My "something old" are microscope images from the 17th and 19th centuries, and my "something new" are recent scanning electron microscope (SEM) images.

I recommend that you go to the actual link instead of exploring the embedded image on this page because sometimes the microscope images do not materialize properly on his page. So go here: http://www.dipity.com/pmcdig/Old-and-New-Microscope-Images/.

The first set of images were drawn by Robert Hooke, and unlike the more technologically generated images of the SEM and the double microscope, Hooke's visualizations are hand-drawn. In comparing the "old" images of the 17th and 19th century with those of the 21st century, we see a move away from hand-drawn and human-authored visualizations and towards placing more of the visualization agency in the mechanical device. In what other ways does the early modern micrographer's agency differ from the modern scientific investigator's agency? Obviously my timeline obscures a lot of the historical situations that gave birth to these instruments, but this temporality exercise does invite me to think about how scientific and investigative agency changes substantially in relation to the specific technological medium that is used.