Skilled typists do not look at the keys or at the body of the machine; rather, they experience what William James undeniably would have called a "cultivated motor automatism" or a mild case of posession..."
I replicated that entire quote completely without taking my eyes off of Gitelman's book. I am a cyborg.
But I digress. Gitelman's book interested me primarily because of the similarities of then versus now; I don't think anyone would argue (though you are more than welcome to) that the Internet is our own world-changing turn of the century technology, much as the phonograph, typewriter, motion pictures et. al completely transformed the world during the transition from the 19th century to the 20th. Gitelman does address this in the epilogue of her book, but since the time of this book’s publication, the Internet has grown exponentially—and this doesn’t include the amount of people who can now access this technology. Since 1999, we have seen the integration of movies, television, and music on the Internet in ways that have only been made possible in the last few years. But before I go into this more, I’d like to discuss a few of the interesting similarities about the anxieties caused by technology between then and now.
Of course, we have the initial redefining of “reading” and “writing,” which (I’m pretty sure) is a major theme throughout Gitelman’s work. Reading and writing changed from an activity a human being could fully take part in—i.e., writing/reading letters—to an activity where the human element was a bystander. We saw with the record that, even though the sound itself left physical traces on a disc, no reading of the letter “a” produced the same evidence; so, here we have a version of “reading” and “writing” that can only be inscribed and interpreted by a machine. This is actually something that I talk about in my writing classes, that reading and writing exists in more than just the literal ways we assume exist. For example, I use the work of James Paul Gee to show my students how both “reading” and “writing” exist in the semiotic domain of video games, and I’d like to think that it blows their minds. Either that, or they’re just sleepy.
Back to the Internet: it’s a shame that Gitelman didn’t write this book a few years later, because some of the things she mentions in the epilogue really exploded right around the time of its publication (Is there an updated version anywhere?). Between 1999-2000, the Napster phenomenon exploded, requiring many modifications to copyright law, and redefining the ideas of both “intellectual property” and “theft,” just as we saw with records, piano rolls, etc. And the growth of broadband since the printing of Gitelman’s book—I’m not sure if dial-up even exists anymore—has only complicated matters as it facilitates the copying and transfer of intellectual property. It’s an issue that fascinates me endlessly—probably because I’ll be thrown into prison one day for showing a copyrighted YouTube clip to a room full of students.
Oh, and here’s an interesting article about the battle over Winnie the Pooh. Interesting stuff.
http://iblsjournal.typepad.com/illinois_business_law_soc/2006/03/winnie_the_pooh.html
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