User:Cristinac/Annotation: Discourse Networks

Discourse Networks 1800/1900 - Friedrich Kittler

"Not every discursive configuration rests on an originary production of signs. Circa 1900 several blindnesses--of the writer, of writing, of script--come together to guarantee an elementary blindness: the blind spot of the writing act. Instead of the play between Man the sign-setter and the writing surface, the philosopher as stylus and the tablet of Nature, there is the play between type and its Other, completely removed from subjects. Its name is inscription" (195).

"The ordinary, purposeful use of language--so-called communication with others--is excluded. Syllabic hodgepodge and automatic writing, the language of children and the insane--none of it is meant for understanding eyes or ears; all of it takes the quickest path from experimental conditions to data storage" (229).

"As technological media, the gramophone and film store acoustical and optical data serially with superhuman precision. Invented at the same time by the same engineers, they launched a two-pronged attack on a monopoly that had not been granted to the book until the time of universal alphabetization: a monopoly on the storage of serial data" (245).

"After the destruction of the monopoly of writing, it becomes possible to draw up an account of its functioning" (370).

But on the fourth day he suddenly caught himself not concentrating on the equation he was supposed to be solving but reading the letters as notes, and, without being aware of it, he had already hummed a whole page of the book.... Soon, however, he was no longer laughing; he noticed that he could no longer concentrate on the mathematical value of the letters, and that the simplest sequence of letters would remind him of a musical phrase or suggest a motif. (271)

Friedrich's Kittler's seminal book, Discourse Networks 1800/1900, is a post structuralist exploration of technological media. It is a comparison between ways of absorbing information in the 19th century vs the 20th century, all the while introducing terms, such as "cloud of meaning" or "silent reading". As a result of scarce means of transcribing data in the 19th century, writing had monopoly over the imagination of people, which would mean that colours, sounds, physicalities, all belonged to the reader's creation. This 'inwardness' is lost, however, in the following century, as data storage increases in volume and forms.

A salient realisation runs through the text, namely the translative quality of media once sensory perception is transposed in a digital environment. By reducing sounds and images to a precise chain of digits that is decoded by the computer, one admits to the existence of a unifying common denominator, whose shape-shifting abilities nullifies the idea of a medium itself. Nonetheless, the divide between signified and signifier will hold until the "language channels" through which reality is being propagated will no longer be separated.

Kittler points out that the knowledge gap between engineers and end users, represented by the interface, acts as a dividing screen. Keeping the involvement of the user in the operating processes to a minimum, there is a badge of authority being bestowed upon the technological elite, that is built on "loyalty to industrial achievement". Modifying, repurposing or questioning the product is not in keeping with the role attributed by user-friendliness.

In the 1800s, the central inscription system was writing, impressions would be encapsulated in words reproduced either graphically or verbally. Through this process, each transcription of an event or object would be imbued with the story teller's personal phantasmagories. The information would pass through the interpretation of the direct perceiver as a recount. Writing would only allow a secondary source output situation, in which one would archive the reaction to the original, rather than the object itself.

With the invention of film and phonograph, the power of literature dispersed. No more was the audience dependent on someone else's recollection of events, but they could access it themselves. Together with universal alphabetization and technological data storage, the appearance of the computer contributed the element of calculation to a triad of transmission of information.