Difference between revisions of "Mediatic Etymology"

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In contrast to the media archaeology practices pioneered by Friedrich Kittler and others, mediatic etymology does not begin with an extinct material artifact whose origins might illuminate informatic paradigms excluded from the present moment.  It rather begins with the content of a living medium, seeking to locate the medium from which content descends in an attempt to admit the informatic possiblity of the present.  Just as linguistic etymology seeks to establish when and how words entered into language and how meaning has transformed over time, mediatic etymology seeks to establish the ways in which cultural practices entered into a mediated state, and how the mediums that have housed the remains of these practices have transformed them over time.
 
In contrast to the media archaeology practices pioneered by Friedrich Kittler and others, mediatic etymology does not begin with an extinct material artifact whose origins might illuminate informatic paradigms excluded from the present moment.  It rather begins with the content of a living medium, seeking to locate the medium from which content descends in an attempt to admit the informatic possiblity of the present.  Just as linguistic etymology seeks to establish when and how words entered into language and how meaning has transformed over time, mediatic etymology seeks to establish the ways in which cultural practices entered into a mediated state, and how the mediums that have housed the remains of these practices have transformed them over time.
  
One need only to examine the graphic user interfaces of computer operating systems to indentify content which has origins in objects and processes which had previously lacked formal, expressive qualities. The desktop, the folder, the file, and copy and paste functions remediate living processes from contemporary office culture, yet in the process, their funcitonality in a computing environment forces us to re-examine the expressive potential of the objects to which they refer.  The desk, for example, offers space in which reading and paperwork can occur, and like the shelf and the library is a logical extension of a print culture that is coexistensive with the remediation of print in digital form.  
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One need only to examine the graphic user interfaces of computer operating systems to indentify content which has origins in objects and processes which had previously lacked formal, expressive qualities. The desktop, the folder, the file, and copy and paste functions remediate living processes from contemporary office culture, yet in the process, their funcitonality in a computing environment forces us to re-examine the expressive potential of the objects to which they refer.  The desk, for example, offers space in which reading and paperwork can occur, and like the shelf and the library is a logical extension of a print culture that is coexistensive with the remediation of print in digital form. In this way, the etymological origins of content enable us to reconsider the desk as a medium which in its functional , and to postulate what cultural phenomena which no longer exist that it houses.
 
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, but rather with the content of a living medium.  One might  
 
, but rather with the content of a living medium.  One might  

Revision as of 21:00, 22 April 2008

When establishing a cohesive framework within which to understand media, Marshall McLuhan famously posited that the content of every medium is yet another medium, and the method of "Mediatic Etymology" builds upon his mechanism of remediation offering a speculative tool with which one might theorize the existence of dead media whose origins remain unknown.

In contrast to the media archaeology practices pioneered by Friedrich Kittler and others, mediatic etymology does not begin with an extinct material artifact whose origins might illuminate informatic paradigms excluded from the present moment. It rather begins with the content of a living medium, seeking to locate the medium from which content descends in an attempt to admit the informatic possiblity of the present. Just as linguistic etymology seeks to establish when and how words entered into language and how meaning has transformed over time, mediatic etymology seeks to establish the ways in which cultural practices entered into a mediated state, and how the mediums that have housed the remains of these practices have transformed them over time.

One need only to examine the graphic user interfaces of computer operating systems to indentify content which has origins in objects and processes which had previously lacked formal, expressive qualities. The desktop, the folder, the file, and copy and paste functions remediate living processes from contemporary office culture, yet in the process, their funcitonality in a computing environment forces us to re-examine the expressive potential of the objects to which they refer. The desk, for example, offers space in which reading and paperwork can occur, and like the shelf and the library is a logical extension of a print culture that is coexistensive with the remediation of print in digital form. In this way, the etymological origins of content enable us to reconsider the desk as a medium which in its functional , and to postulate what cultural phenomena which no longer exist that it houses.

, but rather with the content of a living medium. One might

 Whereas material artifacts ask us to construct a modality that no longer exists  with content in a living medium which offers no mediatic precedent for its appearance in mediated form.  Content which exhibits this phenomenon can easily be found throughout the graphic user interfaces of computer operating systems which seek to mimic funcitonal objects and activities which 
 He explained that the content of film was the screenplay or novel, that the content of printed matter was the alphabet, and that the content of the alphabet was phonetic speech.  The process of remediation is invaluable to the media archaeological project because it allows older forms of