Unveiling the Biographies of Media: On the Role of Narratives, Anecdotes, and Storytelling in the Construction of New Media's Histories

Natale, Simone

doi:10.1111/comt.12099

Cited by 22 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 54 publications

(34 reference statements)

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“…At this early stage, the Internet did not need a history; rather it needed what the media historian Simone Natale calls a 'biography' (Natale 2016a), a story about the life of the medium to be recounted starting from a mythical genesis. 4 It is not by chance that the first books on Internet history were written with the very same enthusiasm that digital technologies were exciting in Western societies: successful works such as Where Wizards Stay up Late: The Origins of the Internet (Hafner and Lyon 1996) and Casting the Net: From ARPANET to Internet and Beyond (Salus 1995) are two examples of how the literature celebrated the glorious lives of Internet pioneers.…”

Section: The Dominant Narrative Of Internet Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, the radio drama The War of the Worlds, narrated by Orson Wells on CBS in 1938, is still used to describe the power of radio and the capacity of broadcasting to terrorize and drive the audience to specific behaviours. Even if historians and social scientists have demonstrated that there is no proof of the train effect, and that the War of Worlds terrorized only a small part of its audience, such anecdotes persist as foundational narratives of the birth of these media (Natale 2016a).…”

Section: The Narratives Of the Internet's Originsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Internet Myth: From the Internet Imaginary to Network Ideologies

Bory

2020

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Biography of the Web as a Myth-Building Narrative 2.2 Questioning the Myth of the Web: Media Imaginaries and Web History 2.2.1 Hypertext: The Forgotten Hero Ted Nelson 2.2.2 Retracing Old Media in the World Wide Web 2.2.3 The Web and the Network 2.3 Rethinking Web History 3. Lost Networks: The Socrate and Iperbole Projects in Italy 3.1 The Web Was Not Alone 3.2 The Italian Networking Landscape in the 1990s 3.3 Rise and Fall of Socrate 3.3.1 The Uncertain Reasons for the Failure viii Contents 3.4 The Other Network: The Internet in Italy 3.4.1 Iperbole: The Pioneering Italian Civic Network Project 3.5 Conflicting Imaginaries: Socrate vs. Iperbole 3.6 The Ruins of Socrate 3.7 Legacy Systems 4. Challenging the Network Ideologies 4.1 Imaginary Networks 4.2 The Transitory Propriety of Network Imaginaries 4.3 The Power of Limits 4.4 Beyond Networks References List of Acronyms Index Preface xiii Internet. The 1990s was the decade when, to quote Umberto Eco, this integrated vision of the network emerged, while more recently a turn towards the apocalyptic vision occurred with key authors such as Morozov, Lyon, Zuboff, Fuchs and others. But, in the contemporary 'network imaginaries' , the two visions still co-exist. The one studied in this book is already in place and has limited the possibilities to imagine other forms of network. This is a relevant aspect, underlined by Paolo Bory in the final pages: the power of limits. Consequently, this book is also an inquiry in the limits of imagining the Internet and the technologies we live by in general. Internet imaginaries, ideologies, narratives, and myths (all terms used and explained by Paolo in his book) take time to be built, spread, accepted, and maybe then killed by society. They all have effects in the long term, they need long periods to be metabolized, and their effects are persistent even if often unnoticed. This book uses history, one of the few disciplines able to grasp longterm changes and continuities, in order to understand crucial issues in the relationships between contemporary societies and the Internet. It is an attempt to retrace how the digital culture today is based on forgotten ideas, to revitalize the powerful and persistent narratives behind failed projects, and to understand how the Internet was built with a mix of mythologies, human needs and limits. Every technology of communication is a by-product of the society that created it. And in every society, imaginaries, ideologies, narratives, and myths play a crucial role in establishing a taken-for-granted and yet powerful system of looking at the world. This book ultimately aims to study the habitus where the Internet was created and, in the end, to better understand the ways in which contemporary societies decide to imagine, show, and limit themselves.

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Section: The Dominant Narrative Of Internet Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Narratives Of the Internet's Originsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Internet Myth: From the Internet Imaginary to Network Ideologies

Bory

2020

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“…My own use of the term, however, aims to stress the narrative character of biographical recounting. In this regard, biographies of media can be defined as the bodies of narratives unfolding and representing the lifespans of different media (Natale, 2016).…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

If software is narrative: Joseph Weizenbaum, artificial intelligence and the biographies of ELIZA

Natale

2018

New Media & Society

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Software is usually studied in terms of the changes triggered by its operations in the material world. Yet, to understand its social and cultural impact, one needs to examine also the different narratives that circulate about it. Software's opacity, in fact, makes it prone to being translated into a plurality of narratives that help people make sense of its functioning and presence. Drawing from the case of Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA, widely considered the first chatbot ever created, this paper proposes a theoretical framework based on the concept of "biographies of media" to illuminate the dynamics and implications of software's discursive life. The case of ELIZA is particularly relevant in this regard because it became the center of competing narratives, whose trajectories transcended the actual functioning of this program and shaped key controversies about the implications of computing and AI.

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“…Such problems are also connected to the particular narratives through which the process of technological change is represented and understood (Natale, forthcoming). As Edgerton () effectively underlines, we tend to give emphasis to the moment of first design of a technology, failing to grasp that technologies continue to change after they are introduced, and that the history of innovation does not concern just “new” media.…”

Section: Searching For Old Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…“Old media” have acquired such a strong and stable position in our imagination that they contribute to defining how media enter into the public sphere, the everyday life, as well as the inner life of perceptions and feelings. Media, after all, are not only “things”; they are also cultural constructions that shape our everyday experience, and provide us with meanings and narratives to make sense of the transformations and changes experienced throughout life (Natale, forthcoming; Natale & Balbi, ).…”

Section: Conclusion: Imagining Old Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

There Are No Old Media

Natale

2016

J Commun

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Despite its ubiquity in scholarly and popular publications, relatively few attempts have been made to interrogate the meanings and implications of the notion of “old media.” This article discusses this notion in the context of theoretical debates within media and communication studies. Defining old media as artifacts, technologies, or in terms of their social use is problematic, because media constantly change, resisting clear‐cut definitions related to age. The article therefore proposes to treat new media as a relational concept: not an attribute characterizing media as such, but an element of how people perceive and imagine them. Rhetoric, everyday experience, and emotions are key contexts where new ground can be found to redefine the concept of “old media.”

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Unveiling the Biographies of Media: On the Role of Narratives, Anecdotes, and Storytelling in the Construction of New Media's Histories

Cited by 22 publications

References 54 publications

The Internet Myth: From the Internet Imaginary to Network Ideologies

The Internet Myth: From the Internet Imaginary to Network Ideologies

If software is narrative: Joseph Weizenbaum, artificial intelligence and the biographies of ELIZA

There Are No Old Media

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