New Media Archaeology

Information
Course Coordinator: Imar de Vries
ECTS: 7,5

Description
In this course we will investigate myths, future visions and anxieties about new media technologies and compare these with equivalent discourses of five so-called old media when these were young: telegraphy, telephony, film, radio, and television. Starting with two seemingly mutually exclusive assumptions about describing historical events, put forward by Michel Foucault and Erkki Huhtamo, we will work towards creating an integrated methodology that enables us to take a comparative look at the many media manifestations that are distinguishable in media history. The resulting comparisons will each contribute to critically understanding older and newer media discourses and to constructing theoretical frameworks with which new media technologies in Western culture can be analysed.
During the course each individual student will choose a specific case from the field of new media and juxtapose its discourses with those of older media. We will look at mobile augmented reality and knowledge systems, social networks and democracy, as well as at necessary fictions found in science fiction narratives, in commercial advertisements and in religiously infused debates on the effects of new media.

Goal
To be able to critically reflect upon new media myths; to be able to work with and construct your own historical comparison approaches; to be able to use and re-arrange written work by yourself as by others; to be able to cooperate and discuss with others.