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By Matthew G. Kirschenbaum Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination [Paperback]
Excellent Book
Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
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February 2, 2025not rating this b/c a lot of this went over my head but i think i maybe still kind of liked it. i like that you have to run over a harddrive with an actual fucking tank for even a CHANCE at rendering its information unrecoverable. oh and the fact that the ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* vibes ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* of postmodernism have like hugely (and detrimentally) affected how media studies handles, presents and makes claims about digital media is so funny. because like, i get it. but also we can't get blinded by the swag of the screen... we can't revisionist history mundane programs like storyspace and pretend they were sooo radical and crazy and nonlinear and epic. it was probably about as cool as, like, notion. also kirschenbaum writes with like 10% more stylistic abandon in his (often excessive) footnotes so i liked that
September 3, 2016
I was leary when I first started, on account of the (for me) immensely technical nature of the first couple of chapters, but I found the book as a whole very interesting.
The book's primary shortcoming is, I think, unavoidable. It certainly succeeds at bringing the material realities of electronic texts into the larger textual studies conversation, but that achievement comes with a great deal of internal tension. Kirschenbaum's subject matter requires him to discuss a lot of subject matter (the technicalities of magnetic encoding technologies, usage of a hex editor, the binary coding behind the ASCII character set, etc.). His arguments have to assume a certain level of technological knowledge. Yet, his book is directed primarily at an audience of English professors. He makes some valiant attempts at explaining things without becoming a primer on programming, but, as a liberal arts person, I still found myself confused a lot of the time. I understand the basic principal that all things electronic also have a physical dimension, but the finer points of the discussion were lost on me. Periodically, there would be a screen shot of, for example, Mystery House opened in a hex editor. Even toward the end of the book, the only response I found myself able to have was something along the lines of “Hmmm. A long string of unintelligible symbols.” As a reader, it's frustrating, but I have to admit that even alerting me to the fact that there is such a thing as a hex editor is no small acheivement on Kirschenbaum's part. Not that I understand what, exactly, it is that a hex editor does. But at least I know that they exist and are vaguely connected with underlying code.
Overall, Mechanisms has its frustrations (besides the technical terms, I'm convinced it could have lost 50-60 pages without suffering much ill effect), but it also has plenty of interesting things to say.
The book's primary shortcoming is, I think, unavoidable. It certainly succeeds at bringing the material realities of electronic texts into the larger textual studies conversation, but that achievement comes with a great deal of internal tension. Kirschenbaum's subject matter requires him to discuss a lot of subject matter (the technicalities of magnetic encoding technologies, usage of a hex editor, the binary coding behind the ASCII character set, etc.). His arguments have to assume a certain level of technological knowledge. Yet, his book is directed primarily at an audience of English professors. He makes some valiant attempts at explaining things without becoming a primer on programming, but, as a liberal arts person, I still found myself confused a lot of the time. I understand the basic principal that all things electronic also have a physical dimension, but the finer points of the discussion were lost on me. Periodically, there would be a screen shot of, for example, Mystery House opened in a hex editor. Even toward the end of the book, the only response I found myself able to have was something along the lines of “Hmmm. A long string of unintelligible symbols.” As a reader, it's frustrating, but I have to admit that even alerting me to the fact that there is such a thing as a hex editor is no small acheivement on Kirschenbaum's part. Not that I understand what, exactly, it is that a hex editor does. But at least I know that they exist and are vaguely connected with underlying code.
Overall, Mechanisms has its frustrations (besides the technical terms, I'm convinced it could have lost 50-60 pages without suffering much ill effect), but it also has plenty of interesting things to say.
April 6, 2009
This is an important book. Instead of complicating the writing process by understanding it in terms of larger material contexts (which is incredibly powerful and useful), Kirschenbaum offers a strategy for material analysis that drills down into the technology itself, focusing on data storage, material persistence, and interface opacity. I'm using this book as part of my lit review to carve out some space that allows for discussion of digital writing as a "material" practice, as opposed to a "virtual" one.
October 14, 2008
An excellent book for anyone interested in technology or computers. The author obviously loves both and is very good at describing them. In addition, the topic of electronic text is not addressed enough in the literature of today, this is an essential addition to any collection that considers modern media in print.
August 24, 2012
Masterful. Erudite, rich, varied, deep. An exemplary digital history.
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September 22, 2015I've read parts of this book, but I'm looking to go back over and fill in the gaps in my understanding and memory.
April 11, 2015
More technical (and drawn out) than what I would normally turn to, but fun to learn about the mechanisms of the hard drive.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews