Waves and Code › 45 RPM / Revolutions Per Minute ›

Concepts of Media History

Submitted by Armin Medosch on Mon, 10/08/2007 - 14:05
in

As the political philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis pointed out, the concepts of history that exist are amazingly poor 1. There are those historians who focus on big events, big personalities, tyrants, revolutions and intermediate periods of peace. In their accounts there is no logic, no structure. History consists of a series of more or less random events in which identifiable individuals play an important role. This is illustrated best by Bertolt Brecht's short poem where he wrote: "Caesar beat the Gauls. Did he not even have a cook with him?" (Bertold Brecht, Questions from a worker who reads ). In the Marxist version of history social change is the result of class struggle between antagonistic group actors. As in Marxism the base defines the superstructure, the relationship of the forces of production is of defining influence on what people can think and dream about. Regarding history and new media another version of explaining social change has emerged. According to Marshall McLuhan and variations of his 'philosophy'2 communication media are the main force for social change; the book, the printing press, the newspaper, photography, radio, television and now the computer and the internet are the defining forces which trigger social change which is as inevitable as an avalanche (McLuhan 1964). In the first version of big-men-do-great deeds and in the last version of media being the main cause of socio-cultural change (which are compatible, by the way) the people do not play a role in the making of their own history. They become completely objectified and exposed to external heteronomic forces. Only a small elite of politicians and inventors, the political class and the creative class, have any role in the making of history (Florida 2002, Barbrook 2006). The Marxist version, although it comes with a lot of historic baggage,3 offers itself as a tool to look beyond the surface, gain some understanding of the inner workings of the big wheels of history and seeks to empower people to be the authors of their own history. Therefore I express my preference for concepts of history which seek to empower people to be autonomous, self-defined and the active makers of their own history (although it often looks as if we didn't really have a chance).

That said, I would also like to propose that the discovery of radio waves and the development of first applications in the late 19th century should be understood within a typically capitalist framework of 'innovation'. The age of electrical telecommunications had begun in the midst of the 19th century with the telegraph. The elites of that time were keenly aware of the potential of new communication media for war and commerce and it was a well established model that the inventor of a new technology would then become the founder of a large industrial corporation. The philosopher of science 4Jutta Weber (2003) observed that the conduct of science changed at about the midst of the 19th century. Before that turn science or technological innovation had been an activity of individuals either as academics or private inventor/entrepreneurs searching either for pure knowledge or business opportunities. As the importance of technological innovation in an industrial society had become increasingly obvious, science was turned into an organized activity financed and directed by large corporations and nation states, often working in unison to further goals such as colonial expansion (the logical continuation of this tendency was the WWI). It is this climate in the second half of the 19th century which stimulated exploration of and experimentations with electricity and magnetism. Thus, after Robert Maxwell mathematically postulated the existence of electromagnetic waves and after Heinrich Hertz provided empirical evidence that radio waves existed many engineers, inventors and entrepreneurs tried to find ways of putting this new force of nature to work in human society. Although Nicolas Tesla was hailed as the bigger genius and visionary, it was the more pragmatically minded Marconi who became the first wireless entrepreneur. As soon as he had his patents registered he tried to create a worldwide commercial monopoly for wireless telegraphy.