MECM90015 History and Philosophy of Media 2012

1. Problems of Periodisation: screen geometries

so know thou, I am the origin of this entire world and also its destruction; beyond me there is noth-ing higher, to me this All is linked as a chaplet of pearls on a thread . . . whatever natures are genu-ine, are shining or dark, they are from me, I am not i them, they are in me . . . even the divine illu-sion, Maya, is my illusion, hard to transcend, but those who follow me go beyond illusionBhaghavad Gita 7.iv, cited in Hegel’s Aesthetics (v.1, II, 1,A,1), 367

‘Since nothing falls under the concept “not identical with itself ”, I define nought as follows: 0 is the number which belongs to the concept “not identical with itself ”’ Frege, Gottlob (1974), The Foundations of Arithmetic, trans J.L. Austin, Blackwell, Oxford.: 87)

Now “why a thing is itself ” is a mean-ingless inquiry, for – to give meaning to the question ‘why’ – the fact or the existence of the thing must already be evident – e.g., that the moon is eclipsed – but the fact that a thing is itself is the single reason and the single cause to be given in answer to all such questions as why the man is man, or the musician musical, unless one were to answer, ‘because each thing is inseparable from itself, and its being one just meant this.’ This, however, is common to all things and is a short and easy way with the question.Aristotle, Metap[hysics, VII, 17: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Metaphysics/Book_VII#Part_17

A = A

A ≠ A

0,1,2...0, (0+1), (0+2), (0+3) . . . (0+n){}=0, {{}}=1, {1}=2, {2}=3 . . . {n}=n+1

Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828) Tour du gros horloge, Évreux Lithograph, 331mm x 245mm(detail of clockface above)

William Henry Fox Talbot, Latticed Window at Lacock Abbey, 1835

Stephen H. Horgan, Steinway Hall, New York Daily Graphic, December 2, 1873: first prited halftone photograph.

Bell Labs Wirephoto, first commercial transmission, New York 1935

The Quatermass Experiment, BBC TV, 1953, dir Rudolph Cartier, scr Nigel Kneale

Cathode Ray Tube

Trinitron Mask

LCD sub-pixel

Plasma Screen Pixel Array

Ritratto di Frà Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli (1495), “inventor” of double-entry bookkeeping c. 1494

NCR Class 2000 Bookkeeping and Distributing Machine 193 7

The Domesday Book, 1086

Shannon Filing Cabinet, Schlicht & Field Co., Rochester, NY, 1886 ad

Principles of contemporary media 1:

Enumeration