Historical Technologies of Information: Orality to Hypertext

General Resources
The Voice (Orality)
The Manuscript
The Book (History of Print)
Late 19th- and Earlier 20th-Century Media
Hypertext
Theoretical Approaches to Past Media Technology

= More Info (see policy on "more info" links)

General Resources

• Daniel Chandler (U. Wales Aberystwyth), "Biases of the Ear and Eye" (overview of theoretical issues regarding orality and literacy; includes bibliography)
• Roger Chartier, Forms and Meanings: Texts, Performances, and Audiences from Codex to Computer (Philadelphia: U. Pennsylvania Press, 1995)
• COOL: Conservation Online (Stanford U.)
• Tom Davis (Birmingham U.) (page for courses on bibliography [printing, handwriting, the web] and on theories of the mind
• Feminism and Writing Technologies ("investigates specific technologies--such as, alphabet, moveable type, index, pencil, typewriter, xerox machine, computer, internet--which are historically and currently enmeshed in multinational divisions of labor") (Katie King, U. Maryland) | The Politics of the Oral and the Written: Feminism and Writing Technologies (Katie King's course)
• Michael Fuller (U. Calif., Irvine), "Gatekeepers of Memory: Issues in the Chinese Efforts to Organize Their Textual Legacy"
• Images of Orality and Literacy in Greek Iconography of the Fifth, Fourth and Third Centuries BCE (James O'Donnell)
• Language Machines: The Technologies of Literary and Cultural Production, Essays fromthe English Institute, eds. Jeffrey Masten, Peter Stallybrass, Nancy J. Vickers (New York and London: Routledge, 1997)
• Media History Project
  1. Selected Links
  2. Keywords, Concepts, & Theorists
  3. Time Line/Media History
  4. The Dead Media Archives
  5. Oral & Scribal Culture
  6. Printing & Print Culture
  7. Journalism
  8. Comics
  9. Telegraphy
  10. Telephony
  11. Sound Recording
  12. Photography
  13. Radio
  14. Film
  15. Television
  16. Computing
  17. General Historical Reference
• Reading Matters: Narrative in the New Media Ecology, eds. Joseph Tabbi and Michael Wutz (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1997)
• Clifford Siskin, "The Business of Romanticism" (1997) ("the particular configuration of genres we call Literature is, in fact, a specific historical instance of a larger category--the technology of writing") (Romantic Circles)

The Voice (Orality)

• Center for Studies in Oral Tradition at U. Missouri, Columbia
• John Miles Foley, "Oral Formulaic Theory and Research: An Introduction and Annotated Bibliography" (1985)

The Manuscript

• Bodleian Library Image Catalogue (.gif and .jpg images of manuscripts; thumbnail index and higher-resolution)
• Martin Irvine (Georgetown U.), "The Technology of the Manuscript Book" (overview of history of the codex manuscript; includes illustrations)
• Kevin S. Kiernan (U. Kentucky), "Digital Preservation, Restoration, and Dissemination of Medieval Manuscripts"
• A Leonardo da Vinci Notebook (Codex Arundel) (British Library exhibit)
• Arthur F. Marotti, Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric (Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell Univ. Press, 1995)
• RuneType: The Rune Typology Project--Computerizing Runic Inscriptions at the History Museum in Bergen) (searchable)
• Emery Snyder (Princeton U.), "Baroque Simulacra" (1996) (on the relation between early modern manuscript culture, mnemotechnics, historical reading habits, the book, and hypertext)
• Technology of the Word in the Middle Ages (manuscript images) (Jim O'Donnell, U. Penn.)

The Book (History of Print)

• Charles Bernstein (State U. of New York, Buffalo), Review of Johanna Drucker, The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909-1923 (1994) (Project Muse, Johns Hopkins U. Press)
• Bibliography of Early Printing History (The Colonna Project, Rutgers U.)
• A Brief History of Venice in Publishing (The Colonna Project, Rutgers U.)
• Center for Book Arts (Richard Minsky)
• The Colonna Project (Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, 15th C.) ("When . . . initially published, it was a technical achievement in a barely fledgling craft. The world of publishing was a rough and tumble place - but Aldus Manutius, a scholar already in advancing years, brought together pre-eminent scholars and craftsmen to painstakingly create a work still breathtaking in its complexity and beauty") (Information Media Design Group, Rutgers U.)
• Color Printing in the 19th Century (exhibition at Hugh M. Morris Library U. Delaware Library; includes explanations of intaglio, relief, lithography, and nature printing and photomechanical processes)
• Early Printed Books Project, Oxford U.
• Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1983) [abridged edition of 2-vol. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, 1979]
• Don Etherington & Matt Roberts, Etherington and Roberts Dictionary-Electronic Edition (glossary of bookbinding and conservation terms)
• Graphion's Online Type Museum
• History of Books and Printing: A Research Guide (bibliographies) (New York Public Library)
• Ivan Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh's "Didascalion", (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1993)
• Interactive Bibliography of Writings on Typography (annotated bibliography with links to publishers' information on the works) (Chris Grooms, Collin County Community C., Texas)
• Introduction to Bookbinding (Douglas W. Jones, U. Iowa)
• The Inscription Project: A Modern Look at Writing (a survey of the history, technology, and genres of writing) (Amit Asaravala)
• Bruce Jones (U. California, San Diego), "Manuscripts, Books, and Maps: The Printing Press and a Changing World"
  1. Introduction
  2. Four Important Periods in the History of the Book
  3. The Rise of the University
  4. The Development of Print Technology
  5. Luther and the Protestant Reformation
  6. The Rise of Vernacular Languages and Nation States and the Decline of the Roman Catholic Church
• Keigwin and Mathews Collection (Revolutionary-era American newspapers)
• Koninklijke Bibliotheek: Historical Dutch Bookmaking & Typography
  1. Typography and Design Until 1800
  2. Modern Typography and Design
  3. Book Bindings and Design
  4. Decorated Paper and Papermaking
• The Letterpress Pages (John Labovitz)
• James J. O'Donnell (U. Penn)
  1. (course) Cultures of the Book (1996) ("explores ways in which the material forms of the 'book,' from antiquity to the present, shape the cultures of those who use them")
     • "Course Bibliography"
     • Chinese Textual Practices
     • Burning Books
  2. (course) Transformations of Language (1991) | Bibliography
• On-Line Literary Resources: Bibliography & History of the Book (Jack Lynch, U. Penn)
• The Planets and Their Children: A Blockbook of Medieval Popular Astrology ("a hypermedia presentation of a blockbook or "Planetenbuch", in which I have attempted to make the 15th-century experience of reading a popular astrology text accessible to a modern, nonspecialist audience") (Marianne Hansen)
• Prairie Paper Project (Douglas W. Jones, U. Iowa)
• Printing: History and Development (overview) (Jones International Ltd.)
• Printmaking: On Line Information (Arvon Wellen, Anglia Polytechnic U., Cambridge, UK)
  1. Links Related to Printmaking
  2. Printmaking Techniques and History
• Resources of Scholarly Societies - Bibliography & History of the Book (U. Waterloo)
• SHARP Web: Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, & Publishing (metapage of publisher archives, publishers' pages, syllabi, bibliographies, online exhibits, calls for papers, and other resources related to the history of published discourse) (Patrick Leary, Indiana U., Bloomington)
  • SHARP-L: Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, & Publishing Listserv (info & subscription address)
  • Prospectus for Book History MA (includes bibliography) (Robin Alston, U. College, London, for SHARPWeb),
  • Publishers' Archives: Weedon List (text file)
  • Publishers' Archives: Albinski List (text file)
  • Publishers' Materials at the McFarlin Library, U. of Tulsa (Sidney F. Huttner, U. of Tulsa, for SHARPWeb)
• Emery Snyder (Princeton U.), "Baroque Simulacra" (1996) (on the relation between early modern manuscript culture, mnemotechnics, historical reading habits, the book, and hypertext)
• Daniel Traister (U. Penn) (course syllabi)
  • "History of Books and Printing"
  • "History of Books and Printing, 1800-1950"
• U. Alabama MFA in the Book Arts Program
• U. of Iowa Center for the Book
  • About Handmade Papers
  • U. of Iowa Conservation Lab
  • U. of Lund, Sweden: Division for the History of Books and Libraries
• Kim H. Veltman, "Space, Time and Perspective in Print Culture and Electronic Media" (claims "that perspective is not simply a Renaissance phenomenon; that its temporal and kinetic dimensions actually require electronic media; that these have basic implications for our concepts of knowledge and that a new era in the understanding of perspective is therefore about to begin") (McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology)

Late 19th- and Earlier 20th-Century Media

• General Media Resources
  • Daniel Chandler (U. Wales Aberystwyth)
    • "Cultivation Theory" (media theory regarding effects of TV-watching)
    • "The 'Grammar' of Television and Film" (overview and glossary)
    • "Marxist Approaches to Mass Media" (hypertext guide)
    • "Processes of Mediation"
    • "Semiotics for Beginners"
    • "Technological Determinism"
    • "Texts and the Construction of Meaning"
    • Transmission Model of Communication
    • Uses and Gratifications: Why do People Watch Television?
    • "Using the Telephone"
  • Information Age: People, Information & Technology (Smithsonian Exhibit: pictures and info from the history of early telegraphy, telephony, and cybernetics)
• Telegraphy
  • Information Age: People, Information & Technology (Smithsonian Exhibit: pictures and info from the history of early telegraphy, telephony, and cybernetics)
• Telephony
  • S.H. Aronson, "The Sociology of the Telephone," International Journal of Comparative Sociology 12 (1971): 153-67
  • Joshua Graham Baldner, "The Telephone: Impact and Expansion"
  • Daniel Chandler (U. Wales Aberystwyth), "Using the Telephone"
  • H.S. Dordick
    1. "The Social Uses of the Telephone," in Zerdick (1989), pp. 221-38
    2. and R. LaRose, The Telephone in Daily Life: A Study of Personal Telephone Use (Philadelphia, PA: Temple Univ. Press, 1992)
  • C.S. Fischer, America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940 (Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press, 1992)
  • A. Hardy, The Role of the Telephone in Economic Development (Stanford, CA: Institute for Communication Research, Stanford Univ., Jan. 1980)
  • Information Age: People, Information & Technology (Smithsonian Exhibit: pictures and info from the history of early telegraphy, telephony, and cybernetics)
  • Media History Project: Telephony
  • I. de Sola Pool, The Social Impact of the Telephone (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977)
  • Telemuseum (history of telecommunications) (Telecommunications Museum, Stockholm)
  • A. Zerdick and U. Lang, ed., Soziologie des Telefons (Berlin: Freie Universitat, 1989)
• The Typewriter
  • The Classic Typewriter Page (Richard Polt)
• Radio
  • Marconi Celebration (online resources and pictures relating to the radio inventor) (Stephen Manley & Chad MacDonald) | Marconi Centennial Celebration (another Marconi page)
  • Ellen Hume (Annenberg Washington Program), "Tabloids, Talk Radio, and the Future of News: Technology's Impact on Journalism"
• Audio Recording
  • Recording Technology History: A Chronology (Steve Schoenher, U. California, San Diego)
• Photography
  • The History of Photography Group
• Television and Video
  • History of TV Advertising (Advertising Age)
  • Crystal Kile (Bowling Green State U.), Television as Popular Culture (course)
  • M. Levy, ed., The VCR Age (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1989)
  • C. Ogan, "The Worldwide Culture and Economic Impact of Video," in M. Levy (1989), pp. 230-52
  • Georgette Wang, "Video Boom in Taiwan: Blessing or Curse?" The Third Channel 2 (1986): 365-79

Hypertext

• Espen J. Aarseth, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1997)
• Sven Birkerts, Carolyn Guyer, Bob Stein, and Michael Joyce, "Page versus Pixel: Part One of FEED's Dialogue on Electronic Text" (June 1995)
• Jay David Bolter, Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates, 1991)
• Vannevar Bush
  1. "As We May Think" (1945) (HTML version of the canonical essay on hypertext; originally published in The Atlantic Monthly)
  2. Remembering the Memex: A FEED Document on Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think" ("we have reprinted major passages from Bush's original essay, with hypertext annotations from a panel of leading writers and critics, including hypertext pioneer Michael Joyce, Release 1.0's Esther Dyson, and Wen Stephenson, editor of The Atlantic Monthly's Web site, Atlantic Unbound")
• Paul Delany and George P. Landow, Hypermedia and Literary Studies (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991)
• Jane Yellowlees Douglas, " 'How do I stop this thing?': Closure and Indeterminacy in Interactive Narratives," in Hypertext and Literary Theory, ed. George Landow (Baltimore: John's Hopkins Univ. Press, 1995)
• Silvio Gaggi, From Text to Hypertext: Decentering the Subject in Fiction, Film, the Visual Arts, and Electronic Media (Philadelphia: U. Pennsylvania Press, 1997)
• Richard Grusin, "What is an Electronic Author? Theory and the Technological Fallacy," in Robert Markley, ed., Virtual Realities and Their Discontents (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1996), pp. 39-53 (critique of Lanham, Landow, Poster)
• Carolyn Guertin, "Queen Bees and the Hum of the Hive: An Overview of Feminist Hypertext's Subversive Honeycombings" (1998) (hypertext essay that offers an excellent overview of hypertext fiction by women; includes links) (BeeHive)
• Terry Harpold, "Hypertext and Hypermedia: A Selected Bibliography," in The Hypertext/Hypermedia Handbook, ed. Joe Devlin and Emily Berk (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991): 555-71 | online version
• Michael Heim, Electronic Writing: A Philosophical Study of Word Processing (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1987)
• Hypertext and Hypermedia: A Select Bibliography (extensive collection of resources) (Scott Stebelman (George Washington U.)
• Michael Joyce
  1. "Notes Toward an Unwritten Nonlinear Electronic Text: The Ends of Print Culture," Postmodern Culture 2:1 (1991) (Project Muse; subscription necessary)
  2. Of Two Minds: Hypertext Pedagogy and Poetics (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michican Press, 1995)
• Nancy Kaplan, "Politexts, Hypertext, and Other Cultural Formations in the Late Age of Print" (Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine 2:3 (March 1, 1995): 3
• George P. Landow
  1. Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1992) | Revised diskette-based digital version for PCs or Macs titled "Hypertext" in Hypertext | Revised and expanded version (titled Hypertext 2.0 ) (1997)|
  2. ed., Hyper/Text/Theory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1994)
• Richard Lanham, The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology and the Arts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993)
• Stuart Moulthrop, "Polymers, Paranoia, and the Rhetorics of Hypertext," Writing on the Edge 2.2 (Spring 1991): 152-159
• Janet H. Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (New York: Free Press / Simon and Schuster, 1997)
• Theodor Holm Nelson, Literary Machines: The Report On, and Of, Project Xanadu Concerning Word Processing, Electronic Publishing, Hypertext, Thinkertoys, Tomorrow's Intellectual Revolution, and Certain Other Topics Including Knowledge, Education and Freedom, rev. ed. (the cover gives the release number "90.1" by analogy with software releases) (Sausalito, Calif.: Mindful Press, 1990)
• Celia Pearce, The Interactive Book: A Guide to the Interactive Revolution (Indianapolis, IN: Macmillan Technical, 1997)
• James Tarling (Coventry U., UK), "The Struggle of Writing Against the Limitations of Print Culture" (1995) (BA Honors Thesis)
• John Tolva (Washington U.), "Ut Pictura Hyperpoesis: Spatial Form, Visuality, and the Digital Word" (1996) (The Seventh ACM Conference on Hypertext, Washington D.C.)
• Myron C. Tuman
  1. ed., Literacy Online: The Promise (and Peril) of Reading and Writing with Computers (Pitssburgh: Univ. Pittsburgh Press, 1992)
  2. Word Perfect: Literacy in the Computer Age (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1992)

Theoretical Approaches to Past Media Technology

• Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, eds., Materialities of Communication, trans. William Whobrey (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1994)
• Ivan Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh's "Didascalion", (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1993)
• Friedrich A. Kittler, Discourse Networks, 1800/1900, trans. Michael Metteer with Chris Cullens (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1990 (orig. pub. in German in 1985 as Aufscreibesysteme)
• Marshall McLuhan
  1. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1962)
  2. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964; rpt. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994)
• Avital Ronnel, The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1989)
• Flora Süssekind, Cinematograph of Words: Literature, Technique, and Modernization in Brazil, trans. Paulo Henriques Britto (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1997)
• Samuel Weber, Mass Mediauras: Form Technics Media (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1996)