Our routine and everyday use of digital and Internet technologies happen in an unrelenting present and future tense: the Internet is right now, the next viral happening is about to happen, the next software release or technology upgrade is coming soon. Yet forms of online sociality, computer networks, and even hardware like phones, tablets, and laptops have a history In DIGITAL 357, History of the Internet, we will study how computer networks came to be, how people have made often surprising use of code and network connections, and ground our approach to the unrelenting future-focused rhetoric of digital media in a deeper understanding of its past.

The history of new media extends back into the histories of media and technology far deeper than we might first imagine. Computers, software programs, networks, and the innovative social, cultural, and artistic exchanges and representations that occur through them have emerged from, adapted, and re-formed prior media like film and television. At the same time, computer media also introduced and spread new kinds of content and experiences across a range of networks and devices. Understanding the history of media and the moments when media forms emerge, converge, adapt, and shift is critical to understanding the very forms of media themselves. This class looks back at the history of media in order to best understand what our present notion of new media is and how it has come to be. Along the way, we will examine the rhetoric of innovation and “newness” that surrounds certain technologies and what their implications are. From photography to weaving, radio to television, automobiles to airplanes, we will seek to understand how the technologies of the Industrial age are part of the history of our current and future forms of new media. Students in this course will learn the history of media technologies, develop critical literacy around new media and identify key issues in digital media studies.