Computer Society
2962 Park Street #1
Jacksonville, Florida 32205
Encyclopedia of Computer History
by Mark Greenia
Lexikon Publishing (??)
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 3 of 28: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Sun, Nov 8, 1998 (11:03) * 623 lines
Subject: Public Address on Dead Media Project
by Bruce Sterling
bruces@well.com
Literary Freeware: Not for Commercial Use
"The Life and Death of Media"
Speech at Sixth International Symposium on Electronic Art
ISEA '95
Montreal Sept 19 1995
Hello, my name's Bruce Sterling, I'm a science
fiction writer from Austin, Texas. It's very pleasant to
be here in Montreal at an event like ISEA. It's
professionally pleasant. As a science fiction writer, I
have a deep and abiding interest in electronic arts. In
multimedia. In computer networks. In CD-ROM. In virtual
reality. In the Internet. In the Information
Superhighway. In cyberspace. Basically, the less likely
it sounds, the better I like it.
These are topics that I dare not ignore. It would
mean ignoring the nervous system of the information
society. The laboratory of information science. The
battlefield of information warfare. The marketplace of
the information economy. As well as one of the strangest
areas of the art world.
When Jules Verne invented science fiction, Jules Verne
was a stockbroker. Almost by accident, Jules Verne
discovered that nineteenth century France had a large
market for techno-thrillers. Jules Verne discovered and
fed the tremendous 19th-century cultural appetite for
romantic, futuristic technologies like the hot-air-
balloon, the electric submarine, the airborne battleship,
the moon cannon.
Today, at the close of the twentieth century, I feel a
great sense of solidarity with my spiritual ancestor Jules
Verne when it comes to topics such as virtual reality, and
telepresence, and direct links between brain and computer.
Even as I stand here before you, I can scarcely restrain
my natural urge to inflate some of these big shiny high-
tech balloons with the hot air of the imagination.
But ladies and gentlemen, I have seen this done for so
long now, and for *so many times,* and to so many
different technologies, that I can no longer do it myself
with any sense of existential authenticity. I must
confess to you quite openly and frankly that I am having a
crisis of conscience.
In the year 1995, do information technologies really
*need* any more hot-breathing promotion from science
fiction writers? I would suggest otherwise. Take AT&T's
famous "You Will" campaign. AT&T's public relations
campaign has reached millions of people -- even though
AT&T have just announced plans to fire ten thousand of
their own computer people.
Have you ever wondered if AT&T has any real idea what
they're doing? Do you think that AT&T has any real idea
what they'll do to us, once they arrive in that future
that they are selling to us? Did you ever wonder what
AT&T really wants? You Will!
But at least AT&T makes nice looking science fiction
commercials with great set design. Let's consider Canada
Bell. Canada Bell is making an incredibly arrogant
attempt to trademark the term "The Net" -- a term which
has been common parlance worldwide since at least 1988.
Canada Bell should be sued for that kind of hubris, and
in fact they *are* being sued, or at least opposed in
court.
Symptoms like this make it clear that the good old
techno-booster role of science fiction writers has been
taken over by a new professional class of public relations
hucksters and intellectual property attorneys. Science
fiction writers are no longer needed to serve as
handmaidens for these blundering colossi.
Nowadays, science fiction writers should fulfill
another role. Science fiction writers should be examining
aspects of media that cannot be promoted and sold.
Aspects of media that corporate public relations people
are *afraid to look at* and deeply afraid to tell us
about. We should be attempting to achieve a coherent
understanding of media.
I'm not saying, mind you, that we're actually going to
do this fine and noble thing. I'm merely saying that's
what's needed. Given that tremendous challenge, science
fiction writing is a rather meager response at best. At
our best, maybe we science fiction writers can act as
harbingers or catalysts, but what is really needed at this
historical juncture is a serious general global assessment
of our technosocial condition. Before we install the
latest hot-off-the-disk-drive version of Windows For
Civilization 2.0, we ought to look around ourselves very
seriously. Probably, before leaping in postmodern
ecstasy into the black hole of virtuality, we ought to
make and store some back-ups of the system first. Our
society would do this if we had a momentary attack of
common sense. But never mind, that's just a passing
suggestion.
Rather than dwelling on that, let me tell you how I
reached this artistic crisis of mine. Two months ago, I
finished a new science fiction novel. It's a novel about
virtual reality artists in Europe in the late twenty-first
century. I think people in today's digital art community
will recognize this novel as my little valentine for them.
This is a novel set a hundred years from today, in which I
pretend that digital arts people like the people from ISEA
have become the planet's art establishment. I know this
is a very far-fetched notion, but you can get away with
that sort of thing in science fiction novels.
The novel was a lot of fun to write. I thought it was
very inventive and clever and it left me absurdly pleased
with myself. Unfortunately, I got to thinking seriously
about digital art while I was writing this book, and this
forced me confront some of my own limits.
I'm not thinking hard enough about media. The
approaches I have been using are too shallow, too
glittery, too facile. I have to get a better grip.
Media is a commodity. Media is something that is sold
to us. Media can be something that we are sold to, even.
Media is an everyday thing. You can buy bandwidth in job
lots. You can watch television, buy books, videos,
records, CDs, but that's not it. That's not what's
interesting.
Media is an extension of the senses.
Media is a mode of consciousness.
Media is extra-somatic memory. It's a crystallization
of human thought that survives the death of the
individual.
Media generates simulacra. The mechanical
reproduction of images is media.
Media is a means of social interaction.
Media is a means of command and control.
Media is statistics, knowledge that is gathered and
generated by the state. Media is economics, transactions,
records, contracts, money and the records of money.
Media is the means of civil society and public
opinion. Media is a means of debate and decision and
agitpropaganda.
None of these are a full working definition of the
term "media," but they are a list of the qualities of this
phenomenon that I find really relevant and compelling.
To treat this matter seriously, I need a far better
understanding than I have. We're getting in really deep
now, ladies and gentlemen; we can't trifle with this thing
any more. As a society, we have bet the farm on the
digital imperative. I need to speculate from new
principles and new assumptions. I want a new synthesis, I
want to really know and understand how media live and die.
Maybe I'll get my heartfelt little wish, and maybe I
won't. But now I want to tell you how I plan to go about
attempting this.
First, I want to destroy the Whig version of
technological history. In the Whig version of history,
all events in the past have benevolently conspired to
produce the crown of creation, ourselves. In the Whig
version of media history, all technological developments
have marched in progressive lockstep, from height to
height, to produce the current exalted media landscape.
This is a very simple story. It's convenient and it
flatters our self-esteem. It's very cheering to
supporters of the media status quo (if there are any
supporters left, or even any status quo left), but it can
be proven untrue.
It can be proven untrue by disinterring and dissecting
dead media. One understands evolution by studying the
fossil record. The arcane, the offbeat, the forgotten.
The failures, the lost and the buried, the media-maudit.
The dead precursors of later successes. Some forms of
media are rendered obsolescent, but others are murdered.
Some innovations are pushed very hard by clever and
powerful people with lots of money, and yet they still
fail. I find that aspect particularly interesting.
I'm not alone in my interest in this topic. My
friend and colleague Richard Kadrey is also a science
fiction writer, and together we have launched an effort
called the Dead Media Project. We're using the Internet
to bring people together to catalog and study extinct
forms of human communication. We're in the media autopsy
business. We're into media forensics.
At the moment our scholarly efforts are very modest.
We are currently engaged in a simple roll-call of the
dead -- disinterring and listing dead media.
My interest in dead media doesn't mean I've lost
interest in forms of media that are struggling to be born.
I spend a lot of time on the Internet these days. For
instance, I made an entire book of mine available on the
Internet -- a book called THE HACKER CRACKDOWN. In the
past, I've used the Internet as a vanity press -- to
publish and spread articles and speeches and critique.
The Dead Media Project is my attempt to involve the
Internet community in a new and different aspect of book
production -- the beginning of a book, the raw research,
the conceptual stages. This time I want the public in
on the book *before I've written it.*
In fact, I don't even *want* to write this book -- The
Dead Media Handbook, a field guide for the communications
paleontologist. Someone else should write this book,
quite possibly someone in this audience. I don't
particularly want to create it -- I just want to read it,
absorb its useful lessons, and then go on to my normal
business, which is writing science fiction novels.
I believe that the DEAD MEDIA HANDBOOK will in
fact be written, even if I have to break down and actually
write it myself. But there will be a price to be paid
for the production of this book, and that price will be
the necessity of abandoning intellectual property.
I think this is a fine idea for a book, but rather
than hiding it, I plan to publicize it widely. It's not
a trade secret; I don't care how many people know I'm
working on it. I have nothing to gain by poring over
this in secrecy. All the notes and research in the Dead
Media Project will be available to anyone who joins the
research effort. It will be a public-domain source of
knowledge contributed by independent scholars working pro
bono. This information will be free.
If this scheme works, it will work in the way the
Internet works: through prestige, netiquette and acts of
intellectual generosity. I think that books can and even
should be constructed in the same way that the Internet is
constructed. I'm going to give it a try.
I know that many people are working in media studies
from a variety of different scholarly approaches, and I
respect those efforts. I plan to spend a lot of time
reading a lot more of them. But they're not yet
scratching my visionary itch. I don't think that
overarching syntheses or ideological summations are in
order yet -- I think what is needed now is *fieldwork.*
Commentaries, coming in from all corners of the compass,
from all over the world, via modem. Maybe the central
mystery of media can be paste-bombed into submission --
nibbled to death bit by bit.
I strongly suspect that people of your backgrounds
and accomplishments can help me in this project, so I'm
frankly begging you to help me.
The Dead Media Project has only been public for about
a month and a half, but I want to share with you some of
my preliminary discoveries. I rather suspect that they
may have some modest relevance for people in ISEA.
Let's consider cinema. Cinema is not a dead medium --
cinema is a hundred years old, and obviously alive, and
more or less well. At least, it's still generating plenty
of revenue in those squinchy little multiplex theaters.
But cinema killed quite a few other media. The magic
lantern, the phenakistiscope, the phantasmagoria, the
praxinoscope, the zoetrope, the mutoscope, the fantascope.
If you look closely at the evolution of cinema you can see
that cinema is not a monolith, it's a radiation of
species. E J Marey's "chambre chronophotographique." The
Edison kinetoscope. Anschutz's tachyscope. The
vitagraph, the cinematographe, the theatrograph, the
animatograph, the Urbanora.
Cinema as a medium did not make a sudden triumphant
leap from silent movies to sound. People were attempting
to jam sound into cinema from almost the beginning. We
remember the much-publicized triumphs like THE JAZZ
SINGER, but we have been taught to disregard the numerous
experiments that died on the barbed wire of technological
advance. The Edison kinetophone. Gaumont's Chronophone.
The synchronoscope. The movietone. Phonofilm. The
graphophonoscope. The vitaphone.
These mutant forms of talking and singing cinema
weren't ignored because they failed to work. In a lot of
cases they worked just fine. Nobody who invented these
devices ever set out to build a failure. The truly failed
experiments never even made it out of the lab. These
dead species of cinema were always imagined and proclaimed
to be the cutting edge, the state of the art, and they
were generally unveiled in a state of wild enthusiasm and
a furious drumbeat from the press. They died because of
contingency, not destiny.
Take Gaumont's Chronophone, for instance. The name
sounds rather arcane and silly, but that is not a
technical judgement. Cinevision, Cinerama, Odorama --
do these names really sound any less silly? How about
Apple QuickTime, or CU-SeeMe, or Yahoo? But hey, those
can't be silly -- those are modern! "I hope you're not
trying to suggest that someday people will laugh at *us.*
Hey man, we're cyberculture -- we'll never be obsolete."
Some media shed a few dead species, but the genus goes
on living. Other media are murdered.
Have you ever heard of the quipu of preColumbian Peru?
If you have, it's a minor miracle. The archives of
Incan quipu were burned by the Spanish conquerors, after
the Council of Lima in the year 1583. There are about
400 authentic quipus left in the entire world. Every
last one of the quipus we possess nowadays was dug out of
a human grave.
Well, not quite every last one. I happen to have a
brand-new quipu here in my pocket. I was doing quite a
bit of reading about quipu, so I decided I'd make one.
The word quipu means 'account' in the Quechua
language, so the quipu was basically a kind of accounting
device and calculator. This is a fabric network to carry
data. This was the only recording medium that the Incas
had. It served all the recording functions of their
society.
No one today seems to have any real idea how these
quipu worked. They all looked more or less like this one
-- they had a thick fabric backbone, with a series of
dependent fringes. But the fringes could also have
fringes. Sometimes there were as many as six
subdirectories coming off the backbone of the network.
They had a variety of different knots. They had quite a
wide variety of colors. People have only the vaguest
ideas what the colors may have signified.
This is a very small quipu. The largest remaining
quipu weighs about forty pounds and has well over two
thousand dependent cords. No one has any idea what this
device signifies or what message it carries. It was
buried with a Peruvian gentleman who was modestly well to
do, but he doesn't appear to have been particularly
prominent.
The Incas had no idea that the planet harbored any
civilization other than their own. As far as they were
concerned, these quipu were the absolute apex of human
intellectual accomplishment. And one must admit they
have a lot to offer. They're very light -- wool and
cotton -- they're portable and durable. Crush-proof. No
problem with power surges or headcrashes. A good thing
they were portable too, because one of their primary
functions was the census.
It appears that everyone without exception in the Inca
realm existed as a knot in a quipu somewhere. The Incas
were great masters of ethnic cleansing. They thought
nothing of ordering thousands of people out of their homes
to distant realms as pioneers and settlers. Everyone
simply loaded all their possessions onto their backs and
left immediately. Thanks to the quipu, there was simply
no way they would ever be missed by the authorities.
The Inca economic system was a centralized command
economy. A third of the nation's economic output was
stored in vast ranks of stone cells. Everything down to
the last sandal was recorded on quipu.
I don't think there was ever an alphabet in quipu. I
don't think that the Inca were literate in that fashion,
because their empire was only a hundred years old. There
was nothing to pronounce that you could find on a piece of
string. But there may have been geneologies in string --
hierarchies, maybe family trees. Maps, even -- three
days' journey, they forded a blue river, they fought a red
battle -- you can imagine how usefully suggestive this
might have been. Maybe you could attack language even
more directly with a quipu: meter, stress, quantity,
pitch, length of the poem -- why should this be hard to
believe? In English we sometimes call telling a story
"spinning a yarn."
These Incas were fine textile makers. They had a lot
of wool and cotton. The government made them grow it, and
their women spun yarn every day of their lives. When a
quipucamayoc read one of these recording devices, I don't
think his lips moved. There was nothing crude or halting
or primitive or painful about the experience -- a quipu is
certainly a more tactile and sensual and three-
dimensional experience than a book.
The quipu was a medium. It was a way to cast the
world into an entire new form of order. It was a medium
invented by and for a very careful and methodical people,
people who liked to fit huge boulders together so snugly
that you couldn't slip a knife-blade between them. For
the Incas, this was the Net -- a net that caught their
population in a sieve that dominated the whole material
world, a sieve that no one could escape.
You know, in today's ultramediated world, I think it's
quite a good idea to go into a quiet room with a quipu.
Go to a room and shut off the electricity. Don't look at
the quipu with scorn or condescension. Just hold it in
your hands and try to pretend that this the only possible
abstract relationship, besides speech, that you have with
the world. Really try to imagine what you are *missing*
by not comprehending all economics, all governmental
business, all nonverbal communication, as a network of
colored yarn. Think of this as a discipline, as an act
of imaginative concentration, as a human engagement with a
profoundly alien media alternative.
It's truly pitiful how little is known or remembered
about the quipu, a dead medium which was once the nervous
system of a major civilization. And yet that is by no
means the only form of knot record. There's the
Tlascaltec nepohualtzitzin, the Okinawan warazan, the
Bolivian chimpu. Samoan, Egyptian, Hawaiian, Tibetan,
Bengali, Formosan knot records. So far, I know almost
nothing about these beyond their names. I'd like to
learn more. If I learn more and you're on my list, I'll
tell you about it.
Before I began the Dead Media Project I had no idea
that native North American wampum could be historical
records. I always thought that wampum were a kind of
currency. Maybe, like the quipu, wampum were both
currency and record at the same time. Imagine if *our*
currency were a medium. Maybe our currency *should* be a
medium. If you're an experimental media artist, why don't
you start writing poetry on twenty-dollar bills and see
what happens? Maybe you should just write the address of
your favorite web site on money, and see what happens then
as the bill travels from hand to hand. Peculiar notion,
isn't it -- communicating *with* money? Maybe we've just
been *trained* to find that notion peculiar.
I'm eager to learn more about wampum. I hope someone
can tell me about them, and share that information with
likeminded people. My email address is bruces@well.com.
That's bruces, with an s at the end. Go ahead and write
me, don't be shy. We're all in this together -- our net
heritage belongs to all netkind! We can distribute all
the data we like nowadays, there's nothing stopping us
except for the RCMP, the FBI, the SPA and the Church of
Scientology. Maybe these DISKS will help you! (((begins
flinging Dead Media Project floppy disks into the
audience))).
These are just harmless text files, ladies and
gentlemen. Probably Virus Free! I use electronic text
these days, because the typewriter is dying now.
In the early days of typewriters, what wonderful names
they had: Xavier Progin's "Machine Kryptographique"
(1833), Guiseppe Ravizza's "Cembalo-Scrivano" (1837),
Charles Thurber's "Chirographer" (1843), J B. Fairbanks'
"Phonetic Writer and Calico Printer," and so forth. A
minor horde of typing machines, many of them scarcely
recognizable as such to the modern eye. Soon they'll all
be gone. Swept away by the computer.
The computer. Its tide is so inexorable. Its power
is so immense. Its triumph is so complete. What do we
mean exactly when we say: "I've modernized. I own a
computer"? Are we really in possession of a machine less
mortal than Guiseppe Ravizza's Cembalo-Scrivano?
This computer is a Macintosh Powerbook 180. An
impressive machine, isn't it? I dote on it, personally.
I admire that name -- PowerBook. It says a lot about the
kind of rhetoric our culture cherishes in the 1990s. The
name "PowerBook" somehow suggests that this device can
*last* as long as a book, though even the cheapest
paperback will outlive this machine quite easily.
PowerBook is a good name, but not a really pretty
name. Personal computers have had much prettier names.
Like the Intertek Superbrain II. It must have been
extremely difficult not to buy an Intertek Superbrain II,
even though that machine is absolutely as dead as mutton.
Forgive me while I indulge in a brief sentimental
roll-call of vanished glories. The vast and every-
growing legion of dead personal computers. The Altair
8800. The Amstrad. The Apple Lisa. The Apricot. The
Canon Cat. The CompuPro "Big 16." The Exidy Sorcerer.
How can a sorcerer end up dead on the junkheap? That's
not supposed to happen, we're not even supposed to
*think* about that. A computer is a sorcerer with a
superbrain, it's not supposed to be lying in a landfill
with great-grandma's victrola. The Hyperion, the Mattel
Aquarius. The NorthStar Horizon and the Osborne
Executive. The Xerox Alto and the Yamaha CX5M.
But wait! There's more! Dead mainframes! Dozens
and dozens of fantastically complex and expensive dead
mainframes. Dead supercomputers. Dead operating systems.
We all know that yesterday's operating systems are far
inferior to today's Windows 95. Windows 95 is an
operating system which is refreshingly honest, because it
has an expiration date written right on it. We know that
operating systems are of absolutely critical importance in
computing, but how often do we honestly recognize that?
Suppose you compose an electronic artwork for an
operating system that subsequently dies. It doesn't
matter how much creative effort you invested it that
program. It does not matter how cleverly you wrote the
code. The number of manhours invested is of no relevance.
Your artistic theories and your sense of conviction are
profoundly beside the point. If you chose to include a
political message, that message will never again reach a
human ear. Your chance to influence the artists who come
after you is reduced drastically, almost to nil. You
are inside a dead operating system. Unless someone
deliberately translates you into a new one -- with heaven
only knows what liberties of translation -- you are nailed
and sealed inside a glamorous sarcophagus. You have
become dead media. Almost as dead as the quipu.
This is, of course, the dirty little secret of the
electronics industry, and therefore it is the mark of Cain
for electronic art. When we are surfing the web in 1995,
we are surfing on a vast dark sea of dead computers. We
have to surf, you see -- because we are just a white scrim
of foam up on the surface. The waves of machines rolling
in beneath us are moving in with the hideous
relentlessness of Moore's Law, doubling in power every
eighteen months, one order of magnitude a decade. If you
are working on a cutting-edge computer today you are
working on one percent of the cutting-edge computer you
will have twenty years from now.
And beyond that -- the awe-inspiring prospect of
teraflops, gigaflops, petaflops. Here's the latest issue
of SCIENCE magazine (((Vol 269, 8 Sept 1995, p 1363))),
with a truly hair-raising article called "Computer
Scientists Re-Think Their Discipline's Foundations." I
recommend this article highly. This isn't something I
made up, mind you -- this is stuff that people at
Princeton and Argonne National Laboratory are making up.
Quantum Dot computers, ten thousand times faster that
today's fastest microchips. Optical computers, one
hundred thousand times faster. Holographic data storage,
one hundred thousand times faster.
Sometimes you think that computation has to slow down
-- that it has to bureaucratize -- become more like a
normal industry. But then you're confronted with yet
another awesome vista of absolute possibility!
You see ladies and gentleman, we live in the Golden
Age of Dead Media. What we brightly call "multimedia"
provides an a whole galaxy of mutant recombinant media,
most of them with the working lifespan of a pack of
Twinkies. Mastering a typical CD-ROM is like mastering an
entire new medium by using a frozen watch-cursor. And
then the machine dies. And then the operating system
dies. And then the computer language supporting that
operating system because as dead as the Hittite language.
And in the meantime, our entire culture has been sucked
into the black hole of computation, an utterly frenetic
process of virtual planned obsolescence.
But you know -- that process needn't be unexamined or
frenetic. We can examine that process whenever we like,
and the frantic pace is entirely our own fault. What's
our big hurry anyway? When you look at it from another
angle, there's an unexpected delicious thrill in the
thought that individual human beings can now survive
whole generations of media. It's like outliving the
Soviet Union once every week! That was never possible
before, but for us, that is media reality.
It puts machines into a category where machines
probably properly belong -- colorful, buzzing, cuddly
things with the lifespan of hamsters. This PowerBook has
the lifespan of a hamster. Exactly how attached can I
become to this machine? Just how much of an emotional
investment can I make in my beloved three thousand dollar
hamster?
I suspect that the proper attitude -- one that more
and more people will share in the coming millennium -- is
a kind of Olympian pity. We are as gods to our mere
mortal media -- we kill them for our sport.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me implore your pity and
understanding for dead media. If you're really
electronic frontier people, then in all justice, you ought
to eat what you are killing. Let's try to see the
greater sense of tragedy and majesty in this whirlwind
we're creating. Perhaps this realization will free us
from the hypnotism of our own PR. I dare not suggest that
it will make us better artists -- but at least it may help
establish where we are and what is coming. Somehow, it
might help us survive. It might even help us prevail.
You've been very kind to hear me out for so long.
Thanks very much for listening.
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 4 of 28: wer (KitchenManager) * Sat, Jan 23, 1999 (00:01) * 1 lines
any new info on this yet, Terry?
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 5 of 28: Alexander Schuth (aschuth) * Fri, Mar 12, 1999 (10:37) * 1 lines
Terry, I think this topic would maybe fare better in a more technological or scientific conference. It's more retro-geekism that would be attracted to this, rather than publishing folks or journos, I think. Could you post it up there, too?
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 6 of 28: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Fri, Mar 12, 1999 (15:58) * 3 lines
We could link it to techbusiness, or web, or internet. Hmmm, what
conference am I in now?
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 7 of 28: Stacey Vura (stacey) * Fri, Mar 12, 1999 (16:35) * 1 lines
making ya dizzy ain't it!
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 8 of 28: Alexander Schuth (aschuth) * Sat, Mar 13, 1999 (09:08) * 2 lines
Uh, yeah, that's what made me think of a more tech-, culture- or science-oriented conference. It's more any of these three than media as in publishing and the like.
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 9 of 28: wer (KitchenManager) * Sat, Mar 13, 1999 (10:29) * 1 lines
or maybe collecting?
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 10 of 28: Alexander Schuth (aschuth) * Tue, Mar 16, 1999 (08:00) * 13 lines
Wer, you are of course right (as usual, I must admit), e.g. is my interest in old audio technology (among others) nicely complemented by Bruce Sterling's Dead Media project.
But if you collect things like Super 8-movies or 78s or reel-to-reel magnet tapes, and play them, how dead are they? This discussion has been already tackled by better men than me, so let's give it some deserved rest.
The most important aspects of this projects are in my mind the credit past ingeniosity gets (amazing results with limited means, etc.), a basic understanding of how most technologies don't just suddenly pop up as in "Here I am! I'm cool! I'm new! Use me!", rather they often start their live cycles on the wreckage of former concepts, to either develop or subsitute existing concepts.
Today, we computer-interested people are frustrated by severe limitations in compatibilities, in part caused by extensive use of proprietary standards. But this is no news at all - just examine the competition between the wax cylinders Edison marketed and the grammophone discs by Berliner. In 1890 (and up into the 1920ies), if you had an Edison (or perhaps license) Phonograph, you could not play any black, flat, round disc with grooves. You're choice of music was limited to the stuff Edison marketed (an
supposedly he didn't have that hot a taste in music... especially after he was deaf...).
And if you had a grammophone, you couldn't play every flat, round black thing, either. While most spun outside-in, some spun inside-out (e.g. products from Pathé, France), and while all these had grooves with horizontal markings, there were also some with vertikal marks in the grooves. AND ALL THESE DIFFERENT STANDARDS REQUIRED DIFFERENT HARDWARE!
The same thing happened in late 40ies, when 45 and 33 rpm speeds were introduced by competing companies, whoses respective record players would only play their medium (plus maybe - after switching the needle - the old "standard" 78 rpm). If you had a 45 player - sorry, no LPs for you. If you had an LP player, you couldn't buy the much cheaper 7'' Singles on 45 rpm.
Terry and I have this problem right now, again. We agreed on a medium, a VHS tape. Nice. Just I deliver PAL format, and he needs NTSC, so we need a workaround (who lives in Tennessee).
This all virtually reeks of TECH or SCIENCE, SOCIETY, CULTURE, because of the historical/ cultural/ sociological aspects involved (e.g. 78s were in the US longer made by musicians with strong following in the southern states, the same it was 40 before that with wax cylinders, which could still be sold in the south after the northern market had vanished).
Therefore I hereby once more request: put this thing up in respective conferences, too. Please.
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 11 of 28: wer (KitchenManager) * Wed, Mar 17, 1999 (23:39) * 1 lines
would fit in a history conference, too...
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 12 of 28: Alexander Schuth (aschuth) * Thu, Mar 18, 1999 (10:27) * 3 lines
Just what i say, just what I say (and I know I repeat myself on this one)! ;=}
But then, we do not have a dedicated historical Conference yet, do we? There are some topics, like medieval, but no history conference (which would, in turn, intersect with society and culture at least).
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 13 of 28: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Thu, Mar 18, 1999 (11:14) * 2 lines
A history conf would be cool, any history buffs here?
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 14 of 28: Alexander Schuth (aschuth) * Thu, Mar 18, 1999 (11:34) * 1 lines
Depends on what's history for ya, mate! If learning from past mistakes counts, don't count on me. If knowing about mistakes qualifies, you might know somebody.
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 15 of 28: wer (KitchenManager) * Fri, Apr 9, 1999 (00:12) * 8 lines
'tis linked up in cultures now, Alexander...
and earlier you asked,
"But if you collect things like Super 8-movies or 78s or reel-to-reel
magnet tapes, and play them, how dead are they?"
they are as dead as their usage and their production, IMHO
(I know, you said let it rest but...)
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 16 of 28: Alexander Schuth (aschuth) * Fri, Apr 9, 1999 (06:14) * 7 lines
Well, Werby, ask Terry to switch yer batteries, and dig this:
SUPER8 AIN'T DEAD! It's just expensive... ;=}
Honestly, I just filmed my trip to Hamburg and Flensburg in Super8, as the films are still available (by Kodak, 15 meters/approx. 3 minutes). And! We enjoy inviting folks over to watch our or their old family home movies or the occasional real movie, like Invanhoe cut together to fit on an 18 minute-reel. Also, we enjoy Kung Fu-Movies a lot, I own several reels of vintage Bruce Lee-stuff.
Thanks for linking this to the Cultures conference!
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 17 of 28: Alexander Schuth (aschuth) * Fri, Apr 9, 1999 (06:22) * 6 lines
Dear Dead Media-appreciator, you might also enjoy visiting this topic here:
http://tvnight.org/yapp-bin/restricted/respond/collecting/24 .
It's the *Films and Movies (Super8, 16mm, 32mm, video)* topic in the Collecting conference.
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 18 of 28: wer (KitchenManager) * Sat, Apr 10, 1999 (00:13) * 1 lines
yes, yes it is
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 19 of 28: Marcia (MarciaH) * Mon, Feb 21, 2000 (23:31) * 1 lines
Wonder whatever happened the the Stereo Realist Terry has? Probably has not had time to fool with it lately. I am curious, though...
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 20 of 28: Marcia (MarciaH) * Mon, Feb 21, 2000 (23:33) * 1 lines
as for the history conference, of which I believe Alexander is the only current active host, he does not go in there. I seem to rattle around in there posting like a dried pea in a referee's whistle. Oh well, I do that a lot of places...
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 21 of 28: terry (sprin5) * Tue, Feb 22, 2000 (09:51) * 1 lines
Haven't done much with it, I'm doing more with digital photography and still digital and video these days. I'll be posting some stuff soon.
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 22 of 28: Marcia (MarciaH) * Tue, Feb 22, 2000 (10:52) * 1 lines
Oooh! I can't wait *grin*
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 23 of 28: FX MasterMind (fxmastermind) * Mon, Jun 4, 2001 (16:53) * 1 lines
Well?
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 24 of 28: Marcia (MarciaH) * Mon, Jun 4, 2001 (17:28) * 1 lines
I was wondering that, myself. I have some I took the other night - a gorgoeus sunset while we waited for it to get dark enough to see the lava pouring down the cliffs.
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 25 of 28: Alexx Alex (Alexx) * Sat, Apr 26, 2003 (01:51) * 7 lines
For the record, Super-8 filmmaking lives again!
If you would like to know more, please visit my Super-8 forum.
http://www.hostboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum&f=405
-Alexx
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 26 of 28: Culcha (terry) * Sat, Apr 26, 2003 (08:23) * 1 lines
What do you use for editing with your Super 8 setup?
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 27 of 28: Marcia (MarciaH) * Tue, Apr 20, 2004 (15:25) * 1 lines
is Super 8 still widely available?
Topic 20 of 42 [cultures]: dead media project of Bruce Sterling
Response 28 of 28: Culcha (terry) * Tue, Apr 20, 2004 (22:07) * 3 lines
Not too much. At least I don't hear about it much.
Same with 8 mm.
cultures conference 
Main Menu