Gutenberg and the Samurai

Or, The Information Revolution is History

Bibliographic Data

ID3041995
AuthorsAdrian Johns (corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume85
Issue3
Pages859-883
Publication date2012-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnthropological Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-5491 • E-ISSN: 1534-1518
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/anq.2012.0039
OpenAlexW2056889450
LanguageEN
References cited21

This paper explores the relation between history and information revolutions, in particular the most recent such revolution, that of digitization. I argue that information revolutions are shaped by protagonists' efforts to reshape history itself, on a range of scales from the very small and contemporary to the very large and long-term. Making a digital revolution involved reconceptualizing the deeper history of print and other media, and also rethinking the local cultural processes that allowed for digital media to take effect. Reconstructing history in such ways is hard work and is always liable to foment confrontations, which often take the form of contests over prized entities like property. These contests, the paper argues, provide points of access, thanks to which we can grasp what otherwise tend to be elusive and complex cultural processes. To make my case, the paper concentrates on an attempt in the 1980s-2000s to digitize Japanese. A company named NIC (later Foursis) tried to produce a digital system that would incorporate the entire kanji character set, intending to integrate this within a broader vision to democratize the design and production of the page itself. The effort led to a catastrophic piracy case, which prompted the articulation of the historiographical claims, perspectives, and stakes in the bid to transform print practices into digital

Aesthetics · Art · Articulation (sociology) · Cultural history · Design History · Digital Revolution · Digitization · Historiography · Information revolution · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Relation (database) · Sociology · Visual arts · Anthropology · Computer Science · Digital Games and Media · Digital Humanities and Scholarship · History · Law · Media, Communication, and Education

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