A History of Digital Media

An Intermedia and Global Perspective

Gabriele Balbi, Paolo Magaudda

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351807234
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

From the punch card calculating machine to the personal computer to the iPhone and more, this in-depth text offers a comprehensive introduction to digital media history for students and scholars across media and communication studies, providing an overview of the main turning points in digital media and highlighting the interactions between political, business, technical, social, and cultural elements throughout history. With a global scope and an intermedia focus, this book enables students and scholars alike to deepen their critical understanding of digital communication, adding an understudied historical layer to the examination of digital media and societies. Discussion questions, a timeline, and previously unpublished tables and maps are included to guide readers as they learn to contextualize and critically analyze the digital technologies we use every day.

1 Why Study the History of Digital Media and How?

1.1 Contextualizing Digital in Contemporary Societies

From the 1990s onwards digitization has increasingly shaped the collective imagination of contemporary societies. Digital media have become one of the main obsessions of our time: getting online (or more frequently being constantly online), sharing “likes” on social network pages, downloading apps, updating virtual profiles, exchanging e-mails, text messages and WhatsApp or WeChat messages are just some of the infinite array of routine activities that have become part of the daily lives of billions of people. Digital has contributed to the formation of new “communities”, which were previously unable to inter act with one another and also to new barriers and inequalities. Digital has been interpreted variously in different cultures taking on positive or negative connotations that are in any case deeply rooted in these communities. Digital has, above all, impacted on the daily lives of billions of people. Just think of our compulsive use of mobile phones, our constant access to knowledge as a result of the World Wide Web and the ease with which we access media contents, often free of charge, which were previously either difficult to source or expensive (think of films and songs). In recent years, the controversial presence of digital media in social relationships has found its way into the popular imagination through TV series such as Black Mirror (first season in 2011), created by a well-known British satirist and columnist, which gives an overview of the many dystopic and disturbing consequences ubiquitous media technologies may have on people’s lives in the present or near future. And this is not all. Digital media and our use of them has also become the defining metaphor of late twentieth and early twenty-first-century society. French philosopher Stéphane Vial (2013) has spoken of digital ontophany, using an expression drawn from religious semantics (from the Greek on meaning “being” and faneia “appearing”) to illustrate the totalizing effect of the digital universe and the extent to which it is affecting our experiences and perceptions of the world itself.

Digital media, with their transformative power and metaphorical force, require explaining and defining because the more we go in depth, the more we discover that the meaning of digital is a medley of somewhat ephemeral and constantly evolving ideas. The adjective “digital” comes from the Latin digitus (finger, toe) and, as Ben Peters (2016a) has argued, we can say that human beings are “naturally” digital, because they have to always count, point, and manipulate with their fingers—exactly what digital media are.

As a starting point, digital is often defined in contrast to analog almost as if they were two extremes on a scale, even if they are not. A concrete example of a common definition of digital vs. analog comes from the music field—comparing and contrasting vinyl records and CDs. Vinyl record lovers know that the sound they like is a product of contact between the player’s needle and the grooves scored into the vinyl. These grooves are continuous in the sense that there are no interruptions in the spiral of frequencies containing the music and words. There is thus a physical analogy, a similarity between the sound and the grooves: a different groove depth produces a different sound. With CDs, on the other hand, sound is broken up (or sampled) into a multitude of points and thus into discrete and non-continuous units whose values are registered on support surfaces in binary format as 0s and 1s. Sound is generated by laser reading of the values of these discrete points, which, translated into sound frequencies, can be listened to in sequence, recreating listening continuity.

This definition assumes that analog is everything not digital and vice-versa, but as Jonathan Sterne (2016, p. 32) claimed, the distinction between analog and digital is far more intricate, first because “the idea of analog as everything not-digital is in fact newer than the idea of digital”. What we mean today by the word “analog” is more an historical outcome of cultural distinctions and shifting symbolic boundaries, than an objective technical feature of some kind of technology: in the 1950s “analog” was indicating anything related to computers, in the 1970s the term’s use started to signal something in contrast with electronic devices and, finally, only in the 1990s it began to be used with the connotation of “old-fashioned” and even “vintage”. In short, we can see how the definitions of analog and digital have evolved together and changed across time in dialectic and reciprocal relationship.

That said, the CD/vinyl record example helps us to introduce the two basic elements in digital media technologies: digitization and binary language (Lister, Dovey, Giddings, Grant & Kelly, 2009). Digitization is, above all, a process converting contents, which were previously expressed in different forms, into numbers (to the extent that in languages such as French the term numérisation is used). In the analog model, video, audio and text are transmitted as continual signals and each of these three content forms differs from the others. With digitization, video, audio and text are, on the other hand, all codified in the same “material”, i.e. numerical data that allows information to be transferred and stored independently of the original content type.

It is often mistakenly believed that digitization means converting physical data into binary information. In actual fact digitization—as the name itself (from the English word “digit” i.e. number) suggests—is simply a matter of assigning numerical values. On the other hand, the fact that contents are numerized in strings of 0s and 1s (called bits) has hugely simplified this process and made it much cheaper because it reduces each component to two states: on or off, electrical flowing or not-flowing, 0 or 1. For example, the programs we see on our digital TVs are simply sequences of 0s and 1s, which break down the continuous waves generated by sounds and images into value strings that are no longer analogous with the original in any way. It is thus our TVs or decoders that translate and reconstitute these sequences of 0s and 1s into understandable sounds and images for human ears and eyes.

If this can work as a technical description of the differences between analog and digital media, there are far more relevant elements to be addressed if we are to understand the wide range of features involved in the media digitization process. For example, treating all forms of communication in the same way apparently enables digital media contents to be dematerialized, it enables us to compress them and thus transfer them more quickly, store them on supports that take up little space (think of the difference between the few hours of video that can be contained on a VHS tape and the gigabytes stored in an external hard disc or in a cloud) and manipulate or modify them simply. One of the often pointed out differences between analog and digital media is that, with analog media, all these processes were more complex and costly, if only because cutting and copying physical material supports and transferring them concretely from one place to another was often required. Again, this assumption can be contested if considered from an historical perspective: for example, at the origins of computer, large and “heavy” supports were needed to store memory (see Chapter 2), while non-digital small photographic film on the other side recorded plenty of information in a short space. Furthermore, and contrary to the argument of dematerialization, digitization has encompassed an explosion of new hardware dedicated to reproducing and storing these contents: from computers to telephones, DVDs to USB sticks, MP3 readers to cameras, to cite just a few. So, a side effect of this aspect is the fact that, rather than translating into a dematerializing of culture as we said before, the digitization process has actually stimulated the dissemination of material devices.

In order to get to the bottom of digitization’s deeper meaning, however, we also need to consider the ways in which representations and images of the digital world in contemporary culture have evolved. Let’s start from certain theoretical categories that were especially visible after World War Two. In the 1950s, theories linked to cybernetics (Wiener, 1948) and, in the 1970s, those linked to the postindustrial society (Bell, 1973) contributed to popularizing the central importance of computers in society. Even the information society definition—a locution that highlights the relevance of IT and information itself as an irresistible force capable of revolutionizing the world of work, the economy and politics (Dordick & Wang, 1993)—contributed to placing digital centerstage in the debate on the transformation of contemporary cultures well before the internet was invented. A notion of how an information society might evolve was already taking shape in the 1960s and 1970s and one of the earliest documents to place the information concept at the heart of political and economic processes was a report by the Japan Computer Usage Development Institute (1972), which illustrated a government plan for the achievement of a “new national goal” consisting precisely of the computerization of Japanese society.

Full consideration of the advantages of digitization from the economic and political points of view, however, emerged explicitly only in the 1980s and early 1990s, when governments in a number of countries simultaneously got to grips with the need for radical modernization of their telecommunications infrastructure. As the 1990s wore on, the American and Japanese governments and the European Union (see the 1990 Bangemann Report or the 1994 white paper Growth, Competitiveness, Employment) started to construct a digital myth narrative, advocating measures favoring the digitization of their communication infrastructures in the somewhat deterministic belief that this constituted not simply a transit channel for data flow but also a crucial resource ensuring economic, social and cultural progress (Richeri, 1995; Mosco, 1998). The most famous and frequently cited of these various governmental plans was, unsurprisingly, American: the well-known Clinton government document The National Information Infrastructure: Agenda for Action published in September 1993. This report placed the information networks (or what Clinton’s administration called for promotional purposes information superhighways), at the center of US economic and industrial policy, which was to guarantee Amer ican citizens and especially American companies universal access to the services and contents, which would circulate on this infrastructure (Kozak, 2015; see also Box 3.3 for an excerpt). From this moment onwards, in many countries, digital infra structure and the circulation of digital contents on the networks was one of the main focuses of interest in national communications policies. The belief that citizens’ wellbeing, business potential and nations’ very future prosperity depended on their digital information infrastructures was a constant feature of the political economy debate in the years to come.

There is effectively no doubt that digital media are now a crucial sector in contemporary society. Also in a sense of their economic, productive and thus political weight. In 2015, the global digital communications market accounted for 3,829 billion Euros, the greatest revenues coming from telecom services (29%), IT services and software (25.9%), devices (18.9%), TV and video services (10.7%) and internet services (just 8.5% but the fastest growing segment in recent years) (IDATE, 2017, p. 34). Despite growing more slowly than global GDP (in 2015, global GDP grew by 4.8% in nominal value while the digital global market grew only 3.9%, and this trend emerged in the early years of the second decade of this millennium), digital media have contributed to transforming global communication flows and geographies and, on occasions, digitization has played a part in widening the existing inequality gap between the various parts of the globe (a phenomenon generally defined as the digital divide; see Box 3.4 for more on this concept). Proportionally to their populations, moreover, certain world regions are producing and consuming far more digital goods and services than others. In 2015, 31.9% of the digital media market was concentrated in North America, 29.7% in Asia/Pacific and 25.5% in Europe, while the remaining regions were playing a much smaller part: 7.2% in Latin America, 5.7% in Africa and the Middle East (see IDATE, 2017, p. 37). On the other hand, it is precisely thanks to digital, and above all mobile phones—as we will see in Chapter 4—that many regions of Africa, Latin America and Asia are currently accessing communications that were once mainly the exclusive preserve of the richer continents and, moreover, it is precisely in these parts of the world that some of the more interesting and unexpected uses of digital media have emerged.

Thus far we have attempted to define digital and sketch an outline of the political, economic and cultural motives, which have made it a modern obsession. Now is the time to look at how this subject of study can be analyzed: what are the useful research trajectories that give us a better grasp of digital media evolutions; and what, primarily, are the advantages to approaching digital from a long-term perspective. In other words, why study the history of digital media?

1.2 Theoretical Paths

The front-rank role played by the digital media referred to above has attracted ever increasing scholarly attention from a range of social studies and humanities disciplines in recent decades. Sociology, for example, has looked at the consequences of what was initially defined as “new media” on identity and community bonds concentrating on issues such as privacy, social networks, inequalities, celebrity and many others. Psychology, on the other hand, has concentrated greater attention on digital’s impact on interpersonal relationships and on the minds and brains of users (often with discordant results ranging from its reinforcement of intelligence to incentivizing collective stupidity). Economics have examined digitization, and more generally digital IT, as a powerful force for change in productive practices and in the traditional relationship between supply and demand (there is nothing accidental about the fact that the so-called new economy has essentially become a synonym for the digital economy). Political science, lastly, has seen the internet and social media as places of aggregation and debate on shared political values oscillating between an enthusiasm for new forms of political participation (for example, direct digital democracy) and concern for the totalitarian style control facilitated by digital technologies.

This book’s approach to digital media history is a generally neglected one. The history of digital media has received limited attention because new media are an apparently recent phenomenon—even if this term has been used since the 1960s and 1970s in reference to satellites, video cameras and other, at the time, new communication technologies. New media seem to change so quickly and are considered so radically “revolutionary” (thus provoking a drastic break with the past) that historical analysis has often been difficult to apply and, ultimately, useless for a vision concentrated on the present and future (not by chance named “presentism”).

This book—following the research agenda of media historians as Lisa Gitelman (2006), Jonathan Sterne (2012), Benjamin Peters (2009), Dave Park, Nick Jankowski and Steve Jones (2011) and many others—will argue against this idea, showing that new or digital media have to be analyzed from a broader and more questioning perspective, keen to better understand what is “truly new” about them and what the profound and long-lasting consequences of digitization are.

Obviously, a historical analysis cannot limit itself to a chronological or events-based (évènementielle) framework made up of a sequence of relevant dates and inventions. Quite the contrary, historical analysis also and above all implies adopting interpretative concepts and perspectives aimed at gaining an in-depth understanding of the main long-term implications of digital media. It is for this reason that we have taken insights and inspirations from diverse fields of study, which have adopted specific concepts and theories to understand the role such media play in society. Hence, before embarking on the history of digital media per se, it would be useful to spend a little time looking at the main research currents in media and communication studies dealing with digital tech nology. This will be our basic “toolbox”, which we will then draw on over the next few chapters to retrace the evolution of digital media and give our a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Boxes
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Why Study the History of Digital Media and How?
• 2 The Computer
• 3 The Internet
• 4 The Mobile Phone
• 5 The Digitization of Analog Media
• Conclusion: Myths and Counter-hegemonic Narratives in Digital Media History
• Chronology
• Appendix: Statistical and Quantitative Data
• Acronyms
• References
• Index