Record system
In his media theory , Friedrich Kittler primarily describes technical devices that are used to store data, but also "the network of techniques and institutions [...] that allow a given culture to address, store and process relevant data" as the writing system .
Phases
In terms of media genealogy , Kittler distinguishes between three phases, which he describes as the writing systems 1800 and 1900. The following phase, which one could perhaps call the "writing system 2000" , remained unnamed at Kittler.
Record system 1800
The typographic writing system with the book as the main medium ranges from Johannes Gutenberg's invention (1440/1454) to the end of the 19th century (around 1880). Texts and scores are the only time memories available .
Characteristic are the typical features of the Gutenberg galaxy such as the development of the concepts of authorship and originator , the development of aids such as addressing books by naming the author, design of the title page and pagination as well as mechanization , standardization , normalization and finally the beginning of automation of the processes and Procedures, the change from reading aloud to reading still , the onset of the educational revolution with general literacy , the change in thinking towards linearity , the associated differentiation of the sciences and the development of scientific methodology, the change in language through the development of national languages , which in turn led to the emergence of nation states.
A characteristic and formative feature of the writing system 1800 in particular is the alphabetical monopoly with the authority of authorship, formative personalities such as the "poet prince" Goethe , the pairing of creator narcissism and reader obedience and re-reading.
Record system 1900
Partial media networks from the beginning of the 20th century with the “technical primordial media” such as phonograph and gramophone , kinetoscope or film as well as the typewriter or typewriter and later television , radio , tape and post characterize the writing system 1900 . The alphabetical monopoly is broken, formative branches of science are psychophysics , psychotechnology and physiology , which also produced the first calculated images .
The first possible storage of writing , images and sound heralds the end of the Gutenberg galaxy , which other media theorists started a little later and, for example, as McLuhan galaxy ( Manuel Castells ) or - with an even later beginning - Turing galaxy ( Volker Grassmuck , Wolfgang Coy ).
"Record System 2000"
The possible successor stage is the "total media network on a digital basis" ; through the digitization of any manipulation of the data flows as are modulation , transformation, synchronization , delay , storage , keying , scrambling , scanning and mapping possible.
The computer is becoming the leading medium that integrates everything: "Instead of connecting techniques to people, absolute knowledge runs in an endless loop" . All modern media implode in the computer. There is universal media convergence .
See also
- Oral transmission
- Literacy
- Scriptorium
- Typographeum
- Vilém Flussers Communicology, the Telematic Society and Technical Image
literature
To the Gutenberg galaxy:
- Michael Giesecke : Book Printing in the Early Modern Era . A historical case study on the implementation of new information and communication technologies (stw; 1357). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1998. ISBN 3-518-28957-8
At the end of the Gutenberg galaxy:
- Friedrich Kittler : Grammophon Film Typewriter . Berlin: Brinkmann & Bose, 1986. ISBN 3-922660-17-7 (English edition: Gramophone Film Typewriter , Stanford 1999)
- Friedrich Kittler : Writing-down systems 1800/1900 . Munich: Fink, 1985. ISBN 3-7705-2881-6 (English edition: Discourse Networks 1800/1900 , with a foreword by David E. Wellbery. Stanford 1990)
- Norbert Bolz : At the end of the Gutenberg galaxy . Munich: Fink, 1993. ISBN 3-7705-2871-9
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Marshall McLuhan :
- The Gutenberg Galaxy , London 1962 (English language first edition).
- The Gutenberg Galaxy. The end of the book age , Bonn u. a. 1995 (German translation)