ABSTRACT
This chapter presents The Lab Book as an opportunity to position the Media Archaeology Lab (MAL) in the contemporary landscape of the humanities/ media labs. The MAL initially came to life in 2008–2009 as the Archaeological Media Lab. Rather than being hierarchical and classificatory both in its display of objects as well as its administrative organization of people, the MAL is porous, flat, and branching; objects are organized in any way participants want. The chapter shows how anomalies in the collection quietly show how media history, especially the history of computing, is anything but a neat progression of devices simply improving upon and building upon what came before. Nearly all foundational media studies scholars were first literary scholars. Moreover, one can read the long history of experimental writers, especially poets, as one that is inherently about experimenting with writing media – whether pens, pencils, paper, or typewriters and personal computers.
