Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications

This book introduces an archaeological approach to the study of media - one that sifts through the evidence to learn how media were written about, used, designed, preserved, and sometimes discarded. Edited by Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka, with contributions from internationally prominent scholars from Europe, North America, and Japan, the essays help us understand how the media that predate today's interactive, digital forms were in their time contested, adopted and embedded in the everyday. Providing a broad overview of the many historical and theoretical facets of Media Archaeology as an emerging field, the book encourages discussion by presenting a full range of different voices. By revisiting 'old' or even 'dead' media, it provides a richer horizon for understanding 'new' media in their complex and often contradictory roles in contemporary society and culture.

Erkki Huhtamo is Professor of Design - Media Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles. Jussi Parikka is Reader at Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton, UK) and the author of Digital Contagions: A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses and Insect Media: An Archaeology of Animals and Technology.