Craig Robertson (4)

The author does admit during the preface that the genesis of this work was something of a satire on the arcane academic subdiscipline of media materialism. It is never clear whether the author intends the same for this book. Whatever its purpose, the result is a tediously ideological treatment that provides relatively little understanding of the topic as indicated by the title. A much more descriptive title would have been "A Critical Theory Approach to Early 20th Century Office Equipment Advertisements." It is not surprising that file cabinet marketing material would be consistent with early 20th century culture, or express the power dynamics of the1920s office environment. Morbidly fascinated by the academic pretense, I found myself circling chronically overused academic buzzwords such as modern, gendered, mode, materiality, and verticality, which appeared an astounding number of times. Treated as hugely profound concepts, these academic tropes were repeated woven into for long, boring and uncompelling hypotheses about the motivations of office equipment designers, and the organizations that purchased their products. Perhaps pragmatic motivation provides less potential for philosophical and political speculation, but it often is the case that form does largely follow function. There are multiple practical reasons why file cabinets, and their contents, ended up in vertical arrangements. After struggling to the end of this short but difficult text, I really don't know what the book is for. If it is meant to be a legitimate academic work, and not a satire, it doesn't provide much new insight into the evolution or impact of the latter stages of physical data storage technology. It gives the impression of a naïve anthropologist, peering through the lens of their own significant expectations, attempting to assign profound symbolic meaning to objects of relatively prosaic origin.… (mehr)

Craig Robertson, a professor of Communication Studies at Northeastern, provides a comprehensive history of the passport in the United States, starting from its initial use in the late 18th century. The book is divided into two parts, on the assembly of the passport (including the document itself, the applicant's name, signature, physical description and, later, his photograph), and the use of the passport as its primary role changed, from a letter of introduction to foreign governments for travelers, to an essential form of identification in the early 20th century, particularly for immigrants wishing to travel to or establish residency in the US. I was interested to learn that married women did not routinely receive their own passports until the women's suffrage movement took place, as respectable women always traveled in the presence of their husbands, whose passport photograph included their wives and children; and that the upper and middle classes resented having to use passports as a form of identification, as many felt that this document was most appropriate to keep anarchists, non-white immigrants and other undesirables from entering the US and western European countries.

The book includes several interesting personal stories, including the one that opens the book about a Danish man who was encouraged to shave off his Kaiser Wilhelm mustache upon entering Germany, and then was denied entry to the US after his clean shaven face did not match his passport photo. However, I found most of the book to be a bit dry and academic, and there was almost no discussion or analysis about the history and use of the passport after the 1920s, which would have made this a more interesting book for me.… (mehr)