Where people fail our machines will succeed - it seems to be one of the most stubborn myths in Western society. We are incessantly being bombarded with films, books, street advertising and commercials about new gadgets, new media and new futures that seem suspiciously similar to all that precedes. Imagine the power ... of the umpteenth gadget. Imagine ... that technology can go where no human has ever gone before, that technology can succeed where no human has succeeded - not only in space or in nature, but also in the interpersonal, specifically in communication with the other.
Where people fail our machines will succeed - it seems to be one of the most stubborn myths in Western society. We are incessantly being bombarded with films, books, street advertising and commercials about new gadgets, new media and new futures that seem suspiciously similar to all that precedes. Imagine the power ... of the umpteenth gadget. Imagine ... that technology can go where no human has ever gone before, that technology can succeed where no human has succeeded - not only in space or in nature, but also in the interpersonal, specifically in communication with the other.
This book investigates those technological myths and the dream of the ultimate communication medium from multiple perspectives. Building on insights provided by media archeology, Siegfried Zielinski, Bruce Sterling, Erkki Huhtamo and Timothy Druckrey spin a web of connections between the wonderful fantasy machines of Athanasius Kircher, the mania of stereoscopy, 'dead' media and archeological media art. Edwin Carels and Zoe Beloff descend into the cinematographic caverns of spiritualism and the iconography of death, while Eric Kluitenberg and John Akomfrah lift the lid on the imaginary connection machines and the 'mothership connection'. On the DVD, artistic jack-of-all-trades Peter Blegvad provides an hilarious commentary on the imaginary media with a son et lumière version of his On Imaginary Media. He also invited renowned cartoonists, including Ben Katchor, Thomas Zummer, Dick Tuinder and Jonathan Rosen, to depict their own visionary media fantasies.
