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Assimilating New Technologies Early Cinema, Sound, and Computer Imagery

Why do cinematic technologies, though promoted as 'utopian' and 'progressive', ultimately repeat earlier cultural/Visual practices? To answer this question, this paper examines cinema's integration of new technologies. It proposes that nineteenth-century institutions such as the insurance industry and the railroad provide cinema with a strategic model for choosing and regulating new cinematic technologies. To investigate this hypothesis, the paper overlays film history's three most important technological transitions: cinema's 'invention' in 1895, sound's standardisation in the 1920s, and the contemporary integration of computer-generated images (CGI). By examining the history of each technology and the film texts they produce, the paper reveals an institutional pattern of technological assimilation.

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, Vol. 5, No. 2, 51-79 (1999)
DOI: 10.1177/135485659900500205


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