This course will examine the effects of the introduction and invention of certain technologies in the Asia-Pacific region, from the early nineteenth to late twentieth centuries. We will learn about how technologies such as electricity, the gramophone, photography, and cartography were created within or adapted to a particular Asian locale, and examine the pre-existing modes of mediation and representation that facilitated—and often uncannily anticipated—these technologies’ invention or arrival. We will also critically examine the ways in which these technologies reshaped forms of social life and political authority, transformed perceptions of space, time, and presence, and in many cases, precipitated the emergence of ideas about cultural “tradition” and “authenticity” as that which would disappear with the spread of modern media and machines.