Obermann
Summer 2000
Faculty Research Seminar

The Usable Past:
Historical Perspectives
on Digital Culture

This interdisciplinary research seminar will address issues of digital culture by examining histories of the social integration of previous new technologies and linking them to present conditions. Precedents for our own digital concerns might be found in technologies as recent as 30 or 100 years ago or as distant as the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment, the invention of movable type and the Renaissance, or the invention of paper and Classical Antiquity. A distinctive focus on four inter-related fields of knowledge will provide important touchstones:

1. audio-visual cultures' challenges or resistance to print,
2. cultures and politics of new information technologies,
3. perception and human experience,
4. the metaphysics of appearances and artifice.

By focusing on historical models, each seminar participant will be able to contribute reflections on technology, ideology, and culture — past and present.

Funded by the C. Esco and Avalon L. Obermann Fund and by the Office of the Vice President for Research.

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