What does Kittler mean when he says “new media do not make
old media obsolete; they assign them other places in the system”? I understand
his example of typography and handwriting; that specialized handwriting is what
creates individuality in a sea of uniformity. But surely it can’t be argued
that no medium has ever been made obsolete by another, can it?
I suppose it depends on how we define “obsolescence.” Is a
record player obsolete, because we have developed better ways to consume music?
Or is it not obsolete because it holds on as a relic, a novelty, as something I
can still purchase and use if I choose to? Perhaps it is more important to look
at the evolutionary process of media as a whole. Media doesn’t just happen, it
doesn’t appear out of nothing. The iPod sprang out of digital music files,
which came from CDs, which developed from cassette tapes, which draws lines
back to records (this a very condensed, and in no way exhaustive history of
music technology, just humor me). The record player is part of this lineage. It
will always be assigned a spot in the story, even though it may be a secondary
or historic one.
They say that it takes bad days for you to appreciate the
good ones. Really it’s about having a point of reference. Maybe that is where
the value lies in old media. It is just like anything else in life: we discover,
we learn from, we improve upon and then we move on. But do those things ever
truly go away or leave our consciousness? I don’t think that they do.
Blake, it might help to think more generally in terms of types of communication media/systems rather than individual technologies (since the latter are so much easier to dismiss as outdated or obsolete). I can't remember the last time I saw someone writing with a quill and ink, but people can and still do hand write communications.
ReplyDeleteAside from the orthography/typography example, we could also think of celluloid film/digital film (or photography). Though many have dramatically proclaimed the death of traditional film or photography, we're still surrounded by both, because some see the properties of the earlier media as surpassing the newer media, whether for nostalgia's sake, technical/formal reasons, or cultural ones.