Abstract
Horse racing has played a significant role in the development and use of new media technologies and media spaces. With the beginning of modern horse racing in the nineteenth century, racetracks became leisure destinations, with physical spaces that structured and were structured by social and cultural practices. By the late 1800s, in the days before theme parks, tracks served as vacation sites. The invention of an early computer, the totalizator, at the turn of the twentieth century allowed horse racing to help usher in the information age. The totalizator made pari-mutuel wagering, in which race odds are determined by the bets of participants in a gambling market, manageable. It also enabled near-instantaneous data processing of bets and posting of odds, and it facilitated networks that linked live racing with remote sites: from telegraph-connected “pool rooms” to late twentieth-century off-track betting facilities (OTBs). OTBs pioneered the use of non-ambient public screens, and the arrangement of social space around public screens.
Interactive television and the Internet have moved participation in online pari-mutuel markets from public to private space, highlighting and challenging the traditional divide between public and domestic sphere. In addition, fans of racehorses use social media to share the products of their uncompensated and femininely-gendered labor, from fan videos to real-time information needed to rescue former racehorses. Indeed, throughout its modern history, the practices of horse racing have underscored the roles played by gender, race, and class in technology use.
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