The Unruliness of Serials in the Nineteenth Century (and in the Digital Age)

Abstract

At the close of his well-known article, “Interpreting Serials,” Umberto Eco fancifully peeks into the deep future and invites us to:[I]magine a society in the year A.D. 3000, in which ninety percent of all our present cultural production had been destroyed and of all our television serials only one episode of Columbo had survived.