This volume examines the role of history in the study of new media and of newness itself, discussing how the ‘new’ in new media must be understood to be historically constructed. Furthermore, the new is constructed with an eye on the future, or more correctly, an eye on what we think the future will be. Chapters by eminent scholars address the connection between historical consideration and new media. Some assess the historical descriptions of the development of new media; others hinge on the issue of newness as it relates to existing practices in media history. Remaining essays address the shifting patterns of storage at work in media inscription, as they relate to the practice of history, and to the past and contemporary cultural formations. Together they offer a ground-breaking assessment of the long history of new media, clearly recognizing that the new media of today will be the traditional media of tomorrow, and that an emphasis on the history of the future sheds light on what this newness can be said to represent.

David W. Park is Associate Professor of Communication at Lake Forest College. He is the founder and past chair of the International Communication Association’s Communication History Interest Group, and is co-editor of The History of Media and Communication Research: Contested Memories (Peter Lang, 2008). Nicholas W. Jankowski is Visiting Fellow at the e-Humanities Group of the Royal Netherlands Academy for Arts and Sciences (KNAW). He has co-edited some half-dozen books. Two recent edited volumes are Internet and National Elections: A Comparative Study of Web Campaigning (2007) and e-Research: Transformation in Scholarly Practice (2009). Jankowski is co-editor of the journal New Media & Society. Steve Jones is UIC Distinguished Professor, Professor of Communication, and Research Associate in the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He was the founder and first President of the Association of Internet Researchers and is co-editor of New Media & Society.

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