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"Calendar, Clock, Tower" by John Durham Peters (Communication Studies, University of Iowa) |
Abstract
This paper combines three short encyclopedia entries on “old media” that continue to play a civilizational role in religious and political institutions: calendars, clocks, and towers. The comparison of these three media hopes to make several larger theoretical points as well as to amass a range of interesting historical detail. In the case of calendars, clocks, and towers, the links between religion and the state are particularly strong. Part of what taking religion seriously as a source for studying the history of communication technology does is point to the importance of logistical media in addition to transmitting and recording media. All media face the problem of managing time, space, and power, and I argue that calendars, clocks, and towers are best understood as logistical media that give fundamental structure to the elementary forms of social organization.
About the Author
John Durham Peters is F. Wendell Miller Distinguished Professor, Department of Communication Studies, University of Iowa. His many publications include: Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication (University of Chicago Press, 1999, subsequently translated into Bulgarian, Italian, Chinese, Lithuanian, Macedonian and Ukranian); Courting the Abyss: Free Speech and the Liberal Tradition (University of Chicago Press, 2005); “Helmholtz, Edison, and Sound History.” In Memory Bytes: History, Technology, and Digital Culture. Eds. Lauren Rabinovitz and Abraham Geil (Duke University Press, 2004); "Technology and Ideology: The Case of the Telegraph Revisited." In Thinking With James Carey: Essays on Communications, Transportation, History. Eds. Jeremy Packer and Craig Robertson (Peter Lang, 2006).
Contact and Further Links
Contact Information:
125 BCSB, Department of Communication Studies
University of Iowa,
Iowa City,Iowa, 52242-1498, USA
email: jdpeters@uiowa.edu
Links: http://www.uiowa.edu/~commstud/faculty/peters/index.html
