TY - BOOK AU - Sconce,Jeffrey TI - Haunted media: electronic presence from telegraphy to television SN - 0822325535 (cloth : alk. paper) AV - P 96 S422h 2000 U1 - 302.2309 PY - 2000/// CY - Durham, NC PB - Duke University Press KW - Mass media KW - Technological innovations KW - History KW - Telecommunication KW - Mass media and culture KW - Medios de comunicación de masas KW - Historia KW - Comunicación y tecnología KW - Estados Unidos KW - Aspectos sociales KW - Ciberespacio N1 - Includes bibliographical references (p. [233]-247) and index; 1. Mediums and media -- 2. The voice from the void -- 3. Alien ether -- 4. Static and Stasis -- 5. Simulation and psychosis N2 - "In Haunted Media Jeffrey Sconce examines American culture's persistent association of new electronic media--from the invention of the telegraph to the introduction of television and computers--with paranormal or spiritual phenomena. By offering a historical analysis of the relation between communication technologies, discourses of modernity, and metaphysical preoccupations, Sconce demonstrates how accounts of 'electronic presence' have gradually changed over the decades from a fascination with the boundaries of space and time to a more generalized anxiety over the seeming sovereignty of technology. Sconce focuses on five important cultural moments in the history of telecommunication from the mid-nineteenth century to the present: the advent of telegraphy; the arrival of wireless communication; radio's transformation into network broadcasting; the introduction of television; and contemporary debates over computers, cyberspace, and virtual reality. In the process of examining the trajectory of these technological innovations, he discusses topics such as the rise of spiritualism as a utopian response to the electronic powers presented by telegraphy and how radio, in the twentieth century, came to be regarded as a way of connecting to a more atomized vision of the afterlife."--Book cover ER -