Bernhard Siegert: Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal System (1993–) [DE, EN]

“This book examines how one aspect of the social and technological situation of literature—namely, the postal system—determined how literature was produced and what was produced within literature. Language itself has the structure of a relay, where what is transmitted depends on a prior withholding. The social arrangements and technologies for achieving this transmission thus have had a particularly powerful impact on the imagination of literature as a medium.

The book has three parts. The first part reconstructs the postal conditions of classic and Romantic literature: the invention of postage in the seventeenth century, which transformed the postal system into a service meant to be used by the population (instead of by the prince alone); the sexualization of letter writing, which was introduced in the middle of the eighteenth century and changed the reading of a letter into an interpretation of intimate confessions of the soul; and Goethe’s turning of this new ontology of the letter into a logistics of literature whereby literary authorship was constructed by means of postal logistics, with the precision of engineering.

The second part analyzes nineteenth-century postal innovations that facilitated communication through letters and examines how literary works were able to live off such communication. These innovations included the reform of the post office; the invention of the postage stamp; the Universal Postal Union, which subjected letter writing to an economy of materials and uniform standards; and the telegraph and the telephone, which surpassed literature in terms of speed, economy, and analog-signal processing.

In the third part, on the basis of a close reading of Franz Kafka’s letters to his typist-fiancée, the author demonstrates how postal logistics of love and authorship have worked in the era of modern postal systems and technical media. Kafka’s correspondence is deciphered as a “war of nerves” waged by means of all available techniques and conditions of transmission.”

Publisher Brinkmann & Bose, Berlin, 1993
ISBN 3922660525
317 pages

English edition
Translated by Kevin Repp
Publisher Stanford University Press, 1999
ISBN 9780804732369
340 pages

Reviews: Peter Berz (Mediamatic, 1994), Daniel Punday (Electronic Book Review, 2000/01), Esther Leslie (Mute, 2008), Hans Kellner (19C Contexts, 2006).
Commentary: Reinhold Martin (Grey Room, 2016).

Publisher (EN)

Relais: Geschicke der Literatur als Epoche der Post, 1751-1913 (German, 1993, updated on 2012-6-13)
Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal System (English, trans. Kevin Repp, 1999, Intro and ch 1 missing, added on 2014-5-20 via lostobserver)

Digital Forensics and Born-Digital Content in Cultural Heritage Collections (2010)

“While the purview of digital forensics was once specialized to fields of law enforcement, computer security, and national defense, the increasing ubiquity of computers and electronic devices means that digital forensics is now used in a wide variety of cases and circumstances. Most records today are born digital, and libraries and other collecting institutions increasingly receive computer storage media as part of their acquisition of “papers” from writers, scholars, scientists, musicians, and public figures. This poses new challenges to librarians, archivists, and curators—challenges related to accessing and preserving legacy formats, recovering data, ensuring authenticity, and maintaining trust. The methods and tools developed by forensics experts represent a novel approach to these demands. For example, the same forensics software that indexes a criminal suspect’s hard drive allows the archivist to prepare a comprehensive manifest of the electronic files a donor has turned over for accession.

This report introduces the field of digital forensics in the cultural heritage sector and explores some points of convergence between the interests of those charged with collecting and maintaining born-digital cultural heritage materials and those charged with collecting and maintaining legal evidence.”

Written by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, Richard Ovenden, Gabriela Redwine, with research assistance from Rachel Donahue
Publisher Council on Library and Information Resources, pub149, December 2010
ISBN 9781932326376
93 pages

Publisher

PDF, PDF (updated on 2018-12-6)

David G. Post: In Search of Jefferson’s Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace (2009)

A leading Internet authority applies the political thought of Thomas Jefferson to the issue of how cyberspace should be governed.

In 1787, Thomas Jefferson, then the American Minister to France, had the “complete skeleton, skin & horns” of an American moose shipped to him in Paris and mounted in the lobby of his residence as a symbol of the vast possibilities contained in the strange and largely unexplored New World. Taking a cue from Jefferson’s efforts, David Post, one of the nation’s leading Internet scholars, here presents a pithy, colorful exploration of the still mostly undiscovered territory of cyberspace–what it is, how it works, and how it should be governed.

What law should the Internet have, and who should make it? What are we to do, and how are we to think, about online filesharing and copyright law, about Internet pornography and free speech, about controlling spam, and online gambling, and cyberterrorism, and the use of anonymous remailers, or the practice of telemedicine, or the online collection and dissemination of personal information? How can they be controlled? Should they be controlled? And by whom? Post presents the Jeffersonian ideal–small self-governing units, loosely linked together as peers in groups of larger and larger size–as a model for the Internet and for cyberspace community self-governance. Deftly drawing on Jefferson’s writings on the New World in Notes on the State of Virginia, Post draws out the many similarities (and differences) between the two terrains, vividly describing how the Internet actually functions from a technological, legal, and social perspective as he uniquely applies Jefferson’s views on natural history, law, and governance in the New World to illuminate the complexities of cyberspace.

In Search of Jefferson’s Moose is a lively, accessible, and remarkably original overview of the Internet and what it holds for the future.

Publisher Oxford University Press, 2009
Law and Current Events Masters
ISBN 0195342895, 9780195342895
244 pages

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2012-9-23)