Looking back

Looking back, I am reminded that my first blog post discussed my conception of media in terms of my undergraduate training in the field of communication and media studies. An additional observation here.

Communication always seemed the more abstract and ineffable of the two terms. Communication was associated with lectures and essays, media with practical workshops and projects. Communication described a particular perspective on the social – one that was focused less on objects and things than upon relational processes. Media appeared more tangible. At the simplest it was just cameras, audio recorders, telephones, typewriters, etc. It was the strange singular-plural term that named the set of available communication mediums. However it quickly became evident – through the debates surrounding technological determinism and causal agency – that the media were much more than a specific order of technological thing. Media were social forms as much as specific configurations of matter. In this sense, they too obtained an ineffable dimension, as well as a more complex, less clearly determinable materiality. The media denoted less an order of object than an order of activity, involving aspects of representation, negotiation and communication. The shift then, even if it was never really very clearly articulated, was from a static conception of media to a dynamic realisation of mediation. And this had curious consequences, allowing the notion of mediation to emerge as more general than the concept that apparently preceded and enclosed it – communication.

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