The 2009 ICA conference in Chicago will feature a preconference entitled "The Future is Prologue: New Media, New Histories?" This preconference will showcase new scholarly work that addresses the intersection of history and new media, giving participants a chance to reflect on ways to analyze, preserve, and understand new media in a manner that is both sensitive to the past and to future needs of historical research. The history of new media is a burgeoning new subfield, but one aspect that often goes overlooked is how new media involve new ways of doing history. The purpose of this preconference is to focus attention on the shifting needs of historical scholarship about new media.
Though the preconference will provide a home for a wide range of scholarly work that fits this description, there will be a particular focus on these themes:
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The idea of 'storage' as it relates to new media and historiography.
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The contextualization of historical problems in a new media milieu.
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The changing meanings and implications of inscription as the internet more fully embraces a range of audio-visual forms of communication.
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Ideological implications of speculations regarding the future.
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The changing place of 'the virtual' in new media studies.
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Digital history.
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The reputed move away from print media to new media.
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Changing meanings of the 'global' in relation to new media.
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Ubiquity, indexing, correlation, and access.
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New media and transformations in the scholarly enterprise.
In addition to these scholarly foci, the preconference will also include a demonstration of new technologies for collaboration and visualization under development at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory, University of Illinois at Chicago.
The program for this preconference will take place all day on May 21, 2009, the date established for ICA preconferences.
The preconference is a joint initiative by the Communication History Interest Group of the ICA, New Media & Society and the Electronic Visualization Laboratory and Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The preconference will be held at The University of Illinois at Chicago, and there will be transportation available for participants and attendees from the conference hotel to the UIC campus.
