ABSTRACT

A history of digital media will have to include a number of different strands of the historical development of art and media, their technologies, institutions and cultural forms. Initially such a history will involve something of the development of computing, electronics, robotics, optics, telecommunications, broadcasting, theatre, art, photography, film, literature, music and popular cultural pastimes. Such a list is daunting since it threatens to involve a history of every cultural means of expression and communication. The overriding reason why digital media needs such a multi-layered history is because of the hybrid nature of both the technologies and cultural practices gathered under the umbrella title. There is, as yet, no single, unified medium of digital media, in which technologies and cultural forms have been integrated, although computing is now the common factor. The current state of the practices of digital media are such that technically they still use a combination of digital and analogue means within a number of continuous cultural forms, which have converged in computing. Equally there is no single, or unified cultural idea of what digital media is; what knowledge and experience it deals with or the contexts in which it is applied. At present any history of digital media will need to account for the diverse developments that are constituted as digital media. A digital media history is better understood as a provisional and relational process of enquiry, because, while a unified and linear history can provide compelling stories of technological advancement or cultural continuity, they reduce and narrow our conceptual understanding of the current possibilities and purposes of what might turn out to be one new medium, or several forms within media. On one compelling current technological account, digital media is condensed into the image of the network, seen as the inevitable outcome of continuous technical advancement. In the culturalist account, digital media is seen as an extension of existing media in which a new set of technological tools are being used. Linear histories typically construct a chronological sequence of selectively significant events in order to argue that present outcomes and configurations, of either technology, or culture, are the logical and essential outcome of that history. An important cautionary point to remember is that any history, including this outline, is authored by individuals and groups working out of subjects, institutions, theories and perspectives, which will organise and promote what is thought to be valuable to include, or stress. Histories of any kind are essentially partial and partisan, they always come with a point of view. However, one should have the expectation that a digital media history will lay claim to its own authority based upon acknowledged and specific scholarship and research. We noted in the introduction how accounts of digital media are cast and shaped within other disciplines and practices, which is only to be expected and should not be dismissed, since there is no absolute position of objectivity in operation here. Any digital media history will, by definition, be an initial one given the relatively recent emergence of digital media practice, but it will also have roots in other disciplines, fields and subjects. For example, an understanding of calculating machines as a precursor of the many screen based mobile devices of today would be in all likelihood an essential component of a history of computing, while on the other hand, a history of typography and newspapers would be an equally important understanding for at history the graphical user interface. Digital media history is, then, better thought of in the plural as histories.