The Dead Media Notebook

by Bruce Sterling

  “The idea of mass producing radio receivers in which all foreign transmissions were censored was subsequently taken up by East European countries. For 25 years in Czechoslovakia the Telsa company manufactured radios whose only frequency spread communist propaganda and whose form was reminiscent of the Volsempfanger.”

  Source: INDUSTRIAL DESIGN, REFLECTIONS OF A CENTURY, edited by Jocelyn de Noblet, Director, Centre de Recherche sur la Culture Technique Flammarion/APCI, 1993 ISBN 2-08013-539-2 page 168, written by Eric Mezel

  clay tokens

  From Matt Norris

  The aforementioned Professor Denise Schmandt-Besserat teaches art history at UT Austin. Her book details her theory regarding the origin of Cuneiform, the earliest known form of writing.

  To summarize (very loosely: I was a poor student); about five or six thousand years ago people (in Mesopotamia) were begining to make the switch from nomadic hunter-gatherers to permanently settled settled cultivators.

  The first manmade “permanent” structures were not human shelters, but rather storage units for things like grain and oil. In excavating these earliest settlements, archeologists continually found small, simple, clay artifacts called, for lack of any idea of there origin or use, tokens.

  These artifacts came in numerous different shapes: balls, cones, rods, et al. They are roughly formed and bear the signs of being fired in an open fire rather then a kiln. Prof. DSB’s theory is that these items were used to signify business transactions; the comunal nature of the storage facility demanded an accounting system. In theoretical practice, one would show up at a storage facility, deposit one’s stuff, and recieve in exchange clay tokens which signified one’s stuff and could be used at a later time to redeem one’s stuff.

  At some point a clever person in need of a means of insuring that a transaction conducted by proxy could not be tampered with came up with the idea of sealing clay tokens up in a clay ball, to be busted open upon delivery (these have been recovered from sites also).

  The only drawback; you can’t tell what’s inside until it’s broke. In response to this some other clever person came up the idea of incising marks on the outside of the clay ball to signify what was within. Obviously, this rendered the original tokens inside redundant and they quickly fell to disuse.

  Source: The Origin of Writing by Denise Schmandt-Besserat

  Paul Allen revives Cinerama

  From Richard Kadrey

  Microsoft co-founder revives 1950s movie technology

  Think of it as virtual reality, 1950s-style. Seattle billionaire Paul Allen, who helped found software giant Microsoft Corp., has put his riches to work reviving a nearly extinct technology—the Cinerama movie. Allen, through his Vulcan Northwest holding company, has enlisted a team of Cinerama buffs to help retrofit his Cinerama theater in downtown Seattle to once again accommodate the spectacular ultra-wide format it was originally meant to show.

  “The hallmark of true Cinerama is a 96-foot-long curved screen that is 50 percent bigger than screens used today. Three giant projectors cast three images side-by-side. When the curtain goes up at the theater Friday, it will be the world’s only Cinerama theater capable of actually showing Cinerama movies, which have recently been seen only in a Bradford, England museum.

  “People have not seen a Cinerama movie inside a Cinerama theater for some 35 years,” Jeff Graves, Cinerama project manager, told reporters Thursday.

  “It’s just a great opportunity to show this fantastic format.” The Cinerama revival is short-lived, however. Working with the Seattle Film Festival, Allen’s theater is showing movies Friday only: “This is Cinerama”, the format’s debut flick, and the frontier epic “How the West Was Won”. The Cinerama idea was born in 1939 when inventor Fred Waller wowed the World’s Fair in New York with a rig that used 11 different projectors and a giant, domed screen.

  “The U.S. military modified the technology during World War II, using a five-projector system to create combat simulators for aircraft turret gunners. Waller further streamlined the package to three cameras and added a dazzling seven-channel audio system, premiering the first Cinerama movie in 1952. The result set the stage for vast 70mm features, surround sound and the big-screen IMAX system, said Larry Smith, president of the Cinerama Preservation Society.

  “When you’re going down a canal in Venice (in a Cinerama film), you feel like you can reach out and touch the walls. In ‘How the West Was Won’, with the horses galloping and kicking up dust, you want to cough,” Smith said.

  “It’s a virtual reality system.” Only seven films were ever made because of the difficulty and cost of dealing with the cumbersome and tricky equipment.

  “The camera weighed a thousand pounds and was very difficult to move around and get shots,” Graves said.

  “The shots they did get were breathtaking, but it wasn’t easy.” Although the Seattle theater still boasts its original three projector rooms, Allen’s team had plenty of work to do to before the movies could be shown. Workers pieced a giant screen together from nearly 2,000 vertical strips. Laws of geometry and optics mean that a screen made out of a single giant sheet warps the image too much. The massive projectors with their 34-inch reels were painstakingly restored, with some replacement parts coming from such unlikely places as Lima, Peru.

  “We took every screw out, every bolt out, repainted and did a fantastic job. So we basically have brand-new projectors, brand-new from 1952,” Graves said. Very few of the films survive, and the Seattle copies were pieced together from scraps by John Harvey, a 63-year-old enthusiast who kept Cinerama alive in the U.S. by screening the movies in his Dayton, Ohio, home for years. The project has stirred excitement in film circles. Daryl Macdonald, director of the Seattle Film Festival, said fans from as far away as Australia were flying in for Friday’s shows.

  “This is probably the most exciting thing we’ve ever been able to be involved in in our 26 years,” Macdonald said. In the end, the project hope to persuade the powers-that-be in Hollywood to take up the Cinerama cause, Graves said, so latergenerations accustomed to tiny multiplex screens can experience the three-screen wonder of Cinerama.

  Source: Reuters

  Runic Tally Sticks

  From Jonathan S Farley

  Runic Tally Sticks were sometimes plain, sometimes elaborately carved sticks of wood. On these sticks were engraved Runes. Generally, they are considered to be merchant’s labels which were then tied or stuck to goods at market in order to identify the seller, and subsequently the purchaser of the item.

  Most historians dismiss these items at this point. It is likely however, that some of these sticks were in fact a great deal more than merely merchant’s labels. It is possible that some were simple messages or letters, and records of stored information covering anything from memorable events to tax receipts.

  The word “Rune” itself derives from the Anglo-Saxon “Runa” meaning ‘mystery’, or ‘secret’. The origin of the word book, is disputed, but is generally thought to derive from the Anglo-Saxon Root “bc”, or literally beech tree.

  Most historians believe that sticks of beech were used to write upon with a pen or brush, some believe that the beech bark was stripped from the tree and used as a kind of paper.

  If the etymology of the word “Write” is examined however, the Anglo-Saxon source word “Writan” in its earliest use means ‘to scratch’ and only later on does it come to mean writing as with a pen. It is no surprise that the majority of these tally sticks are made of beech, and that the Runes or secrets were scratched or “Writan” upon them. These sticks may therefore be the etymological precursor of the present day book.

  Source: Diringer, David; The Book Before Printing; Dover Reprint 1982 Page, R I; Reading the past, Runes; University of California Press 1987 Elliott, R. W. V.; Runes; Manchester University Press; 1987

  Color Movies from Black-and-White Film: Thomascolor

  From Howard Fink

  The caption on th
e photo says it all: Richard Thomas, the inventor, demonstrates his color lens mounted on a standard 35-mm. camera. By means of this lens, both movies and stills taken with ordinary film are reproduced in full color. Thomas used a set of lenses, “optical systems” to fold the path of the light, and four colored filters to produce four images in each frame of the film. He used red, green, blue, and violet filters.

  This produced four channels of gray images on panchromatic film. Projecting the film through a similar lens created a full-color image. The registration was exact because his lens system was built with an accuracy of .0001.” Besides full-color movies available only an hour after exposure, (because of the ease in developing black-and-white film) Thomas proposed using different filters in projection to analyse military photos.

  “By changing filter combinations, certain colors may be held back and others accentuated, thus enabling the viewer to spot enemy installations that are invisible to the eye and to other color processes.”

  Source Popular Science, August 1944, pp196-199

  Totenrotel, the Medieval Wikipedia

  From Dave Bruckmayr

  Totenrotel: The word “Rotel” stems from the Latin and means “Roll”.

  Originally it was understood as every wisdom printed on a pergament scroll. The special form “Totenrotel” developed out of a popular contract of praying assistance between monasteries of a holy order.

  The most important news to medieval monks was news about the death of a brother. This kind of news was distributed on a special scroll called “Totenrotel”. Whenever a monk passed away his name was registered on the scroll to let other monasteries know for whom to pray.

  The scroll was taped to a round wooden stick and carried by a “Rotelbote” from monastery to monastery. The scrolls could be rather long, some have been as long as ten meters.

  The arrival of a “Rotelbote” was always a very special moment for the monks. It meant news, suspense and a pleasant change of the daily routine. The messenger was happily given food, wine and a place to sleep.

  The ritual: After everybody was set at the big table, the abbot of the monastery would invite the “Rotelbote” to let them know who had died at the brotherly monasteries and whose souls needed their praying assistence.

  The messenger would stand up, silence the audience, open the pergament scroll and start reading the names of the dead. He would tell details about their character and their life and death as monks. Everytime he was finished with a dead brother the monks would start a collective prayer for the soul of the passed away. This ritual could go on for quite a while depending on the number of dead monks on the “Totenrotel”.

  When all the naming and praying was done, the messenger closed the scroll and gave it to the abbot. The abbot would then register his own dead monks on the pergament scroll and write down name and arrival date of the “Rotelbote”. Finally, on one of the following days the messenger would move on to the next monastery and there the ritual was repeated.

  “Rotelboten” were not members of an holy order, they were secular people. No monk could be considered to work as a messenger beause their holy orders forced them to live secluded from the unholy” world and never to leave the monastery.

  “Rotelboten” went on foot, by horse or coach.

  Source: “The Medieval Totenrotel-Messenger, the Scrolling of a Webpage and the Proposal of the HyperScroll-Messenger” / Paper by Dave Bruckmayr / Prepared for the Popular Culture Association Conference 2000, New Orleans, USA, For more about “Totenroteln” see: “Totenroteln, Rotelboten, Rotelbilder des Benediktinerklosters zum heiligen Kreuz in Scheyern” Konrektor i. R. Werner Vitzthum, Singenbach Archiv fr Postgeschichte in Bayern, Deutschland

  Non-HTML hypertext authoring systems, circa 1993

  From Jennifer Godwin

  Written in 1993, this page reviews of “commercially available software” for authoring hypertext.

  The systems include:

  DOS: Dart, Folio VIEWS, HyperPad, HyperShell, HyperTies, HyperWriter!, Knowledge Pro, LinkWay, Orpheus

  Windows: FrameMaker, Guide, Knowledge Pro, PLUS, SmarText, ToolBook, Windows Help Compiler

  Apple: FrameMaker, Guide, HyperCard, PLUS, Storyspace

  Source: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0140.html [2015 note: This web page is still alive]

  NASA technology could save vanishing native American languages

  From Paul Nasenbeny

  NASA TECHNOLOGY COULD SAVE VANISHING NATIVE AMERICAN LANGUAGES

  The most up-to-the-minute language-instruction technology, used in the space program, may come to the rescue of some venerable old languages and cultures. Native American educators are looking at technology from NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, in their efforts to preserve and teach their peoples’ languages.

  Johnson’s Language Education Center, one of the largest and most advanced of its kind, teaches astronauts, Russian cosmonauts and others English, Russian and Japanese. Vernon Finley and Johnny Arlee, language instructors at Salish Kootenai College on the Flathead Indian Reservation at Pablo, in northwestern Montana, recently visited the language center. Arlee teaches the Salish Cultural Leadership Program at the college. The program’s goal is to pass cultural leadership on to future generations by developing leaders to replace the elders.

  “Most who still speak the Salish language are elders,” said Arlee, who at 59 is among the youngest of the fewer than 100 who still speak their native Salish language. Finley, 46, teaches Kootenai.

  “While there have been language preservation efforts, they have not produced many fluent speakers,” said Finley.

  “Unfortunately, the Kootenai are even fewer in number than the Salish, with fewer elders to speak and teach the language.” Both cultures view language fluency as a vital part of the development of future leaders. The teachers’ visit to Johnson verified that they are moving in the right direction. Although they are concerned that they must produce many of their own materials, the center provides models that they can use in developing their tools.

  “I believe the two visitors have seen technology and methodology that will help them teach and preserve their languages. It was a very productive visit, “ said Tony Vanchu, director of the Language Education Center.

  Source: NASA press release

  Primordial Interactive Television (or Winky-Dink Redux)

  From Julian Dibbell

  Long-time list subscribers may remember the early experiment in interactive television called Winky-Dink and You. Many months after that was posted, I was contacted by the daughter of one of the show’s creators, who put me in touch with her father. My interview with him, along with a patch or two of my original note to this list, formed the basis of the following essay.

  WINKY-DINK IN THE WASTELAND

  THERE’S A RUMOR going around—you may have heard it—that television as we know it is soon to be swept up and utterly transfigured by some digital-age thing they’re calling interactivity. Pay it no mind. Television has always been interactive, and if you doubt that, just consider the list of the “Top 2000 Best Things About Television” compiled not long ago by the good people at cable’s TVLand channel.

  The list meticulously ranks shows, characters, commercials, genres, catch phrases, theme songs, clich√∞s, news events, and other televisual phenomena, barely distinguishing between world-historic moments like the fall of the Berlin Wall (the 1,409th best thing) and such crumbs of nostalgia as the “little dot of light when turning off old sets” (1,289th). You may argue with the rankings—did the top-rated series, for instance, have to be I Love Lucy? Was Andy Warhol’s guest appearance on The Love Boat (950th) really a lesser thing than the phrase “I’d like to buy a vowel” (543rd)? But in its general approach the list gets its subject dead right: This is definitively how we make sense of TV. Not by attending to the coherence of the individual work, as with novels or paintings or films, but by dipping into the flow—pulling out some
floating bauble now and then, some fragment that catches our eye but doesn’t quite signify until we set it amid the bricolage of other fragments we’ve assembled in our heart’s vitrine. TV would mean nothing without the active, organizing affections of its viewers; we shape it at least as much as it shapes us.

  Interaction, in other words, lies at the heart of television as a cultural form—and always has. And if you’re still not convinced, then I’ll ask you to consider one last aspect of the TVLand Top 2000, an item that can be found just three notches above Tyne Daly and eleven below the phrase “Book ‘ em Danno.” I refer, of course, to the 1,388th best thing about television: the classic, underrecognized children’s program Winky-Dink and You.

  FIRST BROADCAST ON CBS from 1953 to 1957, and later revived for a season or two of syndication in 1969, the highly rated Winky-Dink was the earliest experiment in explicitly interactive television—and given the subsequent competition, from Warner Brothers’ mid-seventies QUBE flop to the still-tentative WebTV of today, it remains by far the most successful.

  Its success is all the more impressive for the fact that the enabling technology was approximately as sophisticated as a stone hand ax. Packaged as a “Winky-Dink Magic Television Kit” and sold through the mail at fifty cents a pop (later also marketed through toy stores in a deluxe $2.50 edition), the core elements were a transparent sheet of blue-green plastic, a box of crayons, and a rag. The plastic sheet clung to the television screen, allowing viewers to draw directly on the TV image, erasing with the cloth. And draw they did. Winky-Dink, an adventurous cartoon boy with a dog named Woofer, invariably got himself into jams involving pirates, floods, sharks, and other mortal dangers, and invariably the only way out was for the boys and girls at home to draw him a ladder, or a rocket ship, or a bridge across some gaping chasm. Typically, the show climaxed with a secret message, a block-letter word transmitted in two parts—half the strokes first (just the diagonals, say), and then the other half—so that only viewers who had traced both sets of lines in crayon would know what the secret was.