I’m Grant Wythoff, a grad student in English and the Program in Media and Modernity at Princeton University. I study media theory and science fiction.
My dissertation is on the history of “gadgetry” in the American twentieth century. Basically, what I’m interested in is how the gadget is both a concrete object you can hold in your hand and a placeholder, a stand-in for a tool that has been forgotten, rigged up on the fly, or not yet invented. Unlike the more dismissive terms “gizmo” or “widget,” which denote insignificant variables, the gadget is an indeterminate device that is nevertheless fully operable in that it fulfills a particular set of technical and narrative functions. It is an object that lives a curious double life as both an actual tool and a fictional device.
Though the word “gadget” is a sort of empty container for any object whatsoever, the shape of that container changes drastically from its origins in late nineteenth century nautical jargon to its present day association with portable electronics. The important point is that the functionality of the gadget, as a perpetually evolving, abstract category of tools, is redefined for the material needs and fictional desires of each new era.
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I also like, depending on who asks:
1) early cinema, the historical avant garde, literary naturalism, Frankfurt School aesthetics, media archaeology, and the rhetoric of “content” in digital culture, or
2) soccer, Top Chef and the idea of cooking, dogs, instructables, small-scale chicken farming, and Philly sports culture.
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Feedback:
- grant.wythoff [at] gmail [dot] com
You can also find me at:
