A history of the CD-ROM (CD-Hist)

The CD-ROM is a very first clear materialisation of media convergence, a key step in digital storage and a path towards digitalisation in the 1990s. It perfectly illustrates the high hopes for multimedia and digitalisation but also the shortening life cycles of innovation and the dynamics of media convergence. Despite a plethora of sources and born-digital heritage, CD- ROMs, as both a storage tool in the late 1980s and an entire branch of digital culture in the 1990s, are still lacking a comprehensive history encompassing technical, economic, cultural, artistic, and social dimensions and embedding this “object biography” into the longer history of storage and mediated interactions. The CD-Hist project intends to propose this key narrative that stands at the intersection of media history, digital studies, the history of digital technology and media archaeology. It draws on a wide range of sources including born-digital heritage, as many CD-ROMs have been preserved in national libraries and by the Internet Archive. The project combines a general narrative with detailed case studies that are more focused on specific types of CD-ROM (e.g. CD-ROMs used in office environments, shareware and video games). This approach enables a scalable reading of this history, entwining macro and micro perspectives and including case studies related to Luxembourg. Our historical approach is complemented by media archaeology and also contributes to public history. Indeed, dead technologies raise issues relating to their heritage and imaginaries, and CD-ROMs may also shed light on the path to digitalisation. Technological re-enactment and a public exhibition will offer complementary perspectives on past media practices, the role of design and graphical user interfaces. The CD-Hist project contributes to a better understanding of media genealogies and paths to digitalisation and materialises a first key stage in media convergence thanks to a comprehensive biography that reveals the multiple ways in which the CD-ROM can be seen as a missing link in the history of digital technology and improve our understanding of the dynamics of innovation and technological life cycles.

The CD-Hist project (C23/SC/18097856/CD-Hist) is funded for 2 years (2024-26) by the FNR.