I was reading Matthew Battles’ Library: An Unquiet History last night, and he presented the idea that the western world was hungry for books and printing before Gutenberg brought movable type to the west. This is similar to the idea that I studied years ago regarding the inception of photography. The was a desire to fix the images produced by lenses and light long before there was the means. Between 1790 and 1839, no fewer than twenty people in seven European countries conceived of the idea. (see Geoff Batchen’s Burning with Desire for an account of this).
So, in studying the internet, I can’t help but think back, not to its beginnings, but to the conditions that were present prior to its creation. Similar to photography and printing in the West, was there a similar desire for the Internet before it existed? If the answer is yes, then we might look at the Internet and Web as symptoms of the information age, rather than the drivers of it. We know it is difficult to study the present, and impossible to empirically study the future, so instead of trying to debate a “current impact” (a bit of an oxymoron, I think) perhaps we can learn from looking at how we got here to begin with… If the Internet, like photography, is a product of a very specific time and place, what were the characteristics of the time and place that led to its creation and widespread use?
What do you think?