11/14/2023 0 Comments Glass speech teleprompter![]() “The more ubiquitous technology and computers become, the more likely they are to disconnect, buffer, and fail us in different ways,” she says. “When a tool breaks down, that’s the moment of knowledge production,” says Alexander, who frequently looks at technology breakdowns in her research, exploring, for example, why technological failures such as buffering or planned obsolescence are often ignored or downplayed by both users and media scholars. The paper explores how the devices became so widespread in media and politics, even as we only seem to notice them when they fail. “It’s a technology designed not to be seen.”Īlexander has now filled in that lacuna with “ Paper, glass, algorithm: teleprompters and the invisibility of screens,” co-written with Keren and published last September in the Journal of Visual Culture. “It’s literally and metaphorically transparent,” says Alexander. Even in academia, it seems, the technology is invisible. Keren asked her to help with research, but Alexander was surprised to find that, despite the ubiquity of the technology in the 21st century, scholars have written almost nothing about it. “It creates the illusion that the speaker is actually able to memorize a talk - or else, that they are charismatic enough to give this wonderful speech without having to read it line by line.”Īlexander, who is also a scholar of science and technology studies, became intrigued by the uses and abuses of teleprompters when an artist friend, Tali Keren, staged a show in which participants were asked to use one to read aloud a speech by a televangelist. “It’s a technology designed to be everywhere, and yet nowhere,” says Neta Alexander, assistant professor of film and media studies. And yet, the better a teleprompter does its job, the less aware we are of its existence. Everyone knows that, when politicians make a speech, they are not reciting it from memory, but rather reading off a scrolling screen. The teleprompter is a technological paradox. Film and media professor Neta Alexander explores the paradoxes of the teleprompter.
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