ABSTRACT
In this part I attempt to develop the terms of reference for a ‘techno-anthropology’ which addresses the symbolic meanings of some of the symbolic objects of our contemporary world, notably the television, the computer and the mobile phone. I begin, in this chapter, with the television set itself. Against the largely unquestioned orthodoxy which characterises television as a visual medium, I consider a number of aspects of the domestic context of television’s usage which lead to the suggestion that television might, in fact, be better understood as a primarily aural medium. I then briefly recount the story of the troubled history of television’s introduction to the home, the better both to denaturalise television’s now taken-for-granted place within that micro-geography and to understand some of the mutual determinations that television and the home have exercised on one another over the past fifty years. My argument then turns to the ‘physics’ of television, focusing on the largely unexamined significance of the television set itself (rather than the programmes it shows), both as a material and as a symbolic, or even totemic, object. I end with a detailed consideration of the contributions made to our understanding of these issues by the Korean techno-sculptor, Nam June Paik.
