プロトコルと書き込み

Lisa Gitelmanのメディア研究をめぐって

抄録

    Media studies have been influenced by dichotomies between: technology and society, "sender" and "receiver," voice and text, and acoustic culture and visual culture. However, materiality and infrastructure opens up the possibility of questioning the very conditions of these dichotomies.

    This paper examines Lisa Gitelman’s media studies as an important exemplar on materiality and infrastructure research. Gitelman defines media as "protocols," and discusses such objects as "documents" and "records."

    First, this paper examines Always Already New which theorizes media as "protocols." Media as protocols include technologies that deliver and distribute information and data, and the everyday practices and material infrastructure used in those technologies.

    Second, this paper examines Paper Knowledge, which deals with the "history of the document." Gitelman goes beyond previous studies on the history of the books and print culture to discuss microfilm, photocopying, and PDF.

    Third, this paper explores Gittelman’s first book, Scripts, Grooves and Writing Machine, which is the origin of the concept of "protocol" and the "history of documentation," published in 1999. This book is a historical exploration that can be called a social history of writing. In addition, the history of protocols on standardization and procedures has been illustrated in this book.

    This paper reveals that Gitelman’s media studies is oriented toward the history of a particular medium, as partly opposed to Friedrich Kittler’s argument on the same subject. It also discloses that Gitelman developed a "social history of truth" in humanities through her exploration of "media history." We show that Gitelman’s argument leads to the problem of standardization and the issue of industrial, mass production, and control technologies.