www.dichtung-digital.de/Forschung

- I 6 I + I new

Railway, Ocean and Book. Harold A. Innis' "Kreuzwege der Kommunikation" [German]
It all started with books about the history of the Canadian Pacific Railway, the Canadian fur trade, and cod fishing. Out of this a special critique of the media evolved whose analysis was not driven by moral conviction. This analysis included the notion of transport media into communication technology. The author of these books is Harold A. Innis (1894-1952), professor at the University of Toronto and teacher of Marshall McLuhan .
http://www.dichtung-digital.com/2002/05-29-Simanowski.htm

Sexy is Short, Colorful, and Fast. Florian Rötzer's "Digitale Weltentwürfe" [German]
Cyberspace is to the "technical avant garde of media users" what America once was to the immigrants tired of Europe: vanishing point of desire, destiny of utopias. But this Eldorado was never what it was presumed to be: the anarchy gives way to the order of portals, interaction doesn't really bring freedom to the user, the utopia of cyberspace democracy is revealed as a mode of escapism from the public space...
http://www.dichtung-digital.com/2002/05-08-Simanowski.htm

Visions about the 21st Century in Nicholas Negroponte's "Being Digital" [German]
In the world of atoms there are books, CDs, video cassettes, newspapers - things one can touch, things which have weight, which sometimes have to be returned and almost always paid for. In the world of bits products are bodiless, intelligent, personalized, and can be manipulated and transformed. Nicholas Negroponte, advocate of the 'digital revolution' , explains what the future looks like.
http://www.dichtung-digital.com/2002/05-07-Simanowski.htm

Lev Manovich: "Language of New Media" [German]
Heiko Idensen reviews Lev Manovich's work which was announced as "the first systematic and rigorous theory of new media" and has enthusiastically been taken on board by several critics. Idensen questions why is it worthwhile reading Lev Manovich's book in the printed version or indeed read it at all? He also questions if Manovich's collection of texts really is a book about the 'language of new media'.
http://www.dichtung-digital.com/2002/03-22-Idensen.htm

Schmidt-Bergmann/Liesegang (Hgg.): "Liter@tur. Computer-Literatur-Internet" [German]
The book aims at highlighting consistency and symbiotic potential of computer technology, the endlessness of the net and and an open definition of literature. Christian Bachmann calls this digital dragonslaying: a very honorable goal which claims nothing less than to carve out the "aesthetical dimension of digital literature".
http://www.dichtung-digital.com/2002/03-22-Bachmann.htm

Stephan Porombka: "Hypertext. Zur Kritik eines digitalen Mythos" [German]
Heiko Idensen's review of the book "Hypertext" by Stephan Porombka demystifies the therein attempted demystification of digital hyper-myths. He critics the way Porombka methodically tries to root the hyperfictions of the 80ies in the totalitarian science fiction worlds of the 50ies. He criticizes how Porombka values textadventures as the only successful media format in terms of a text-reader-transfer and the way Porombka calls any attempts of exteriorizing thinking in software structure a cultural negligence.
http://www.dichtung-digital.com/2002/03-20-Idensen.htm