CONCEPT
The Unsettled Period
Gitelman's term for the window during a medium's early development when its protocols are still in play — when every institutional decision is a proposal for a convention that has not yet formed.
The unsettled period is the phase of a medium's development before its protocols have consolidated into invisible infrastructure. During this period, participants improvise — proposing conventions through their choices about attribution, disclosure, pricing, evaluation, and format. The proposals accumulate. Some are adopted by institutions with the power to validate them; others are abandoned. The outcome is not determined by the technology's properties or by philosophical argument. It is determined by the weight of institutional interests and the decisions made by the actors who hold convention-setting power. Once the period ends and conventions settle, the constructed character of the arrangement becomes invisible — the conventions feel like features of the medium itself rather than contingent outcomes of a contested process. For AI-assisted cultural production, the unsettled period is now.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Unsettled periods vary in duration. The phonograph's took roughly three decades — from Edison's 1877 demonstration to the consolidation of the recorded music