Hartry Field
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199230747
- eISBN:
- 9780191710933
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199230747.003.0013
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Logic/Philosophy of Mathematics
This chapter is concerned with the extent to which supervaluation and revision theories can declare that their rules all preserve truth. The extent varies from one such theory to another, but none ...
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This chapter is concerned with the extent to which supervaluation and revision theories can declare that their rules all preserve truth. The extent varies from one such theory to another, but none can do so entirely, and many actually declare some of their rules not to be truth-preserving. The question is raised whether this makes the theories ‘self-undermining’, and a reason is given why it doesn't. Connections to Gödel's second incompleteness theorem are drawn.Less
This chapter is concerned with the extent to which supervaluation and revision theories can declare that their rules all preserve truth. The extent varies from one such theory to another, but none can do so entirely, and many actually declare some of their rules not to be truth-preserving. The question is raised whether this makes the theories ‘self-undermining’, and a reason is given why it doesn't. Connections to Gödel's second incompleteness theorem are drawn.
Nicholas Garnham
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198742258
- eISBN:
- 9780191695001
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198742258.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter examines the debate about history and its relation to the past that springs out of the confrontation between modernity and Enlightenment thought. It also argues that all debates about ...
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This chapter examines the debate about history and its relation to the past that springs out of the confrontation between modernity and Enlightenment thought. It also argues that all debates about the media necessarily mobilize historical arguments. In addition, it explores the interrelationship between different perspectives on media history, and the evaluative stances they carry with them, on the one hand and more general histories of modernity on the other. The post-modern attack on history is given. In general, it is argued that all theories of the media rest upon historical theories as to the process of the historical development of media institutions and practices and their relationship to the development of modernity and its characteristic social structures and practices.Less
This chapter examines the debate about history and its relation to the past that springs out of the confrontation between modernity and Enlightenment thought. It also argues that all debates about the media necessarily mobilize historical arguments. In addition, it explores the interrelationship between different perspectives on media history, and the evaluative stances they carry with them, on the one hand and more general histories of modernity on the other. The post-modern attack on history is given. In general, it is argued that all theories of the media rest upon historical theories as to the process of the historical development of media institutions and practices and their relationship to the development of modernity and its characteristic social structures and practices.
Ned Kock
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199586073
- eISBN:
- 9780191731358
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199586073.003.0023
- Subject:
- Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Developmental Psychology
This chapter provides a discussion of what has become known as media naturalness theory, a theory of communication media with a special focus on electronic communication, and developed based on human ...
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This chapter provides a discussion of what has become known as media naturalness theory, a theory of communication media with a special focus on electronic communication, and developed based on human evolutionary principles. The theory is centered on the media naturalness hypothesis, which argues that, other things being equal, a decrease in the degree of naturalness of a communication medium (or its degree of similarity to the face-to-face medium) leads to the following effects in connection with a communication interaction: (a) increased cognitive effort, (b) increased communication ambiguity, and (c) decreased physiological arousal. It is argued here that the media naturalness hypothesis has important implications for the selection, use and deployment of e-communication tools in organizations. Unlike some previously proposed technology-centric theories, the media naturalness theory is compatible with social theories of behaviour toward electronic communication tools. Among other things, this chapter shows that the media naturalness theory is compatible with the notion that, regardless of the obstacles posed by low naturalness media, individuals using those media to perform collabourative tasks may achieve the same or better task-related outcomes than individuals using media with higher degrees of naturalness.Less
This chapter provides a discussion of what has become known as media naturalness theory, a theory of communication media with a special focus on electronic communication, and developed based on human evolutionary principles. The theory is centered on the media naturalness hypothesis, which argues that, other things being equal, a decrease in the degree of naturalness of a communication medium (or its degree of similarity to the face-to-face medium) leads to the following effects in connection with a communication interaction: (a) increased cognitive effort, (b) increased communication ambiguity, and (c) decreased physiological arousal. It is argued here that the media naturalness hypothesis has important implications for the selection, use and deployment of e-communication tools in organizations. Unlike some previously proposed technology-centric theories, the media naturalness theory is compatible with social theories of behaviour toward electronic communication tools. Among other things, this chapter shows that the media naturalness theory is compatible with the notion that, regardless of the obstacles posed by low naturalness media, individuals using those media to perform collabourative tasks may achieve the same or better task-related outcomes than individuals using media with higher degrees of naturalness.
Matthias Vogel
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231150583
- eISBN:
- 9780231527750
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231150583.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter attempts to develop a general vocabulary for media theory, in order to show that media can be understood as sets of behavioral possibilities that do not necessarily depend on the ...
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This chapter attempts to develop a general vocabulary for media theory, in order to show that media can be understood as sets of behavioral possibilities that do not necessarily depend on the individuating power of language. A difficulty in developing media theory as an independent theory arises from an interpretationist standpoint, in which case an attempt to construct a viable theory must assume a form in which it is possible to show the plausibility of increasingly decoupling understanding from language. The short version of the resulting formulation, which shall be further explicated in this chapter, is “(M1) Every medium presents a specific number of possibilities for action that arise for the actors.”Less
This chapter attempts to develop a general vocabulary for media theory, in order to show that media can be understood as sets of behavioral possibilities that do not necessarily depend on the individuating power of language. A difficulty in developing media theory as an independent theory arises from an interpretationist standpoint, in which case an attempt to construct a viable theory must assume a form in which it is possible to show the plausibility of increasingly decoupling understanding from language. The short version of the resulting formulation, which shall be further explicated in this chapter, is “(M1) Every medium presents a specific number of possibilities for action that arise for the actors.”
Alan Liu
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226451817
- eISBN:
- 9780226452005
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226452005.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter studies "narratives of new media encounter" (accounts of how individuals and societies react to the introduction of writing, radio, television, the internet, Web 2.0, and so on) to ...
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This chapter studies "narratives of new media encounter" (accounts of how individuals and societies react to the introduction of writing, radio, television, the internet, Web 2.0, and so on) to suggest that major historical changes in the sociocultural order are mirrored in narratives of media history. Often, as in the case of Marshall McLuhan's writings, such narratives follow a plot of progressivist media determinism—of necessary change from old media to new media—even as they also reveal the more ambivalent experience of a "contact zone" between civilizations. At once descriptive and interpretive, tales of new media encounter are a foundational form of media theory—a kind of media archaeology of media theory. They show how societies experience history as communication and information media, and communication and information media as history. They register the experience of history as media history. Finishing on the promising example of a recent collection of essays on the digital humanities, the chapter concludes by asking the critical question: what is an imaginatively enriching, rather than deterministic constraining, narrative of new media encounter?Less
This chapter studies "narratives of new media encounter" (accounts of how individuals and societies react to the introduction of writing, radio, television, the internet, Web 2.0, and so on) to suggest that major historical changes in the sociocultural order are mirrored in narratives of media history. Often, as in the case of Marshall McLuhan's writings, such narratives follow a plot of progressivist media determinism—of necessary change from old media to new media—even as they also reveal the more ambivalent experience of a "contact zone" between civilizations. At once descriptive and interpretive, tales of new media encounter are a foundational form of media theory—a kind of media archaeology of media theory. They show how societies experience history as communication and information media, and communication and information media as history. They register the experience of history as media history. Finishing on the promising example of a recent collection of essays on the digital humanities, the chapter concludes by asking the critical question: what is an imaginatively enriching, rather than deterministic constraining, narrative of new media encounter?
Matthias Vogel
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231150583
- eISBN:
- 9780231527750
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231150583.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter attempts to define the concept of media through sociological, technological, and action-theoretic frameworks, in crafting a general theory of media. In social theory contexts, the ...
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This chapter attempts to define the concept of media through sociological, technological, and action-theoretic frameworks, in crafting a general theory of media. In social theory contexts, the explications characterizing media yield an astoundingly heterogeneous composite, encompassing such things as language, love, health, the formation of empirical order, and so on. From this standpoint, media theory expands to include the consequences of media, particularly in the context of societal structures, which have changed and developed in response to the use of media. The final concept of media discussed in this chapter is grounded on John Dewey's action theory. Dewey's concept plays a decisive role in differentiating art from merely purposive action, especially in the reconstruction of art as a dimension of intersubjective communication.Less
This chapter attempts to define the concept of media through sociological, technological, and action-theoretic frameworks, in crafting a general theory of media. In social theory contexts, the explications characterizing media yield an astoundingly heterogeneous composite, encompassing such things as language, love, health, the formation of empirical order, and so on. From this standpoint, media theory expands to include the consequences of media, particularly in the context of societal structures, which have changed and developed in response to the use of media. The final concept of media discussed in this chapter is grounded on John Dewey's action theory. Dewey's concept plays a decisive role in differentiating art from merely purposive action, especially in the reconstruction of art as a dimension of intersubjective communication.
Ursula K. Heise
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195335637
- eISBN:
- 9780199869022
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195335637.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Building on Ch. 1, this chapter analyzes scientific texts, novels, films and poems between the 1960s and the 1990s that explore the relationship between local, national, and global forms of identity ...
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Building on Ch. 1, this chapter analyzes scientific texts, novels, films and poems between the 1960s and the 1990s that explore the relationship between local, national, and global forms of identity and community through portrayals of population growth and urban spaces. Works from the 1960s and 1970s represent “overpopulation” in the form of urban crowding that forces individuals to remain confined to the local. Works from the 1990s, by contrast, such as David Brin’s science fiction novel Earth or John Cage’s poem “Overpopulation and Art,” imagine in sometimes utopian fashion how digital technologies open up virtual spaces that span the globe and enable new kinds of identity and community. The more recent texts highlight how the experience of virtual spaces has come to form part of living in local places, and thereby highlight the necessity of integrating such mediated experiences into environmentalist theories of inhabitation. They also provide innovative narrative and lyrical solutions to the formal problem of how to represent global connectedness in literary texts.Less
Building on Ch. 1, this chapter analyzes scientific texts, novels, films and poems between the 1960s and the 1990s that explore the relationship between local, national, and global forms of identity and community through portrayals of population growth and urban spaces. Works from the 1960s and 1970s represent “overpopulation” in the form of urban crowding that forces individuals to remain confined to the local. Works from the 1990s, by contrast, such as David Brin’s science fiction novel Earth or John Cage’s poem “Overpopulation and Art,” imagine in sometimes utopian fashion how digital technologies open up virtual spaces that span the globe and enable new kinds of identity and community. The more recent texts highlight how the experience of virtual spaces has come to form part of living in local places, and thereby highlight the necessity of integrating such mediated experiences into environmentalist theories of inhabitation. They also provide innovative narrative and lyrical solutions to the formal problem of how to represent global connectedness in literary texts.
E. Miranda and V. Dobrosavljević
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199592593
- eISBN:
- 9780191741050
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199592593.003.0006
- Subject:
- Physics, Theoretical, Computational, and Statistical Physics
This chapter provides a review of recently-developed Dynamical Mean-Field Theory (DMFT) approaches to the general problem of strongly correlated electronic systems with disorder. The chapter first ...
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This chapter provides a review of recently-developed Dynamical Mean-Field Theory (DMFT) approaches to the general problem of strongly correlated electronic systems with disorder. The chapter first describes the standard DMFT approach, which is exact in the limit of large coordination, and explain why in its simplest form it cannot capture either Anderson localization or the glassy behavior of electrons. Various extensions of DMFT are then described, including statistical DMFT, typical medium theory, and extended DMFT, methods specifically designed to overcome the limitations of the original formulation. The chapter provides an overview of the results obtained using these approaches, including the formation of electronic Griffiths phases, the self-organized criticality of the Coulomb glass, and the two-fluid behavior near Mott-Anderson transitions. Finally, the chapter outlines research directions that may provide a route to bridge the gap between the DMFT-based theories and the complementary diffusion-mode approaches to the metal-insulatorLess
This chapter provides a review of recently-developed Dynamical Mean-Field Theory (DMFT) approaches to the general problem of strongly correlated electronic systems with disorder. The chapter first describes the standard DMFT approach, which is exact in the limit of large coordination, and explain why in its simplest form it cannot capture either Anderson localization or the glassy behavior of electrons. Various extensions of DMFT are then described, including statistical DMFT, typical medium theory, and extended DMFT, methods specifically designed to overcome the limitations of the original formulation. The chapter provides an overview of the results obtained using these approaches, including the formation of electronic Griffiths phases, the self-organized criticality of the Coulomb glass, and the two-fluid behavior near Mott-Anderson transitions. Finally, the chapter outlines research directions that may provide a route to bridge the gap between the DMFT-based theories and the complementary diffusion-mode approaches to the metal-insulator
Bernhard Fulda
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199547784
- eISBN:
- 9780191720079
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199547784.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This introductory chapter underlines the importance and originality of the book as a contribution to our understanding of the fate of Weimar democracy. It reflects on the connection between media ...
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This introductory chapter underlines the importance and originality of the book as a contribution to our understanding of the fate of Weimar democracy. It reflects on the connection between media consumption and electoral behaviour, and challenges previously held assumptions about the role of the press in the political process. It provides a discussion of the difficulties of using newspapers as a historical source, and of the methodological problem of assessing something as complex as media effects. It summarizes key historical debates on the rise of Nazism, and places them in the context of media theory.Less
This introductory chapter underlines the importance and originality of the book as a contribution to our understanding of the fate of Weimar democracy. It reflects on the connection between media consumption and electoral behaviour, and challenges previously held assumptions about the role of the press in the political process. It provides a discussion of the difficulties of using newspapers as a historical source, and of the methodological problem of assessing something as complex as media effects. It summarizes key historical debates on the rise of Nazism, and places them in the context of media theory.
Bernhard Siegert
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823263752
- eISBN:
- 9780823268962
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823263752.003.0001
- Subject:
- Information Science, Communications
The chapter relates the re-emergence of cultural techniques (a concept first employed in the 19th century in an agricultural context) to the changing intellectual constellation of postwar Germany. ...
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The chapter relates the re-emergence of cultural techniques (a concept first employed in the 19th century in an agricultural context) to the changing intellectual constellation of postwar Germany. More specifically, it traces how the concept evolved from – and reacted against – so-called German media theory, a decidedly anti-hermeneutic and anti-humanist current of thought frequently associated with the work of Friedrich Kittler. Post-hermeneutic rather than anti-hermeneutic in its outlook, the reconceptualization of cultural techniques aims at presenting them as chains of operations that link humans, things, media and even animals. To investigate cultural techniques is to shift the analytic gaze from ontological distinctions to the ontic operations that gave rise to the former in the first place. The chapter also includes a discussion of the similarities and differences between German and North American posthumanism.Less
The chapter relates the re-emergence of cultural techniques (a concept first employed in the 19th century in an agricultural context) to the changing intellectual constellation of postwar Germany. More specifically, it traces how the concept evolved from – and reacted against – so-called German media theory, a decidedly anti-hermeneutic and anti-humanist current of thought frequently associated with the work of Friedrich Kittler. Post-hermeneutic rather than anti-hermeneutic in its outlook, the reconceptualization of cultural techniques aims at presenting them as chains of operations that link humans, things, media and even animals. To investigate cultural techniques is to shift the analytic gaze from ontological distinctions to the ontic operations that gave rise to the former in the first place. The chapter also includes a discussion of the similarities and differences between German and North American posthumanism.
Yohei Igarashi
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781503610040
- eISBN:
- 9781503610736
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9781503610040.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter approaches the Romantic period as an instructive earlier moment for today’s digitally networked life, and views Shelley’s poetics as offering a compelling way of being a networked being. ...
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This chapter approaches the Romantic period as an instructive earlier moment for today’s digitally networked life, and views Shelley’s poetics as offering a compelling way of being a networked being. Shelley sat at the nexus of two contemporaneous discourses: proto-sociological discourse found in Scottish conjectural histories and Romantic-era reflections on poetic communication. From this position, Shelley engages in sociological and medial thinking. He offers the obscure medium of abstract poetry as a model for a specific form of social interaction suited to modernity: an interaction that would forge a middle way between an empty commercial kind of dependence and the total intersubjectivity that he calls “love.” Reading Epipsychidion (1821) in light of these concerns, and positing a “poetry of ambiversion” that allows for both connection and disconnection, this chapter suggests that Shelley arrives at a modern ethos of communication that is neither purely business-oriented nor amatory.Less
This chapter approaches the Romantic period as an instructive earlier moment for today’s digitally networked life, and views Shelley’s poetics as offering a compelling way of being a networked being. Shelley sat at the nexus of two contemporaneous discourses: proto-sociological discourse found in Scottish conjectural histories and Romantic-era reflections on poetic communication. From this position, Shelley engages in sociological and medial thinking. He offers the obscure medium of abstract poetry as a model for a specific form of social interaction suited to modernity: an interaction that would forge a middle way between an empty commercial kind of dependence and the total intersubjectivity that he calls “love.” Reading Epipsychidion (1821) in light of these concerns, and positing a “poetry of ambiversion” that allows for both connection and disconnection, this chapter suggests that Shelley arrives at a modern ethos of communication that is neither purely business-oriented nor amatory.
John Corner
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719082603
- eISBN:
- 9781781703182
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719082603.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter considers formal issues that are pivotal for research on media forms. It argues in support of the view that a continuing address to concepts and methods for analysing the forms of media ...
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This chapter considers formal issues that are pivotal for research on media forms. It argues in support of the view that a continuing address to concepts and methods for analysing the forms of media is of the utmost importance for progress in understanding how the media work. The chapter looks at how form figures in the broader context of media theory and research, particularly in regard to ideas of medium and of content. It considers the higher-level descriptive/analytic categories of narrative and genre, in which different formal elements are active, including varieties of those modes of representation designated as realist. The chapter also discusses the varieties of realism and the comparative formal relations among sound, image and writing.Less
This chapter considers formal issues that are pivotal for research on media forms. It argues in support of the view that a continuing address to concepts and methods for analysing the forms of media is of the utmost importance for progress in understanding how the media work. The chapter looks at how form figures in the broader context of media theory and research, particularly in regard to ideas of medium and of content. It considers the higher-level descriptive/analytic categories of narrative and genre, in which different formal elements are active, including varieties of those modes of representation designated as realist. The chapter also discusses the varieties of realism and the comparative formal relations among sound, image and writing.
Mike Finnis
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198509776
- eISBN:
- 9780191709180
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198509776.003.0008
- Subject:
- Physics, Atomic, Laser, and Optical Physics
This chapter discusses two types of interatomic potentials for metallic systems that take neither the approach of perturbing a free electron gas nor of superimposing atomic charge densities and doing ...
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This chapter discusses two types of interatomic potentials for metallic systems that take neither the approach of perturbing a free electron gas nor of superimposing atomic charge densities and doing tight binding. Rather they combine aspects of both. The first is generalized pseudopotential theory, which subsumes and generalizes the pair-potential approach, while systematically adding three-body and four-body contributions to the total energy. It has proved very useful for the simulation of transition metals. The second is effective medium theory, which after much simplification becomes identical to the embedded atom method. The relative merits of different approaches are discussed.Less
This chapter discusses two types of interatomic potentials for metallic systems that take neither the approach of perturbing a free electron gas nor of superimposing atomic charge densities and doing tight binding. Rather they combine aspects of both. The first is generalized pseudopotential theory, which subsumes and generalizes the pair-potential approach, while systematically adding three-body and four-body contributions to the total energy. It has proved very useful for the simulation of transition metals. The second is effective medium theory, which after much simplification becomes identical to the embedded atom method. The relative merits of different approaches are discussed.
Leah A. Lievrouw
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780262525374
- eISBN:
- 9780262319461
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262525374.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
A newly materialist approach to the study of media technologies is emerging in several fields, including cultural studies, digital humanities, and science and technology studies (STS). Yet most ...
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A newly materialist approach to the study of media technologies is emerging in several fields, including cultural studies, digital humanities, and science and technology studies (STS). Yet most technology scholarship in the communication field, informed by classical media research, still follows a broadly constructivist line focused on the meanings, appropriations, representations and semiology of communication technology and its uses. This chapter explores the conceptualization of communication and media technologies at the intersection of STS and communication studies, surveying and comparing key concepts or schools of thought in each field. A framework for mediation is proposed as a way to theorize material artifacts, communication practices, and social arrangements or structures as mutually-constitutive elements of communication and media technology.Less
A newly materialist approach to the study of media technologies is emerging in several fields, including cultural studies, digital humanities, and science and technology studies (STS). Yet most technology scholarship in the communication field, informed by classical media research, still follows a broadly constructivist line focused on the meanings, appropriations, representations and semiology of communication technology and its uses. This chapter explores the conceptualization of communication and media technologies at the intersection of STS and communication studies, surveying and comparing key concepts or schools of thought in each field. A framework for mediation is proposed as a way to theorize material artifacts, communication practices, and social arrangements or structures as mutually-constitutive elements of communication and media technology.
Matthias Vogel
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231150583
- eISBN:
- 9780231527750
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231150583.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This book challenges the belief, dominant in contemporary philosophy, that reason is determined solely by our discursive, linguistic abilities as communicative beings. In this view, the medium of ...
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This book challenges the belief, dominant in contemporary philosophy, that reason is determined solely by our discursive, linguistic abilities as communicative beings. In this view, the medium of language is not the only force of reason. Music, art, and other nonlinguistic forms of communication and understanding are also significant. Introducing an expansive theory of mind that accounts for highly sophisticated, penetrative media, the book advances a novel conception of rationality while freeing philosophy from its exclusive attachment to linguistics. The book's media of reason treats all kinds of understanding and thought, propositional and nonpropositional, as important to the processes and production of knowledge and thinking. By developing an account of rationality grounded in a new conception of media, it raises the profile of the prelinguistic and nonlinguistic dimensions of rationality and advances the Enlightenment project, buffering it against the postmodern critique that the movement fails to appreciate aesthetic experience. Guided by the work of Jürgen Habermas, Donald Davidson, and a range of media theorists, including Marshall McLuhan, the text rebuilds, if he does not remake, the relationship among various forms of media—books, movies, newspapers, the Internet, and television—while offering an original and exciting contribution to media theory.Less
This book challenges the belief, dominant in contemporary philosophy, that reason is determined solely by our discursive, linguistic abilities as communicative beings. In this view, the medium of language is not the only force of reason. Music, art, and other nonlinguistic forms of communication and understanding are also significant. Introducing an expansive theory of mind that accounts for highly sophisticated, penetrative media, the book advances a novel conception of rationality while freeing philosophy from its exclusive attachment to linguistics. The book's media of reason treats all kinds of understanding and thought, propositional and nonpropositional, as important to the processes and production of knowledge and thinking. By developing an account of rationality grounded in a new conception of media, it raises the profile of the prelinguistic and nonlinguistic dimensions of rationality and advances the Enlightenment project, buffering it against the postmodern critique that the movement fails to appreciate aesthetic experience. Guided by the work of Jürgen Habermas, Donald Davidson, and a range of media theorists, including Marshall McLuhan, the text rebuilds, if he does not remake, the relationship among various forms of media—books, movies, newspapers, the Internet, and television—while offering an original and exciting contribution to media theory.
Wolfgang Ernst
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816677665
- eISBN:
- 9781452948065
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816677665.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
An introduction to WE’s media theory in relation to German media theory, Kittler and the wider Digital Humanities debates
An introduction to WE’s media theory in relation to German media theory, Kittler and the wider Digital Humanities debates
Wolfgang Ernst
Jussi Parikka (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816677665
- eISBN:
- 9781452948065
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816677665.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
In Ernst’s media theory, archaeology becomes archivological analysis that refuses to stay on the interface level. Instead, it reveals the technological conditions of our contemporary techniques of ...
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In Ernst’s media theory, archaeology becomes archivological analysis that refuses to stay on the interface level. Instead, it reveals the technological conditions of our contemporary techniques of memory and time. The archivological approach focuses on the infrastructure of media historical knowledge. With an extended concept of the archive, a media archaeological and archivological approach to the past means that media can not be made into “historical” objects of research only. Different media systems, from library catalogues to micro-filming, have influenced the content as well as the understanding of the historical remains of the archive itself. Alphabetic writing which has dominated the archive for centuries has dramatically been challenged by signal recording (photography, the phonograph, cinematography) and puzzled the archivists at the beginning of the age of media reproduction. Now, in the digital age, we are faced with further challenges concerning cultural memory, remembering and forgetting. Time is not registered only through historical writing but also through the microtemporality of the machines themselves. Instead of narrative and historical accounts of media history, Archives, Media and Cultural Memory that we need a more medium-specific account of the interaction of past and current media cultures. Media studies is extended into an analysis of their scientific and technological roots, while combining such specificity with exciting insights into contemporary philosophy and media theory.Less
In Ernst’s media theory, archaeology becomes archivological analysis that refuses to stay on the interface level. Instead, it reveals the technological conditions of our contemporary techniques of memory and time. The archivological approach focuses on the infrastructure of media historical knowledge. With an extended concept of the archive, a media archaeological and archivological approach to the past means that media can not be made into “historical” objects of research only. Different media systems, from library catalogues to micro-filming, have influenced the content as well as the understanding of the historical remains of the archive itself. Alphabetic writing which has dominated the archive for centuries has dramatically been challenged by signal recording (photography, the phonograph, cinematography) and puzzled the archivists at the beginning of the age of media reproduction. Now, in the digital age, we are faced with further challenges concerning cultural memory, remembering and forgetting. Time is not registered only through historical writing but also through the microtemporality of the machines themselves. Instead of narrative and historical accounts of media history, Archives, Media and Cultural Memory that we need a more medium-specific account of the interaction of past and current media cultures. Media studies is extended into an analysis of their scientific and technological roots, while combining such specificity with exciting insights into contemporary philosophy and media theory.
Boris Groys
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231146180
- eISBN:
- 9780231518499
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231146180.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
This chapter examines how the medium becomes the message. It begins by revisiting Marshall McLuhan's statement that the medium “is” the message and its implications for media theory. According to ...
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This chapter examines how the medium becomes the message. It begins by revisiting Marshall McLuhan's statement that the medium “is” the message and its implications for media theory. According to this sentence, the medium that the subject of speech uses to issue a particular statement also issues at the same time and parallel to that statement a statement of its own—the point being that the speaking subject can rarely reflect and can never consciously control this statement of the medium. This chapter also discusses the tendency of media discourse to rehumanize the media; the presumed existence of the subject of signification, notification, and communication within submedial space; McLuhan's baffling trust in medial sincerity; and how media theory continues to thrive based on the belief about the sincerity of medial signs as originally formulated by the avant-garde.Less
This chapter examines how the medium becomes the message. It begins by revisiting Marshall McLuhan's statement that the medium “is” the message and its implications for media theory. According to this sentence, the medium that the subject of speech uses to issue a particular statement also issues at the same time and parallel to that statement a statement of its own—the point being that the speaking subject can rarely reflect and can never consciously control this statement of the medium. This chapter also discusses the tendency of media discourse to rehumanize the media; the presumed existence of the subject of signification, notification, and communication within submedial space; McLuhan's baffling trust in medial sincerity; and how media theory continues to thrive based on the belief about the sincerity of medial signs as originally formulated by the avant-garde.
Anderson Blanton
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469623979
- eISBN:
- 9781469623993
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469623979.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
This chapter describes the miraculous power of the Holy Ghost and its particular mediations through the radio loudspeaker. Through this exploration of prayer translated through the radio apparatus, ...
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This chapter describes the miraculous power of the Holy Ghost and its particular mediations through the radio loudspeaker. Through this exploration of prayer translated through the radio apparatus, this chapter also introduces key performances of charismatic worship and techniques of prayer that recur throughout the book. Articulating the phenomenon of “radio tactility” as an efficacious point of contact for the communication of healing virtue, this section moves comparatively between performances of divine communication in southern Appalachia and broader Pentecostal practices of the twentieth century. While grounded in the contemporary practice of curative radio prayer among charismatic communities in southern Appalachia, this chapter also recalls formative practices of faith during the Charismatic Revival of the early 1950s, when millions of listeners tuned in to Oral Roberts’s Healing Waters radio broadcast and were instructed to put their hands on the radio during the healing prayer.Less
This chapter describes the miraculous power of the Holy Ghost and its particular mediations through the radio loudspeaker. Through this exploration of prayer translated through the radio apparatus, this chapter also introduces key performances of charismatic worship and techniques of prayer that recur throughout the book. Articulating the phenomenon of “radio tactility” as an efficacious point of contact for the communication of healing virtue, this section moves comparatively between performances of divine communication in southern Appalachia and broader Pentecostal practices of the twentieth century. While grounded in the contemporary practice of curative radio prayer among charismatic communities in southern Appalachia, this chapter also recalls formative practices of faith during the Charismatic Revival of the early 1950s, when millions of listeners tuned in to Oral Roberts’s Healing Waters radio broadcast and were instructed to put their hands on the radio during the healing prayer.
Daniel Reynolds
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190872519
- eISBN:
- 9780190872557
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190872519.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
The introduction argues that conceptual discontinuity, or dualism, has had a significant influence on the development of media theory. Many theories have held media and the mind apart from one ...
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The introduction argues that conceptual discontinuity, or dualism, has had a significant influence on the development of media theory. Many theories have held media and the mind apart from one another and from the world at large. The introduction argues that this is often a result of media theorists importing dualist conceptions of the mind into their approaches to media. It outlines an alternative history of antidualist thought in media studies, from surrealism in the 1920s through contemporary philosophy of new media, but it argues that an antidualist orientation does not always result in nondualism. The introduction suggests that an embodied, extended understanding of the mind will be key for a truly nondualist theory of media. It provides an overview of the remainder of the book, showing how the chapters work together in articulating a new theory of media and mind.Less
The introduction argues that conceptual discontinuity, or dualism, has had a significant influence on the development of media theory. Many theories have held media and the mind apart from one another and from the world at large. The introduction argues that this is often a result of media theorists importing dualist conceptions of the mind into their approaches to media. It outlines an alternative history of antidualist thought in media studies, from surrealism in the 1920s through contemporary philosophy of new media, but it argues that an antidualist orientation does not always result in nondualism. The introduction suggests that an embodied, extended understanding of the mind will be key for a truly nondualist theory of media. It provides an overview of the remainder of the book, showing how the chapters work together in articulating a new theory of media and mind.
