Parallel Histories

<jats:p> This article suggests ways in which research into a nineteenth- century technology such as early cinema might be valid in understanding digital technology. It identifies a number of stylistic resemblances between early cinema, personal computing and the internet. It also claims that there is some value in applying one analytical methodology to both 'old' and 'new' media. By looking at digital technology through the filter of an extremely well developed discourse in early film history, softer determinist accounts of digital technology can emerge which are not dependent on the premises of progress nor those of various forms of Postmodernist criticism. In a reverse angle, so to speak, it also argues that a close tracking of digital technology and its critical discourses as they unfold in various entertainment forms can tell us much about the attractions and fascinations that early cinema had a century ago had for its audiences. In short it claims a continuity in audio-visual history and criticism which is a valuable addition, even antedote, to the hyperbole and unsupportable technological determinism that digital media has attracted both in academic and commercial commentary. </jats:p>