Although, methodologically, media archaeology appears to unnecessarily (or even ahistorically) presentize history, in practice it emerges from a strong moral imperative to respect the complexity of our past. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, we must "understand history as being present not only when it demands to be accepted as a responsibility and a heavy burden" — that is, not only when it historicize our present situation — "but also when there is value in allowing it to develop as a special attraction" — that is, as a curious Other that simply does not fit our historical narratives or conceptual models. In this way, the archaeological approach forces us to defamiliarize our understanding of cultures, technologies and knowledge itself.^{8Zielinski, Deep Time of the Media: Toward and Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means, trans. by Gloria Custance (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006): 3.}