A diverse, enriching volume of media analysis from a pioneering thinker in the field Expanding on Siegfried Zielinski’s groundbreaking inquiry into “deep time” of the media, the essays in Variations on Media Thinking further the eminent media theorist’s unique method of expanded hermeneutics, which means for him interpreting technical artifacts as essential parts of our cultural lives. Covering such topics as the televisualized “Holocaust,” the ubiquity of media today, the Internet, the genealogy of sound art, and history’s first hacker movement, these essays further diversify Zielinski’s insight into the hidden layers of media development, which he first articulated in his pioneering work Deep Time of the Media. Including many previously untranslated and scarce essays, these “written time machines” open new lines of investigation for cultural scholars. From the automata of the Arabic-Islamic Renaissance (800–1200) to the largest and loudest techno-event ever, known as The Symphony of Sirens—which transformed Baku in 1922 into an immense music box of modern noise—Variations on Media Thinking covers Zielinski’s inquiries since 1975. Richly illustrated and full of provocation, brilliant insight, and fascinating research, this volume is perfect for students of media archaeology, philosophy, and technology, as well as any adventurous, rigorous thinkers engaged with culture and media.

Breaking new ground as the first transdisciplinary reader in this field, Video Theories is a resource that will form the basis for further research and teaching. While theories of video have not yet formed an academic discipline comparable to the more canonized theories of photography, film, and television, the reader offers a major step toward bridging this “video gap” in media theory, which is remarkable considering today's omnipresence of the medium through online video portals and social media. Consisting of a selection of eighty-three annotated source texts and twelve chapter introductions written by the editors, this book considers fifty years of scholarly and artistic reflections on the topic, representing an intergenerational and international set of voices. This transdisciplinary reader offers a conceptual framework for diverging and contradictory viewpoints, following the continuous transformations of what video was, is, and will be.

The Czech-Brazilian philosopher Vilém Flusser (1920–1991) has been recognized as a decisive past master in the emergence of contemporary media theory and media archeology. His work engages and also rethinks several mythologies of modernity, devising new methodologies, experimental literary practices, and expanded hermeneutics that trouble traditional practices of literary/literate knowledge, shared experience, reception, and communication. Working within an expanded concept of modernism, Flusser presciently noted the power inherent in algorithmic information apparatuses to reshape our fundamental conceptions of culture and history. In an increasingly technological world, Flusser's form of experimental theory-fiction pits philosophy against cybernetics as it forces the category of “the human” to confront the inhuman world of animals and machines. The contributors to Understanding Flusser, Understanding Modernism engage with the multiplicity of Flusser's thought as they provide a general analysis of his work, engage in comparative readings with other philosophers, and offer expanded conceptualizations of modernism. The final section of the volume includes an extended glossary clarifying the playful terminology used by Flusser, which will be a valuable resource for experts and students alike.

The recording of Indigenous voices is one of the most well-known methods of colonial ethnography. In A Decolonizing Ear, Olivia Landry offers a sceptical account of listening as a highly mediated and extractive act, influenced by technology and ideology. Returning to early ethnographic practices of voice recording and archiving at the turn of the twentieth century, with a particular focus on the German paradigm, she reveals the entanglement of listening in the logic of Euro-American empire and the ways in which contemporary films can destabilize the history of colonial sound reproduction. Landry provides close readings of several disparate documentary films from the late 1990s and the early 2000s. The book pays attention to technology and knowledge production to examine how these films employ recordings plucked from different colonial sound archives and disrupt their purposes. Drawing on film and documentary studies, sound studies, German studies, archival studies, postcolonial studies, and media history, A Decolonizing Ear develops a method of decolonizing listening from the insights provided by the films themselves.

A quest to find something new by excavating the "deep time" of media's development—not by simply looking at new media's historic forerunners, but by connecting models, machines, technologies, and accidents that have until now remained separated. Deep Time of the Media takes us on an archaeological quest into the hidden layers of media development—dynamic moments of intense activity in media design and construction that have been largely ignored in the historical-media archaeological record. Siegfried Zielinski argues that the history of the media does not proceed predictably from primitive tools to complex machinery; in Deep Time of the Media, he illuminates turning points of media history—fractures in the predictable—that help us see the new in the old. Drawing on original source materials, Zielinski explores the technology of devices for hearing and seeing through two thousand years of cultural and technological history. He discovers the contributions of "dreamers and modelers" of media worlds, from the ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles and natural philosophers of the Renaissance and Baroque periods to Russian avant-gardists of the early twentieth century. "Media are spaces of action for constructed attempts to connect what is separated," Zielinski writes. He describes models and machines that make this connection: including a theater of mirrors in sixteenth-century Naples, an automaton for musical composition created by the seventeenth-century Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, and the eighteenth-century electrical tele-writing machine of Joseph Mazzolari, among others. Uncovering these moments in the media-archaeological record, Zielinski says, brings us into a new relationship with present-day moments; these discoveries in the "deep time" media history shed light on today's media landscape and may help us map our expedition to the media future.

Do you believe that you can consistently beat the stock market if you put in the effort? —that some people have extrasensory perception? —that crime and drug abuse in America are on the rise? Many people hold one or more of these beliefs although research shows that they are not true. And it’s no wonder since advertising and some among the media promote these and many more questionable notions. Although our creative problem-solving capacity is what has made humans the successful species we are, our brains are prone to certain kinds of errors that only careful critical thinking can correct. This enlightening book discusses how to recognize faulty thinking and develop the necessary skills to become a more effective problem solver. Author Thomas Kida identifies “the six-pack of problems” that leads many of us unconsciously to accept false ideas: · We prefer stories to statistics. · We seek to confirm, not to question, our ideas. · We rarely appreciate the role of chance and coincidence in shaping events. · We sometimes misperceive the world around us. · We tend to oversimplify our thinking. · Our memories are often inaccurate. Kida vividly illustrates these tendencies with numerous examples that demonstrate how easily we can be fooled into believing something that isn’t true. In a complex society where success—in all facets of life—often requires the ability to evaluate the validity of many conflicting claims, the critical-thinking skills examined in this informative and engaging book will prove invaluable.

Novel collection of essays addressing contemporary trends in political science from a broad spectrum of interdisciplinary scholars.