- Home
- A-Z Publications
- Explorations in Media Ecology
- Previous Issues
- Volume 11, Issue 1, 2012
Explorations in Media Ecology - Volume 11, Issue 1, 2012
Volume 11, Issue 1, 2012
-
-
Posthuman visions: Creating the technologized body
More LessAs medical technology continues to progress, we are able to correct deficiencies in the body through means such as cochlear implants and prosthetic limbs. This has led some scholars to argue that we are creating technologized, cyborg bodies.However,these technologies have also enabled us to correct perceived cultural flaws in the body. This article explores the nature of the body through the lens of posthumanism, examining ways that individuals attempt to reshape their bodies through cosmetic surgery and other forms of body modification. Specifically, this article examines the practice of hymen restoration,Genesis Breyer P-Orridge’s artistic endeavours in cosmetic surgery and Stelarc’s cybernetic experimentations. These cases yield three potential visions of the body: the body must be restored; bodies must be unified; and the body must evolve. Such visions have consequences; the ways in which the body is rhetorically constructed influence how people choose to alter their own bodies. By considering the body itself as medium and as an interface with other technologies, we can better theorize what it truly means to be human.
-
-
-
Posthuman, postrights?
By Robert MejiaProject LifeLike refers to the efforts to create a ‘realistic avatar supported by an intelligent engine capable of online learning’. In essence, this means the encoding of the intelligence of presently living individuals in order to preserve the persons’ epistemological structures beyond their ontological death. To do this, the team must distil those ‘humanistic’ elements that are deemed essential to the human experience, and thus this process reconfigures the very concept of the original itself. Hence, I argue that Project LifeLike constitutes an epistemological cooptation of the ontological project of life, whereby the technological apparatus of the body is effaced in favour of the epistemic projections of the mind.
-
-
-
Surfing Foucault’s panopticopolis: Facebooking our way to a panoptic world
More LessThis article seeks to address the following question: how might analysing the implications of the panopticon for Facebook better inform understanding about social media communication? The panopticon derives from a prison system designed by Jeremy Bentham in 1791. Michel Foucault analyses the panopticon as a form of surveillance that controls human bodies. Facebook, a popular social networking site, allows users to share content with other users. Although the physical bodies of Facebook users might be invisible, they reveal information about their private lives in the content of their posts. I suggest that the users’ willingness to divulge information reframes Facebook from a neutral social networking site to a panopticopolis, an online space that controls users. Facebook functions as a panopticon by exercising control over the physical bodies of users in the real world as a result of surveillance over user content posted in the virtual world.
-
-
-
Ellul’s alternative theory of technology: Anticipating the fourth milieu of virtuality
More LessJacques Ellul was a self-proclaimed ‘watchman’ over the progression of twentieth-century technology, and he argues that humans have adopted a sociological determinism that he dubbed ‘technique’, an idea explored in his widely read book The Technological Society (1964). Technique, for Ellul, explains both large-scale and small-scale trends in human civilizations by considering rationalized efficiency as the primary instigator of twentieth-century change. This article argues that Ellul’s conception of technique as a determining factor in technological change has been subsumed by a trend not for rationalized efficiency but rather for evolved efficiency. Specifically, I look at the underlying hypothesis that informed Ellul’s thought – his theory of the three milieus – to offer an interpretative framework for understanding how several current civilizations have moved into a fourth milieu of virtuality. Positing a fourth milieu could potentially revitalize Ellulian scholarship in studies of technology, media ecology and sustainability.
-
-
-
A phenomenology of the podcast lecture
By Peggy JubienMobile technology is an integral part of all areas of life today, including business, government and education. Through the use of mobile devices such as digital audio players, smartphones and tablet computers, students can access pre-recorded lectures immediately from their homes and schools or as they move between locations. Now that mobile lectures (or podcasts) are common, it is important that we study the experience of listening to them in order to discover how it is different from the experience of listening in a classroom or lecture hall. This phenomenological study uses Max van Manen’s four existentials of lived space, time, relationship with others and body as a guide to uncover some of the hidden dimensions of listening to podcast lectures. It reveals new insights and understandings that educators may want to consider as lectures move out of classrooms.
-
Volumes & issues
-
Volume 22 (2023)
-
Volume 21 (2022)
-
Volume 20 (2021)
-
Volume 19 (2020)
-
Volume 18 (2019)
-
Volume 17 (2018)
-
Volume 16 (2017)
-
Volume 15 (2016)
-
Volume 14 (2015)
-
Volume 13 (2014)
-
Volume 12 (2013)
-
Volume 11 (2012)
-
Volume 10 (2011)
-
Volume 9 (2010)
-
Volume 8 (2009)
-
Volume 7 (2008)
-
Volume 6 (2007)
-
Volume 5 (2006)
-
Volume 4 (2005)
-
Volume 3 (2004)
-
Volume 2 (2003)
-
Volume 1 (2002)