Paper knowledge : toward a media history of documents / Lisa Gitelman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gitelman, Lisa.

Series:

Sign, storage, transmission.

Sign, storage, transmission

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Communication and technology.

Written communication--Social aspects.

Written communication.

Communication and culture.

Authors and readers.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (225 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2014.

Summary:

Paper Knowledge is a remarkable book about the mundane: the library card, the promissory note, the movie ticket, the PDF (Portable Document Format). It is a media history of the document. Drawing examples from the 1870s, the 1930s, the 1960s, and today, Lisa Gitelman thinks across the media that the document form has come to inhabit over the last 150 years, including letterpress printing, typing and carbon paper, mimeograph, microfilm, offset printing, photocopying, and scanning. Whether examining late nineteenth century commercial, or "job" printing, or the Xerox machine and the role of reproduction in our understanding of the document, Gitelman reveals a keen eye for vernacular uses of technology. She tells nuanced, anecdote-filled stories of the waning of old technologies and the emergence of new. Along the way, she discusses documentary matters such as the relation between twentieth-century technological innovation and the management of paper, and the interdependence of computer programming and documentation. Paper Knowledge is destined to set a new agenda for media studies.

Contents:

A short history of ________

The typescript book

Xerographers of the mind

Near print and beyond paper : knowing by *.pdf

Afterword: Amateurs rush in.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780822376767

0822376768

9781306539876

1306539870

OCLC:

1139637439