ABSTRACT

Streaming media are often placed in a lineage of electrical technologies that promise connectivity at a distance. We argue, however, that the material-discursive entanglement of streaming is a technological descendent of pre-electrical attempts to control essential resources through flow. Inspired by John Durham Peters’s emphasis on elemental media, we examine streaming media practices that date to antiquity in order to assess infrastructures of flow today. By considering material technologies that capture and channel critical resources to be the “original” streaming media, we demonstrate how the idealized metaphor of streaming conceals the imbrication of human--technology--nature that underpins the capture and channel of flows. Consequently, we position streaming media as infrastructural, indebted to environments, and as part of a lineage that includes not only the telegraph, telephone, television, and film, but also rivers, canals, aqueducts, and pipelines.

摘要

流媒体通常被放置在一系列电气技术中，这些技术承诺远距离连接。然而，我们认为，流媒体的物质话语纠缠是前电气尝试通过流控制基本资源的技术后代。受到 John Durham Peters 对元素媒体的强调的启发，我们研究了可追溯到古代的流媒体实践，以评估当今的流基础设施。通过将捕获和引导关键资源的物质技术视为“原始”流媒体，我们展示了流媒体的理想化隐喻如何隐藏支撑流量捕获和通道的人类——技术——自然的重叠。因此，我们将流媒体定位为基础设施，受环境影响，