Copy Machine as a mediating technology of organization

2019 ◽  
pp. 171-190
Author(s):  
Monika Dommann
Keyword(s):  
Business Education ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
State Administration ◽  
Letterpress Printing ◽  
History Of ◽  
Media Change ◽  
Hans Magnus Enzensberger

At the margins of media and organization studies, the copy machine has occasionally appeared as an agent of media change in various forms: as technology of empowerment, as technology of control, as alternative technology to letterpress printing, and as transitional technology leading to the computer. This chapter discusses first how Marshall McLuhan, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, James R. Beniger, Jean Baudrillard, and Lisa Gitelman contributed to a media theory of the copy machine. Based on historical documents, it then analyses the history of the development of the copy machine and its uses in libraries, administration, business, education, and social movements. While photocopiers in libraries undermined the authors’ copyrights privileges, those in state administration challenged the internal power structures in bureaucracy.

Antarctica and Siegfried Kracauer’s Extraterrestrial Film Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Fay
Keyword(s):  
Film Theory ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Human History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Purpose

`Siegfried Kracauer’s film and photographic theory along with cinematic records of early Antarctic exploration explain how this utterly inhospitable continent (Antarctica) and this media theory advance an alternative and denaturalized history of the present. Cinema has the capacity to reveal an earth outside of human feeling and utility without sacrificing the particularity that gets lost in scientific abstraction. And Antarctica, for so long outside of human history altogether, simply numbs feeling and refuses to yield to human purpose. It is also a continent on which celluloid encounters its signifying limits. Kracauer, this chapter argues, helps us to imagine an estranged and selfless relationship to an inhospitable or even posthospitable earth that may not accommodate us.

scholarly journals Getting a Foot in the Door: Small-Firm Credit and Interest Group Politics in the Netherlands, 1900–1927

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
RUBEN PEETERS
Keyword(s):  
Small Firm ◽  
Small Firms ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Access To Credit ◽  
Financial Infrastructure ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interest Group Politics ◽  
Group Politics ◽  
The Government

This article explores the link between the history of small-firm associations and the development of Dutch financial infrastructure geared toward small firms. In particular, it tests Verdier’s thesis about the origins of state banking using an in-depth case study of the Dutch small-firm movement. This article shows that Dutch small-firm associations did not simply became politically relevant and use their power to lobby for state banking, but rather used the topic of insufficient access to credit to rally support, mobilize members, and obtain subsidies from the government. During this associational process, they had to navigate local contexts and power structures that, in turn, also shaped the financial system. State banking was initially not demanded by small firms, but arose as the result of failed experiments with subsidized banking infrastructure and a changing position of the government on how to intervene in the economy.

Secret Police Networks in the Soviet Zone of Occupation in Germany

2020 ◽  
pp. 118-150
Author(s):  
Molly Pucci
Keyword(s):  
Legal Authority ◽  
Secret Police ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
Eastern Germany ◽  
Background Checks ◽  
State Administration ◽  
History Of ◽  
East German ◽  
Porous Boundaries

This chapter enters the Soviet Zone of Occupation in eastern Germany, where the first East German political police, K5, was formed to assist the Soviet occupiers in carrying out denazification investigations and conduct background checks on members of the new state administration. It provides a brief history of the Soviet security forces active in the Zone at the time, including the NKVD, headed by General Ivan Serov, and the NKGB, headed by Viktor Abakumov. It explores the context of occupation, denazification, and terror in which East German police officials were trained under these Soviet security authorities and the porous boundaries between Soviet and German legal authority in the Zone.

scholarly journals The Theology of Sound: A Critique of Orality

2011 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Sterne
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
Walter Ong ◽  
History Of

ABSTRACT  This article offers an intellectual history and critique of the concept of orality as developed by writers of the Toronto School, focusing especially on the work of Walter Ong and, to a lesser extent, Marshall McLuhan. It argues that common scholarly uses of orality, especially as a theory of acoustic or sound-based culture, are derived from the spirit-letter distinction in Christian spiritualism and a misreading of Hebraic philology by mid-twentieth-century theologians. It argues for a new history of early media and for a new global anthropology of communication that does not operate under the sign of orality. We can thereby honour the curiosity of scholars such as Harold Innis and Edmund Carpenter without taking their findings as timeless truths.RÉSUMÉ  Cet article offre une histoire intellectuelle et critique du concept d’oralité tel que  développé par des auteurs de l’École de Toronto, en portant une attention particulière à l’oeuvre de Walter Ong et, dans une moindre mesure, Marshall McLuhan. Il soutient que les applications académiques les plus communes de l’oralité, notamment en tant que théorie d’une culture acoustique ou sonore, se fondent sur la distinction esprit/lettre du spiritualisme chrétien et une lecture erronée de la philologie hébraïque par des théologiens du milieu du vingtième siècle. Cet article propose une nouvelle histoire des médias originels et une nouvelle anthropologie mondiale de la communication qui dépasseraient les conceptions conventionnelles de ce qu’est l’oralité. Nous pourrions ainsi honorer la curiosité de chercheurs comme Harold Innis et Edmund Carpenter sans devoir accepter leurs conclusions comme si elles étaient des vérités intemporelles.

International Indeterminacy: George Maciunas and the Mail

ARTMargins ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 57-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colby Chamberlain
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Attorney General ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
New York State ◽  
John Cage ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Mail Art ◽  
Art Object ◽  
Curatorial Practice ◽  
History Of

The term “network” has often been used to characterize Fluxus's internationalism and to identify its membership. This has led a number of scholars to argue that Fluxus anticipated forms of artistic exchange now associated with Internet-based art. More recently, it has cast Fluxus as a precedent for applying a network model to other transcontinental avant-gardes, particularly in curatorial practice. Yet in the rush to relate Fluxus to contemporary discourses on global connectivity, insufficient attention has been paid to the specific apparatuses that facilitated its cohesion. This article stages an intervention into Fluxus studies (and by extension Conceptual art, mail art, and other transnational movements associated with communication and the “dematerialization” of the art object) by drawing on the field of German media theory to analyze the “paperwork” that makes up much of the movement's material production. Specifically, it focuses on how the artist George Maciunas's engaged the postal system in order to facilitate Fluxus's collectivity, as well to insinuate Fluxus's methods of experimental composition into larger power structures. After an opening discussion of Maciunas's important diagrammatic history of Fluxus's development (a.k.a. the John Cage chart), the article tracks Maciunas's deployment of newsletters to organize Fluxus activities, his infamous mail-based sabotage proposals, his collaborations with Mieko Shiomi and Ben Vautier, and his “Flux Combat” with the New York State Attorney General.

scholarly journals Reading McLuhan Reading Ulysses

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Galey
Keyword(s):  
James Joyce ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
Rare Book ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Etude De Cas ◽  
Étude De Cas ◽  
The University

Background  Marshall McLuhan was not only a prolific reader but also an expert annotator of his own books. Taking as a case study McLuhan’s copies of James Joyce’s Ulyssesin the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto, this article asks what we can learn about McLuhan’s reading from close analysis of his own books.Analysis  The article begins with a discussion of McLuhan’s media theory as “applied Joyce,” with particular reference to Ulysses, and then turns to an overview of the annotation techniques and strategies visible in McLuhan’s copies of the novel.Conclusion and implications  The conclusion considers McLuhan’s own books as hybrid artifacts that challenge us to rethink rigid distinctions between print and manuscript cultures.Contexte  Marshall McLuhan, en plus d’être un lecteur assidu, était un annotateur expert de ses propres livres. Par exemple, McLuhan a annoté des exemplaires d’Ulyssede James Joyce qui se trouvent maintenant dans la Bibliothèque de livres rares Thomas Fisher à l’Université de Toronto. Au moyen d’une étude de cas de ces exemplaires, l’article actuel examine ce qu’on peut apprendre à partir d’une analyse attentive du processus de lecture de McLuhan.Analyse  L’article commence par envisager la théorie des médias de McLuhan comme étant du « Joyce appliqué », mettant un accent particulier sur l’influence d’Ulyssesur le penseur. L’article continue par un examen des techniques et stratégies d’annotation utilisées par McLuhan dans ses exemplaires de ce roman.Conclusions et implications  La conclusion considère les livres de McLuhan comme des artéfacts hybrides nous invitant à mettre en question les distinctions rigides entre culture de l’imprimé et culture du manuscrit.

Collecting and media change, or: Listening to Phish via app

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 969-989
Author(s):  
Scott Kushner
Keyword(s):  
Mass Production ◽  
Cassette Tape ◽  
Message Boards ◽  
Recorded Sound ◽  
Parallel Motion ◽  
Online Message Boards ◽  
History Of ◽  
Media Change ◽  
Relationship Of

Practices of collecting are constrained by media circumstances. To show how changing media circumstances can occasion changes in collecting practices, this article explores one case study, an iOS app developed by a Phish fan to allow streaming audio of fan-made recordings of Phish concert performances. Such practices are part of a history of unofficial music collecting that parallels the history of recorded sound. This case study shows how one collecting community’s practices evolved in the context of changing media conditions: from cassette tape to CD-R to MP3 to streams (and a parallel motion from print to online message boards to app). This progression illustrates the ways that different ways of listening to and accessing recorded music afford different possibilities of collecting music, different links between listener and music, and different relationships among listeners. More precisely, Phish concert recordings, which lent themselves to collection when circulated on cassette, are no longer available to collect when they circulate as streaming media, because streaming is characterized by a relationship of access rather than possession. Among devoted fans, streaming recordings provoke a cultural emphasis on knowledge about music, rather than accumulation of recordings. My argument is rooted in prevailing theories of collecting, which situate collecting as a component of consumer culture emerging from the capitalist expansion stimulated by 19th-century mass production. Ultimately, I argue that when an object of collecting is displaced by changing media conditions, new collecting practices emerge to fill the void.

scholarly journals Remediating Modernism: On the Digital Ends of Montreal's Electroacoustic Tradition

2019 ◽  
Vol 144 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-189
Author(s):  
Patrick Valiquet
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Electroacoustic Music ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Theories ◽  
Canadian City ◽  
Contemporary Media ◽  
Illustrative Material

AbstractThis article examines ongoing efforts to associate the decline of the modernist electroacoustic music tradition with the rise of digital technologies. Illustrative material is drawn from ethnographic and archival fieldwork conducted in 2011 and 2012 in the Canadian city of Montreal. The author surveys examples of institutions, careers, performances and works showing how the digital is brought into the ideological service of existing musical orders and power structures by musicians, policy-makers and other intermediaries. Drawing upon the social theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Georgina Born, as well as on contemporary media theory, the author argues that accounts of the disruptive agency of digital mediation are incomplete without a corresponding attention to the complex cultural mechanisms by which it is kept under control. What is at stake in the transformation of Montreal's electroacoustic tradition is not a collapse so much as a further remediation of modernist social and aesthetic principles.

scholarly journals McLuhan and Posthumanism: Extending the Techno-Animal Embrace

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jody Berland
Keyword(s):  
Human Perception ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
Medium Theory ◽  
Animal Imagery ◽  
Media Change ◽  
Endangered Status

Background  This article builds on McLuhan’s medium theory to address the undertheorized role of animals as mediators in network cultures.Analysis  McLuhan’s medium theory aligns with and to some extent anticipates contemporary discussion about posthumanist thought that recognizes that human perception and experience are shaped by and extended through non-human tools and connections. Both digital culture and the endangered status of the natural world now call upon us to elaborate less anthropocentric concepts of mediation to understand our interdependence with the non-human world.Conclusion and implications  Using as illustration various moments of media change, including early coins and the first cat videos, this article argues that the proliferation of animal imagery is significant not only in the affective management of digital practices and investments, but more broadly in the management of cultural and ecological risk.Contexte  Cet article se fonde sur la théorie des médias de Marshall McLuhan afin de traiter du rôle sous-théorisé des animaux en tant que médiateurs dans les cultures du réseau.Analyse  La théorie des médias de McLuhan s’aligne avec—et dans une certaine mesure anticipe—les discussions contemporaines sur la pensée post-humaniste reconnaissant que des connections et outils non-humains contribuent à former et à prolonger la perception et l’expérience humaines. La culture numérique et le statut menacé du monde naturel exigent que nous élaborions des concepts sur la médiation qui soient moins anthropocentriques afin de mieux comprendre notre interdépendance avec le monde non-humain.Conclusion et implications Cet article se rapporte à divers changements médiatiques, y compris la création de certaines pièces de monnaie anciennes et les premières vidéos sur les chats, pour soutenir que la prolifération d’imagerie animale est importante, non seulement dans la gestion affective de pratiques et d’investissements numériques, mais aussi plus généralement dans la gestion de risques culturels et écologiques.

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