Brunton, who studies societal and historical aspects of digital technology, presented his idea at the Usenix Annual technical conference this week in Portland, Oregon.

He presented many obsolete and obscure technologies that might seem odd today, but Brunton showed how the basic ideas behind them are hidden in current technologies. 

"Along with being fascinating and often funny, looking deeply into the history of media can offer us insights into how things work and fail to work," Brunton said. "Media technologies offer narratives to us. When we build a media platform, we are offering stories of how we think the future should be, about how we conceive of thinking and communication."

Radio, television, the Internet, CDs and vinyl records all are examples of successful media, though they represent only a fraction of the attempts to come up with new ways to "store, transmit and represent information," he said.  

The history of successful media "is not a history of teleological progress that ends up where we are, but a constant Cambrian explosion of different and diverse forms, most of which don't make it," he said.