7. The Observer’s Dilemma: To Touch or Not to Touch

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. List of Illustrations vii
4. Acknowledgments ix
5. 1. Introduction: An Archaeology of Media Archaeology 1
6. Part One. Engines of/in the Imaginary
7. 2. Dismantling the Fairy Engine: Media Archaeology as Topos Study 27
8. 3. On the Archaeology of Imaginary Media 48
9. 4. On the Origins of the Origins of the Influencing Machine 70
10. 5. Freud and the Technical Media: The Enduring Magic of the Wunderblock 95
11. Part Two. (Inter)facing Media
12. 6. The “Baby Talkie,” Domestic Media, and the Japanese Modern 123
13. 7. The Observer’s Dilemma: To Touch or Not to Touch 148
14. 8. The Game Player’s Duty: The User as the Gestalt of the Ports 164
15. 9. The Enduring Ephemeral, or The Future Is a Memory 184
16. Part III: Between Analogue and Digital
17. 10. Erased Dots and Rotten Dashes, or How to Wire Your Head for a Preservation 211
18. 11. Media Archaeography: Method and Machine versus History and Narrative of Media 239
19. 12. Mapping Noise: Techniques and Tactics of Irregularities, Interception, and Disturbance 256
20. 13. Objects of Our Affection: How Object Orientation Made Computers a Medium 278
21. 14. Digital Media Archaeology: Interpreting Computational Processes 302
22. 15. Afterword: Media Archaeology and Re-presencing the Past 323
23. Selected Bibliography 335
24. Contributors 343
25. Index 347