START- Project Details. You will develop and analyze a curated collection on a dead technology of your choice. The resulting digital text will present a collection of examples of both the technology and the texts it produced, along with original connective commentary. Your focus should be historical and/or critical in nature, and include an emphasis on rhetorical aspects of the technology you select. You should apply relevant readings, either ones we’ve covered in class or others you wish to bring in. The collection may include written text, audio, or visual materials, and should be the equivalent of a 2,000 word paper. The idea is at least partly modeled on Bruce Sterling ‘s Dead Media Project . The Dead Media Project was initially proposed by science fiction writer Bruce Sterling in 1995 as a compilation of obsolete and forgotten communication technologies.
Sterling describes some of the reasoning for this project this way , and provides a master list of dead media: Media turns into trash. . Where to begin: The Dead Media Manifesto. The DEAD MEDIA Project: A Modest Proposal and a Public Appeal by Bruce Sterling bruces@well.com Ever notice how many books there are about the Internet these days?
About 13,493 so far, right? And how about "multimedia? " There are 8,784 books on this topic, even though no one has ever successfully defined the term. Our culture is experiencing a profound radiation of new species of media. This is all well and good, and it's lovely that so many people are paying attention to this. I can't do much about it, personally, because I'm booked up to the eyeballs until the end of the millennium.
Plenty of wild wired promises are already being made for all the infant media. Neither Richard Kadrey nor myself are currently in any position to write this proposed handbook. It's a rather rare phenomenon for an established medium to die. But some media do, in fact, perish. Never heard of any of these? However. Here's the deal. I'll go farther, ladies and gentlemen. Think of it this way. Can you help us? Tools Never Die. Waddaya Mean, Never? : Krulwich Wonders… Submit your tool idea!
Or, see what we've got so far. Kevin Kelly should know better, but boldly, brassily, (and totally incorrectly, I'm sure), he said this on NPR: "I say there is no species of technology that have ever gone globally extinct on this planet. " Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images; Tim Parkin/Flickr Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Christopher Furlong/Getty Images Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images; Paula Bronstein/Getty Images Lambert/Getty Images; Penumbra/Flickr SSPL/Getty Images; Joe Raedle/Getty Images What does that mean? That means, he said, "I can't find any [invention, tool, technology] that has disappeared completely from Earth.
" Nothing? Nothing, he said. Can't be, I told him. If only because of the hubris — the absolute nature of the claim — I told him it would take me a half hour to find a tool, an invention that is no longer being made anywhere by anybody. Go ahead, he said. Skyhorse Publishing And Kevin continues to insist he is right. I know Kevin's wrong. Help Me!