CS100 Lecture 5: Dec 5
Final exam: monday december 19th at the athletic centre 2 hrs 830 am
Few short answer
One essay
● Communication media/people/inventors for short answer
● Essay will include whole course
Summary of Media History
● Starts with development of cuneiform, hieroglyphs, eventually alphabet
● Early readings showed specificity of medium (clay comes out of fertile crescent,
properties of clay are important → heavy)
● Rosetta Stone 196 BCE → solved meaning of egyptian hieroglyphs
● Innis → thought gained lightness (stone-papyrus), thought became mobile
● Innis foreshadows other readings speaking of medium specificity (can/can’t do certain
things)
● Moved into roman empire and development of alphabet, transformative potential of
abstract, sort of universal language
● Parchment in common use by 200BCE from domestic animal skin, could make a codex
(books) used in europe up to 1500, records could be compiled
● Despite books and alphabet, still largely oral culture, literacy restricted to wealthy =
control over communication
● 1400s key turning point → Gutenberg, printing press and moveable type, potential of
alphabet realized, challenge of control over communication, largely controlled by church
● Printing press and protestant reformation challenges this control → more democratized
● Printing of text in vernacular (language of community), helps communicate message and
develop literacy rates
● Eisenstein and the rise of the reading public, leads to more individualistic societies
● Development of periodical press (free press), gradual movement away from
communication control by state or church
● Modernism, many communication technologies develop simultaneously
● Telegraphs, expansion to the West, 18 and 1900s, lays foundation for communication
network
● Carey: economic impacts, decontextualized markets, representation, standardization
● At this same time, new working class, development of suburbs, commuter population
● Development of news → entertainment vs information
● Same time, development of photography and thus film begins
● Daguerreotype 1839 leads to many portraits… mass reproduction of images
● New forms of news reporting
● Each technology promises higher level immediacy than one before it
● People experimenting with freezing time experiment with reanimating it → cinema
● Lumiere cinematographe
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Final exam: monday december 19th at the athletic centre 2 hrs 830 am. Starts with development of cuneiform, hieroglyphs, eventually alphabet. Early readings showed specificity of medium (clay comes out of fertile crescent, properties of clay are important heavy) Rosetta stone 196 bce solved meaning of egyptian hieroglyphs. Innis thought gained lightness (stone-papyrus), thought became mobile. Innis foreshadows other readings speaking of medium specificity (can/can"t do certain things) Moved into roman empire and development of alphabet, transformative potential of abstract, sort of universal language. Parchment in common use by 200bce from domestic animal skin, could make a codex (books) used in europe up to 1500, records could be compiled. Despite books and alphabet, still largely oral culture, literacy restricted to wealthy = control over communication. 1400s key turning point gutenberg, printing press and moveable type, potential of alphabet realized, challenge of control over communication, largely controlled by church. Printing press and protestant reformation challenges this control more democratized.
