Media and the Technological Turn : Truth , Power and Resistance

Brownstone Institute of Social and Economic Research, 2024

This paper addresses the issue of contemporary technology, in the guise of the mainly internet-based media, as 'pharmaka' (plural of 'pharmakon'), which means that they are simultaneously a poison and a cure. It takes its cue from Andrew Feenberg's contention, that, 'once inside the machine' - which 19th- and 20th-century dystopians could not foresee, people could start practicing a 'politics of technology. That this is happening today, is demonstrated by discussing the contemporary mainstream media as manifestation of the 'poison' aspect of the 'pharmakon', and alternative media as expression of its 'cure' aspect, explaining why this does not merely reflect a bias in favour of the latter. Before elaborating on instances of these two countervailing practices, however, a telling example of the 'pharmakon' from Jacques Derrida's work is discussed - one that pertains to 'Plato's Pharmacy' (Derrida) and the ancient Greek's paradoxical valorisation of speech (cure) above writing (poison) in the 'Phaedrus'. It is then demonstrated, by means of paradigmatic examples, how the legacy media systematically and poisonously distort, or obfuscate, newsworthy occurrences in the world, while the alternative media provide therapeutic, substantiating evidence for its own (usually) contrary claims. This explains, in the final analysis, why the so-called 'Davos elites' complain that they 'no longer own the news'.

… 1996-2000. The years …, 2001

Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

Has technology grabbed the reins and galloped off with us under the saddle? Are entrepreneurs and research labs and marketers riding herd, spurring technological change with consequences for who we are and what we can become? Or is it all the rest of us, as users, driving what technology is developed and how it is incorporated into social and political life, for good or ill? Who deserves the credit and who the blame, for what effect? These are not new debates, but communication studies, known more for neglecting philosophy than embracing it, has not always been party to the discussions, despite a recent fascination with new technologies in journalism and mass communication. The early days of the Internet followed by ubiquitous and powerful digital machines produced a heady optimism by many about the potential of social media for bypassing traditional gatekeepers and enabling robust networks of people across the globe. But those days are now covered in the trail dust of claims of fake news, contagions of hate and violence, trolls and bots, election interference, hacking, and opinion silos. Technology, appearing now to ride roughshod over hopes for democracy and community, is viewed in much public discourse as a culprit behind a world gone rogue. Have media researchers been complicit in this swing of perceptions from utopian to dystopian? From savior to satan? From technological determinism to determined technology? Do we have enough grounding in the philosophy of technology to ask the right questions and steer a better conversation? Have we interrogated what technologies are and how and why they are developed, the uses to which they are put, and the claims made and consequences incurred? This forum asked experienced scholars in mass communication theory and research how we should think about technology, what part it plays in how, and what we know and who and what we become. What technologies should be developed, by whom, for what purposes? And on what grounds should we judge them? The contributions in this forum give us a quartet of different voices, experiences, and problematics, raising more questions than answering them. Jeremy Swartz and Janet Wasko start off by opening up considerations about what technology is and what it does, using examples of definitions from John Dewey to 841380J MQXXX10.1177/1077699019841380Journalism & Mass Communication QuarterlyInvited Forum research-article2019 352 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 96(2) Marshall McLuhan and beyond and conceptions of technology from biology and the environment to complex systems. On what grounds can we judge technologies, if they are the product of the same system as our values? More opportunities are needed for mass communication scholars to reimagine disciplinary and material boundaries and share research and engagement if we want to influence systems, they conclude. Carolyn Marvin invites us to consider the long sweep of technological changes and the pattern of disruptions that come in their wake, from the printing press forward. These disruptions fundamentally reshape our social relations, as technologies provide the "sociospatial grids foundational to communicative practice." In other words, they manage social distance and trust. Thus, changes in technology produce crises in communicative relations by disrupting expectations and introducing new suspicions. Digital technologies have produced widespread anxieties that require new conventions to re-establish, "gradually and painfully," a new social geography. Robert Logan shortens our historical view to the media developed since the 19th century, taking us through a brief tour of the phonograph, telephone, telegraph, and Internet and their unintended consequences. Initial optimism, including his own, about the possibility of decentralization of knowledge occasioned by digital media was wrong. These technologies have now turned the table on Marshall McLuhan's description of media. We are the extensions of media, completing technological systems for the profit and advantage of media businesses. He argues that as scholars we can only warn about such consequences and try to repair the damage caused by new monopolies. While Beth Coleman, too, thinks we have experienced a profound shift in our relationship to technology, it has come from decentralization-the view of the "swarm"rather than centralization. It began with the Enlightenment's elevation of humans over nature, who, hand in hand with their computational technology, achieved a reordered command-control system and a decentralized logic. Now, like runaway slaves, smart technology is "marooned"; it has escaped dominion, a coalition with a black aesthetic and politics of innovation, resistance, and freedom. The fusion of the informational and material world has created a built world that surrounds us, irresistibly beckoning. We ignore this change at our own peril, she warns. Despite their differences, all four essays challenge us to reconsider what technology is, what changes are being wrought in who we are and how we know, and what we may or may not be able to do about it. Lana Rakow, Associate Editor form, material public space as democratic resource, and the history and theory of freedom of expression.

Luhmann Conference 2021, Dubrovnik: Risks and Pathologies. Observed with Social Systems Theory, 2021

The purpose of this paper is to examine the risks and pathologies of technology. To this end, a general systems-theoretical concept of technology is first presented. Namely, Technology as a medium for controlling the boundary between dangerous other-referential elements, and useful self-referential resources, worthy of protection. This concept is first explained by means of divination techniques, inquisition techniques and the general technical exploitation of resources, before it is applied in detail to current (digital-technical) social coping with the Corona Crisis.

Media: Keys to Understanding , 2004

... Semiocentrism. The human person in this book is merely a function of semiotic flows... the principle of "information for the sake of information" is being realized. The history of human civilization can be interpreted in terms of expansion or self-development of certain semiotic and symbolic structures, with the human being as part of them. The importance of the personality in journalism is diminishing because there is a general decrease in the importance of the human being. The consequences of "the death of the author", in Michelle Foucault's interpretation, have not yet been properly contemplated. We can even go further and state that the death of the author has not yet happened. And it has not happened for a very simple reason: the author has not been born, that is, in a certain sense, he has never existed. ... Computer does not create virtuality; it just transforms it... reality is a part of virtuality. The human being as a biological carrier of the semiotic sphere, as a recording, reproducing, and creative device, belongs to this sphere and is subject to laws of its expansion... We are merely particles of this steadily expanding system. The struggle against the screen violence and pornography is doomed to failure unless we find efficient means of suppressing the semiotic explosion, or more precisely, unless we manage to gain control over the unruly chain reaction of the semiosis. The idea of restricted development, in my view, reflects the intuitive need to repress the development of the noosphere by keeping back semiotic or semio-technological expansion

Aracne, 2020

With respect to this new "world order", which affects all social layers and everyday activities, a philosophy of technology refers not only to a new domain -essentially the attempt to see, read, and understand the "machine" and the culture it enables or imposes. It also means that philosophy tout court has more than University Press, Cambridge-London 2015 -, one of the first account of this image is in

Natural Science as a social enterprise has contributed a lot towards development of the human life and society. More specifically Post Industrial Revolution has changed human life for good. Quick spread of mobile phone technology in Pakistan speaks volumes about the love of technology in Pakistan society. Media, concerned with society, on the other hand has contributed towards the spread of information to public. Fast dissemination of information has enabled people to make informed decisions about their lives, security, businesses and other concerns. Cable TV subscribers has raison from 0.18m in 2003 to 4.20m in 2010. Segregation between the two, though necessary for their respective development, is more than 200 years old now. This segregation has resulted in the complete ignorance of one to the other. A very good scientist may indeed ruin the prospects of his/her invention with a poor communication to the media. Likewise a good journalist may interpret a very consequential discovery in a way that does not attract readers' attention at all. This paper is built upon the idea that eventually it is life that is the benefactor of media and science so much so these disciplines must initiate measures to bridge gap between the two more specifically in Pakistan. The paper focuses on the need to take on the problem of communication between Science and Media.

2022

This course gives students the conceptual tools to understand diverse technologies, media, and techniques in relation to their different historical, geo-political, and social contexts; their different infrastructures and experts; and their different designs and uses. Since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have witnessed a dramatic increase in the use of digital technologies for remote work, education, health, and leisure in large parts of the world where they are accessible. How do we make sense of the difference between the "old" and the "new normal" of our technologically mediated lives? How should we examine the social significance of electricity-a 150+ year old technology and still inaccessible in large parts of the world-in relation with different engineering practices, political imperatives, electronic media devices, and infrastructures? How should we understand processes of technological "innovation" when users' creativity can seem as important as platform design? How do algorithms learn about us and vice versa? To engage with these and other questions, we will draw upon some of the key concepts and debates at the intersections of Science and Technology Studies (STS), Media Studies, History, Anthropology, Information Science, and Software Studies. We will focus on different ways to understand how technology and media — mechanical, electronic, and digital — shapes and is shaped by cultural, political, and social values. Students will become acquainted with different conceptual approaches to understanding the interplay of technology and society (e.g. technological determinism, social construction of technology, actor networks, affordances) and how these have been applied to various media technologies.