infobong.com

Willard Uncapher posted an interesting item on the Association of Internet Researchers list lamenting the lack of historical knowledge of communications technology among people in the field. He says, “I like to think about the question as to whether the development of the Internet and CMC during the later 20th century was 'revolutionary' or 'evolutionary' or what.” I do too. Having come of age in the 1990s, reading WiReD, and following new technology with some fervor, I long thought that the Internet was indeed revolutionary and uniquely disrupted social relations. Yet my work writing for computer magazines and my later work in graduate school eventually made me realize that the Internet was only one of many technologies, like the telephone or radio, that seemed to threaten an existing social order until it was comfortably situated within society.

I'm starting to think that my calling might be history of communications technology, and I enrolled in my department's Historiography class. (Here's the syllabus in .pdf) Janet is a historian of some reknown and presumably has some faith in history as a means of sharing knowledge and wisdom, but I am a little disappointed that the class is largely devoted to historiographic theory critical of existing histories; I would rather learn how to write effective histories than debate the nature of reality or discuss the hopelessness of making sense of the past.

I presume some readers share my interest in the history of technology, and I will recommend Carolyn Marvin's When Old Technologies Were Newwhich is a highly readable and interesting book with nearly no theoretical mumbo jumbo.