XIX: Worlds of media & internet

 

content

Since 1600: The periodic press creates „secondary reality“

Since 1890: Audio books and features

Since 1895: The movies: The „Dream factory“

Since 1930: „Romance and Reality of Television“

„Life at second hand“

Since 1992: Like a global brain: Internet

 

 

Also media and the Internet create worlds of their own. They supply the recipient with „life at second hand“.

 

 

Since 1600: The periodic press creates „secondary reality“

 

One of the most powerful mediums to create “secondary reality” is the periodic press beginning in 1600. The modeling process is two-fold: cut down and embellish - sometimes to the extremes. In 1635 the Swiss artist Matthäus Merian the Elder created the first illustrated journal. At the same time Comenius demanded for his “Schola pansophica” (1651) the introduction of a special class hour dedicated o reading and discussing the news.

Important periodic publications for erudite people wer in France the “Mercure Ganlante” (since 1672), in Germany the “Erbauliche Ruhestunden” (since 1672) and in England the “moral weeklys” since 1700. Joseph Addison described the aim of theses publications” on March 12, 1711: “to make their Instruction agreeable, and their Diversion useful. For which Reasons I shall endeavour to enliven Morality with Wit, and to temper Wit with Morality, that my Readers may, if possible, both Ways find their account in the Speculation of the Day.”

 

The Swiss writer and painter Rodolphe Toepffer draw “comics” since 1827. They were followed by satirical drawings in the Punch (1841) and by Wilhelm Busch (1865). Since 1884 magazines of comics are published. Busch's “Max and Moritz” is considered as the inspiration of the “Katzenjammer Kids” (since 1897).

 

 

Since 1890: Audio books and features

 

The first audio books were recorded around 1890. With the medium “gramophone” this kind of entertainment spread rapidly.

Since 1920 we have also radio drama, since 1937 radio documentary or feature (sound portrait).

In 1936 the German psychologist Rudolf Arnheim, since three years in exile in Rome, published his research on „Radio – an Art of Sound“ (German translation only in 1979).

 

 

Since 1895: The movies: The „Dream factory“

 

The next powerful mediums to put non-real but nearly-real worlds in the peoples heads were since 1895 the movies and since about 1936 television.

 

Public discussion on cinematography and the movies started around 1907 in

• France (René Jeanne, Charles Ford, 1961; Richard Abel, 1988; Sabine Lenk, 1989),

• Germany (Anton Kaes, 1979; Heinz-Bernd Heller, 1985; Manuel Lichtwitz, 1986; Thorsten Lorenz, 1988; Thomas Schorr, 1990; Jörg Schweinitz, 1992; Helmut H. Diederichs 1996) and

• Italy.

 

In 1911 the first film studios opened in Hollywood, and soon products of the “Hollywood dream factory” spread through the whole world. Also in 1911 the first essay on film theory was published by Ricciotto Canudo: “La naissance du sixième art” (later: "Le manifeste des 7 arts"); he saw cinema as “plastic art in motion”. After his death a collection of his articles and critics appeared as the factory of pictures (“L’usine aux images”, 1995).

 

In 1916 French literary critic Louis Delluc started writing film critics, and soon established film societies; he then get reputation as impressionistic filmmaker. In 1919 film director Germaine Dulac realized his scenario “La Fête espagnole”. Her “Writigs on Cinema (1919-1937)” have been published 1994. Already published 1920 were some critical and theoretical essays of Delluc (“Photogénie”). At the same time started another film critic: his friend Léon Moussinac. Some of his theoretical and historical works have been published 1925: “Naissance du cinéma”.

 

In 1921 the German poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal spoke of the masses of industrial workers who try to escape the mechanics and dreariness of their existence "in the dark hall with the moving pictures" to find “the substitute for their dreams”.

“They want to fill her imagination with pictures, intense pictures summarizing the essence of life; as they were formed from the inside of the looking person and shock her. Because life did not give to her such pictures.”

 

In 1924 Gilbert Seldes published “The Seven Lively Arts” in which he included

·        comic strips;

·        Hollywood movies;

·        musical comedy;

·        vaudeville;

·        radio;

·        popular music; and

·        dance.

Already in 1926 the writer Rudolf Harms published a “Philosophy of Film”. In 1931 the Austrian writer René Fülöp-Miller denoted the film industry as “Phantasiemaschine” and Rudolf Arnheim denoted once again „Film als Kunst“ (English: „Film as Art“, 1933).

 

 

Since 1930: „Romance and Reality of Television“

 

As early as 1930 a booklet was published by the “Shortwave and Televison Corporation, Station W1XAV” in Boston on the “Romance and Reality of Television”. In 1936 television was broadly propagated by exhibitions in Berlin, Paris and London. The Berlin Olympics have been televised by Telefunken. At the World’s Fair of 1939 in New York Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first president to be televised. But it needed the finishing of World War II to pave the way for the triumphal procession of television. Parallel developed computer and video games.

 

In 1951 Marshall McLuhan criticized the media culture of American advertising in “The Mechanical Bride”. Between 1954 and 1956 the French philosopher Roland Barthes wrote a good many journalistic articles on various subjects, which were collected under the title “Mythologies” (1957; Engl. selection 1972). In 1959 the German Josef Mühlbauer published “Fernsehen – Das Wunder und das Ungeheuer” (television – the miracle and the monster). The writer Otto Fedor Gmelin published since 1967 a series of brochures on the philosophy of televison.

 

 

„Life at second hand“

 

In 1967 McLuhan postulated: “The Medium is the Message”. Inspired by this, Neil Postman in 1971 founded a Program in Media Ecology at New York University.

The German writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger published in 1970 an essay: „Baukasten zu einer Theorie der Medien“. In 1997 he published a collection of articles on the freedom of the press under the same title. Meanwhile (1988) he had caricatured television in an article as „Zero medium“ („Nullmedium“):

 

In 1976 the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard published his important study “L’échange symbolique et la mort” (Engl.: Symbolic exchange and death, 1993) in which he explored the life of signs and the “simulacrum”.

In 1978 Jerry Mander presented “Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television”; the subtitle of the German edition (1979) was: “A pamphlet against life at second hand”. In 1985 Postman observed that we are “Amusing ourselves To Death”.

In 1994 the German communication scientist Angela Keppler studied the new “principle of reality” and asked, if television entertainment could be “more real than reality” (“Wirklicher als die Wirklichkeit?”).

 

 

Since 1992: Like a global brain: Internet

 

In a big essay British physicist and psychologist Peter Russel speculated in 1982 on the „Global Brain“ (the original British title was „The Awakening Earth“; the American title: „The Global Brain“, 1983).

Russell saw the earth as an integrated, self-regulating living organism, and evolving a „planetary consciousness“ and emerging a „social superorganism“. We can assume that he did not forsee the possibilities offered by the Internet only then years later.

 

The pioneering internet specifications of Tim Berners-Lee at the CERN in Geneva from 1989-94 and the first popular browsers 1992/93 opened a new dimension for information and communication for mankind – something like a “global brain”.

 

 

Bibliography

Philosophie und Theorie von Film - Rundfunk - Fernsehen – Medien