Hello, everybody (with apologies for cross-posting): See below for details regarding a pre-conference that will be part of the offerings at the annual ICA conference in Chicago this May. Entitled "The Future is Prologue: New Media, New Histories?," this preconference brings together scholars who are interested in considering new media in terms of history, and vice versa. There is still room for those who wish to attend this pre-conference, and we welcome all interested parties. Registration for the ICA conference and this pre-con can be found here: http://www.icahdq.org [I believe the pre-conference is called PC3 in the registration system] And let's hear it for my co-planners, Nick Jankowski and Steve Jones. Thanks, Dave The Future is Prologue: New Media, New Histories? An ICA Pre-Conference Organized by: New Media & Society, The University of Illinois at Chicago, And The Communication History Interest Group of the ICA Chicago, 21 May 2009 University of Illinois at Chicago Lecture Center C1 Schedule 8:00: Bus pickup at Marriott Hotel. Buses depart at 8:10 a.m. for UIC 8:30 a.m.-9:00 a.m.: Opening remarks 9:00 a.m.-10:15 a.m.: Roundtable 1: Storage and New Media: Beyond the Container Metaphor The idea of storage operates as one of a number of helpful-though also constraining-visions of how information operates. New media connect the controversies connected to this idea of storage to long-standing disputes concerning the social role of information. How do media connect with different modes of storage? And how do issues relating to storage in turn connect with historiographical concerns? These will be the animating ideas of this roundtable. Devon Powers, "What Was Popular? New Media, History, and the Problem of the Music Charts" Sabryna Cornish, "Correcting History: The Perils of New Media Correction in a Digital Age" Adriana de Souza e Silva and Daniel M. Sutko, "Mobile Locative Interfaces as Potentiality: Actualizing Information in Space and Space as Information" Megan Sapnar, "From Old to New and Back Again: Broadcast Histories, Software Studies, and the Work of Web Historiography" Deborah Leiter, "Hidden in Plain Sight?: The Exigence of (Electronic) Visibility for Print Materials" Erik Glyttov, "Mediated Realities: Virtual Worlds as New Media and the Preservation of Digital Ancestry" 10:15 a.m.-10:45 a.m.: Coffee Break 10:45 a.m.-12:00 p.m.: Roundtable 2: The Theoretical in the Historical: De-Centering New Media History Media historians are often trained to avoid tendencies like technological determinism and Whig history. Related to these tendencies is the practice of reifying technologies and media, setting them aside as if they were naturally separate 'things'. This roundtable pulls together papers that exemplify the practice of de-centering new and old media through grounded understandings of social praxis, understood through varying theoretical lenses. D. Travers Scott, "The Utility of Sound Studies' Theory and Method for Histories of New Media and Communication Technologies" Peter D. Schaefer, "Reflections on the Sliding Signification of 'Interface'" Klaus Bruhn Jensen & Rasmus Helles, "The Internet as a Cultural Forum: Implications for Research" Josh Lauer, "Surveillance History and the History of New Media" Benjamin Peters, "Media We Do Not Yet Know How to Talk About: History as New Media" Lance Porter, "A Multi-Method Examination of the Move from Print to New Media of Online Sports Reporters and Fans" Dawn Shepard, "The Closet and the House-Tops: Communication Technologies and the Paradox of Privacy" 12:00 p.m.-1:00 p.m.: Lunch 1:00 p.m.-2:15 p.m.: Roundtable 3: Doing History: New Media Historiography, and the History of History Historiography-understood as the methods of history and as the history of history-is of particular importance to those who take an historical approach to new media. How do new media-as storage tools and as analytic devices-intersect with the methods we use to do media history? And what methodological adjustments can we see in new media research? Jaako Suominen, "Gaming Legacy?: Four Approaches to the Relation Between Cultural Heritage and Digital Technology" Mark Brewin, "A History of the History of Objectivity" Simon Popple & David E. Morrison, "Opening the Archive: The BBC, New Media, and Media History" Meghan Dougherty, Jamaica Jones, and Steven M. Schneider, "911@10: Collaboration across Fields to Challenge Formats for New Media History" Michael Dick, "Writing a Prologue for 'Web Science': Situating an Evolving Discipline-and the New Media at its Core-Within Determinist- Constructivist Discourse and Medium Theory" Jan Fernback, "Knowledge Capital, ICTs, and the Academic Community" 2:15 p.m.-2:30 p.m.: Break. 2:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m.: Keynote address by speaker TBA 3:30 p.m.-3:45 p.m.: Break. 3:45 p.m.-5:00 p.m.: Roundtable 4: Historicizing New Media: Applying Historical Approaches to New Media Practice The future assumes numerous forms in media practice. The idea of the future-and the sense of possibility and flexibility that often comes with it-is of particular importance to new media practice. The papers collected here address the ideas of emergence and flexibility as they relate to new media. Holly Kruse, "Internet Gambling and the Changing Meanings of Domestic Space" Charles van den Heuvel, "Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web in Research from a Historical Perspective: The Designs of Paul Otlet (1868-1944) for Telecommunication and Machine Readable Documentation to Organize Research and Society" Stephanie Schulte, "Blogging into the Future: The Internet as Unmediated Proxy of the Self" Deb Aikat, "Digitally Inspired: Classic Concepts, Texts and the Pioneers Who Shaped the Evolution of Computing in 1833-1945" Carolyn Kane, "Digital Art and Experimental Color Systems at Bell Laboratories, 1965-1984: Restoring Interdisciplinary Innovations and Color Systems to Media History" Patricia T. Whalen, "The Tipping Point for Newspapers: A Snapshot of an Industry in Denial" 5:00 p.m.-6:30 p.m.: Closing Reception, featuring guided visit to the Electronic Visualization Laboratory. Though space for the EVL tours may be limited, there will be a chance for groups of approximately 25 attendees to take this tour sequentially.