ABSTRACT
Our particular problem of technological change, from the photochemical to the so-called “digital,” requires engagement with theories of history. Given that comparing emerging technologies a century apart raises the question of “differences of times,” I turn to Reinhart Koselleck’s theory of historical time, or the relativity of past, present, and future, with particular attention to the problem of historical prognostication or prediction. The case at hand compares motion picture film duplication 1897–1907 and contemporary cyberlocker storage technology as charged in their moments with “piracy” or illegal “taking.” Thus intellectual property doctrine draws parallels between historically different “piratical practices” as evidencing responses to the problem of technological “newness.” But Koselleck is canny as he challenges us to consider that paradoxically every new time is both new and “not so new.”
