Videotape
Object Lessons
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Videotape
Narrated by:
Noe Nishizawa
Buy Now for ₹497.01
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Narrated by:
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Noe Nishizawa
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Written by:
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Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy
Object Lessons is a series of short books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
Over the span of a single decade, VHS technology changed the relationship between privacy and entertainment, pried open the closed societies behind the Iron Curtain, and then sank back into oblivion.
Its meteoric rise and fall encapsulated the dynamics of the ‘80s and foreshadowed the seismic cultural shifts to come after the Cold War.
In the West, its advent deepened the trends of the age: individualism, consumerism, the fragmentation of society, and the consolidation of corporate power in the entertainment industry and its victory over the regulatory powers of the state. In the East, it encouraged new forms of socialization and economic
exchanges, while announcing the gradual crumbling of government control over the imagination of the people.
By the mid-1990s, the VHS format was displaced by the DVD. The DVD would eventually give way to streaming. Yet the cultural legacy of the videotape continues to inform our relationship to technology, privacy, and to entertainment.©2023 Haaris Naqvi (P)2025 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
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Critic Reviews
As Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy’s incisive biography of this impactful technology reveals, over the span of a single decade, the VHS format changed the privileged relationship between privacy and entertainment, pried open the closed societies behind the Iron Curtain, and then mysteriously sank back into oblivion ... [This book is] enchanting and informative.
Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy tells the story of how videotape – once an essential medium, now a nostalgia object – set us up for the current age of streaming platforms and interfaces.
[A] celebration of the union between humanity and materiality ... In her vast memoir of experiences
with analogue technology, Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy takes on a Scheherazade-like
role, crafting a cabinet of curiosities in which the videotape weaves together audiences,
media industries, collective experiences, and a human presence within material forms.
with analogue technology, Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy takes on a Scheherazade-like
role, crafting a cabinet of curiosities in which the videotape weaves together audiences,
media industries, collective experiences, and a human presence within material forms.
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