Description
New York University Press Feeling Mediated A History of Media Technology and Emotion in America 2014 Edition by Brenton J. Malin
New technologies, whether text message or telegraph,inevitably raise questions about emotion. New forms of communication bring withthem both fear and hope, on one hand allowing us deeper emotional connectionsand the ability to forge global communities, while on the other promptinganxieties about isolation and over-stimulation. FeelingMediated investigates the larger context of such concerns, considering bothhow media technologies intersect with our emotional lives and how our ideasabout these intersections influence how we think about and experience emotionand technology themselves.Drawing on extensive archival research, Brenton J. Malin exploresthe historical roots of much of our recent understanding of mediated feelings,showing how earlier ideas about the telegraph, phonograph, radio, motionpictures, and other once-new technologies continue to inform our contemporarythinking. With insightful analysis, FeelingMediated explores a series of fascinating arguments about technology andemotion that became especially heated during the early 20th century. These debates, which carried forward andtransformed earlier discussions of technology and emotion, culminated in a setof ideas that became institutionalized in the structures of American mediaproduction, advertising, social research, and policy, leaving a lasting impact onour everyday lives. Table of contents :- Acknowledgments Introduction J 1. Conflicting Feelings: Technology and Emotions from Colonial America to the New Age of Communication 2. Touching Images: Stereoscopy, Technocracy, and Popular Photographic Physicalism 3. Electrifying Voices: Recording, Radio, and the New Friendly but Formal Speech 4. Projecting Emotions: Motion Pictures, Social Science, and Emotional Self-Control 5. Connecting Centuries: The Legacies of Media Physicalism Conclusion K Notes Index About the Author