Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

A pioneering attempt to relate the theory of literary fiction to a more general theory of fiction, using fictions of apocalypse as a model. This pioneering exploration of the relationship of fiction to age-old conceptions of chaos and crisis offers many new insights into some of the most unyielding philosophical and aesthetic enigmas. Examining the works of a wide range of writers from Plato to William Burroughs, Kermode demonstrates how writers have persistently imposed their \"fictions\" upon the face of eternity and how these have reflected the apocalyptic spirit.

Frank Kermode and the Invented World@@@The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction

From the Publisher: \nThe telephone looms large in our lives, as ever present in modern societies as cars and television. Claude Fischer presents the first social history of this vital but little-studied technologyhow we encountered, tested, and ultimately embraced it with enthusiasm. Using telephone ads, oral histories, telephone industry correspondence, and statistical data, Fischer's work is a colorful exploration of how, when, and why Americans started communicating in this radically new manner. Studying three California communities, Fischer uncovers how the telephone became integrated into the private worlds and community activities of average Americans in the first decades of this century. Women were especially avid in their use, a phenomenon which the industry first vigorously discouraged and then later wholeheartedly promoted. Again and again Fischer finds that the telephone supported a wide-ranging network of social relations and played a crucial role in community life, especially for women, from organizing children's relationships and church activities to alleviating the loneliness and boredom of rural life. Deftly written and meticulously researched, America Calling adds an important new chapter to the social history of our nation and illuminates a fundamental aspect of cultural modernism that is integral to contemporary life. \nAuthor Biography: Claude S. Fischer is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of To Dwell among Fris: Personal Networks in Town and City (1982) and The Urban Experience (1984).

America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940

Time and narrative

The hybrid media system: Politics and power

This is a review of Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Updating to remain the same: Habitual new media. The MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 2016; ISBN: 9780262034494. This paper was accepted for publication in the journal New Media and Society and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816683947a

/pdf/updating-to-remain-the-same-habitual-new-media-huqol828fd.pdf

Updating to remain the same: Habitual new media:

This article discusses the role of technological myths in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies from 1950s to the early 1970s. It shows how the rise of AI was accompanied by ...

Imagining the thinking machine: technological myths and the rise of Artificial Intelligence

This article examines the role of discourses about 
new media technology and the Web in the 
rise of the 5-Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle, or
 M5S) in Italy. Founded by comedian and 
activist Beppe Grillo and Web entrepreneur Gianrobe
rto Casaleggio in 2009, this movement 
succeeded in becoming the second largest party at t
he 2013 national elections in Italy. This 
article aims to discuss how elements of digital uto
pia and Web-centric discourses have been 
inserted into the movement’s political message, and
 how the construction of the Web as a myth 
has shaped the movement’s discourse and political p
ractice. The 5-Star Movement is compared 
and contrasted with other social and political move
ments in Western countries which have 
displayed a similar emphasis on new media, such as 
the Occupy movement, the Indignados 
movement, and the Pirate Parties in Sweden and Germ
any. By adopting and mutating cyber-
utopian discourses from the so-called Californian i
deology, the movement symbolically identifies 
itself with the Web. The traditional political esta
blishment is associated with “old” media 
(television, radio, and the printed press), and rep
resented as a “walking dead,” doomed to be 
superseded and buried by a Web-based direct democra
cy.

/pdf/the-web-will-kill-them-all-new-media-digital-utopia-and-4hss90zcua.pdf

The web will kill them all: new media, digital utopia, and political struggle in the Italian 5-Star Movement

This paper discusses how media theory and history should approach specimens of evidence about the cultural reception of media pertaining to the realms of the fantastic, such as speculations, predictions, dreams, and other forms of fantasy regarding media. It argues that the role of the imaginary in the history of media can be fully comprehended only by employing a perspective which is dynamic in time. In different phases of a medium's evolution, in fact, we find different fantasies; it follows that we need specific approaches to study them. The article discusses fantasies which are specific to three stages in media change: those preceding the actual invention of a medium; those accompanying the earliest period after the introduction of a new medium; and those connected to old media.

/pdf/media-and-the-imaginary-in-history-the-role-of-the-fantastic-4d80caymae.pdf

Media and the Imaginary in History: The role of the fantastic in different stages of media change

Despite its ubiquity in scholarly and popular publications, relatively few attempts have been made to interrogate the meanings and implications of the notion of “old media.” This article discusses this notion in the context of theoretical debates within media and communication studies. Defining old media as artifacts, technologies, or in terms of their social use is problematic, because media constantly change, resisting clear-cut definitions related to age. The article therefore proposes to treat new media as a relational concept: not an attribute characterizing media as such, but an element of how people perceive and imagine them. Rhetoric, everyday experience, and emotions are key contexts where new ground can be found to redefine the concept of “old media.”

/pdf/there-are-no-old-media-3q88fpij1z.pdf

Simone Natale

Papers

Updating to remain the same: Habitual new media:

Imagining the thinking machine: technological myths and the rise of Artificial Intelligence

The web will kill them all: new media, digital utopia, and political struggle in the Italian 5-Star Movement

Media and the Imaginary in History: The role of the fantastic in different stages of media change

There Are No Old Media