History of Digital Media

Gabriele Balbi is Assistant Professor in Media Studies at USI Università della Svizzera Italiana (Switzerland), where he is Director of the China Media Observatory and teaches media history and sociology at the Faculty of Communication Sciences. His main areas of interest are media history and historiography of communication.Paolo Magaudda is Senior Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Sociology at the University of Padova (Italy) where his research is in technology, culture, and society with particular reference to media and consumption processes. Since 2013, he has been Secretary of STS Italia, the Italian Society for the Study of Science and Technology.

"A History of Digital Media is the go-to text for a compact overview of how our current communication universe came about. Spiced with sidebars and teaching helps, the book offers a gently revisionist account that places the telephone alongside the computer as a vector of innovation. Informed both by primary historical sources and classic theoretical insights, this easily readable volume will prove an essential resource to scholars and students sure to be fascinated by how the digital, while ever-pressing on the present, is in fact anything but new." -John Durham Peters, Yale University and Benjamin Peters, University of Tulsa "An original, theoretically sophisticated and historically informed work about the digitization of media and communication. Gabriele Balbi and Paolo Magaudda’s pioneering book advances our understanding of the myths and mechanisms associated with the processes of digitization. Highly recommended." -Daya Thussu, University of Westminster, London"A History of Digital Media is a first-rate introductory text that is as delightful to read as it is informative and instructive. It tells a complicated, global story in disarmingly charming and unhurried prose. Its long-range historical synthesis is rich but not labored, and can only be the fruit of meticulous research and deep theoretical thinking. Highly recommended to beginners and experts alike." -Guobin Yang, University of Pennsylvania

• Introduction Chapter 1 – Why Study the History of Digital Media and How?1.1. Contextualizing Digital in Contemporary Societies1.2. Theoretical Paths1.3. A Few of the Benefits of a Digital Media HistoryChapter 2 – The Computer2.1. The "Mother" of All Digital Devices2.2. The Mechanical Computer Age and the Social Need for Calculation 2.3. The Birth of the Computer and the Mainframe Age2.4. The Age of Personal Computers2.5. The post-PC Age from a Global PerspectiveChapter 3 – Internet3.1. What We Mean by the Internet3.2. The Military Influence 3.3. The Academic Influence3.4 The Counter-cultural Influence3.5. The Public Service Influence 3.6. The Commercial Influence3.7. The Social Influence 3.8. Re-reading the Internet in Historical PerspectiveChapter 4 – The Mobile Phone4.1. The Origins of the Mobile Phone 4.2. Digital Rebirth and Growing up4.3. The European Digital-Bureaucratic Miracle 4.4. The Power of Routine. A Concise History of Text Messaging 4.5. A New Mobile Phone Paradigm: 3G, Smartphones and Mobile Internet 4.6. The Global Mobile Phone Fever4.7. Sociocultural Implications of Mobile ConnectivityChapter 5 – The Digitization of Analog Media5.1. Intermediality and the Digital Media Pattern5.2. Music 5.3. Publishing: Books and Newsmaking5.4. Cinema and Video5.5. Photography5.6. Television 5.7. Radio5.8. Digitization and the Interweaving of Different MediaConclusionMyths and Counter-hegemonic Narratives in the History of DigitizationChronologyAppendix: Statistical and Quantitative DataAcronyms