Notational

A case in point is the current tendency to regard the computer as the ultimate solvent that is dissolving all other media into itself. Since sound, image, text, and their associated media (such as phonography, cinema, and books) can all be converted into digital code, many commentators, including Lev Manovich and Friedrich Kittler, have claimed that there is now only one medium, the digital computer. Asserting that “one century sufficed to transform the ancient storage monopoly of writing into the omnipotence of integrated circuits,” Kittler writes that “all data flows end in a state n of Turing’s universal machine: numbers and figures become (in spite of romanticism) the key to all creatures.”” This claim has the effect of flattening into a single causal line-the convergence of all media into one-social and cultural processes that are in fact much more complex. To take the case of books, clearly it matters that print has now become a particular kind of output for digital text.