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- Volume 17, Issue 2, 2018
Explorations in Media Ecology - Volume 17, Issue 2, 2018
Volume 17, Issue 2, 2018
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Technology, hypocrisy and morality: Where, oh where, has all the hypocrisy gone?
By Corey AntonAbstractThis essay examines the phenomenon of hypocrisy from a media ecological vantage. It walks through examples and cases of hypocrisy witnessed in the United States today, and then argues that dominant media forms have shaped and are continuing to shape our senses of self, community, constancy and consistency. Accounting for the apparent rise in hypocrisy – its near ubiquity in modern US culture – as well as clarifying why today’s accusations of hypocrisy seem to carry little to no weight, the essay furthermore reveals key tensions between reason and rationalization in times of great technological change.
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Media ecology and Bios Theoretikos: Philosophy as extended cognition
By Adam RobbertAbstractIn this article, I take a media ecology perspective on philosophy. This approach supports the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk’s claim that first philosophy is not metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics or epistemology but rather practice (askēsis). Sloterdijk’s practice-centred view of philosophy is shared by Pierre Hadot and Michael McGhee, both of whom give askēsis a central role in philosophy. I draw on the work of these philosophers to show that philosophy is best conceived as an act of extended cognition performed amidst different media ecologies. To make this point, I start not with humans and our practices, but with spiders and theirs. When philosophy is seen as an instance of extended cognition, I argue, one can draw parallels between our practices and those of non-human species, who like us build artefacts to deepen their perception and understanding of their environments. To this end, I explore the settings that enable philosophical training. Philosophy on this view is facilitated by an ecology of affordance spaces – academies, libraries, monasteries and more – whose design helps the philosopher perform certain manoeuvres in thought, manoeuvres that make apparent the conditions required for the bios theoretikos (the life of contemplation).
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All your <data> base are belong to us
More LessAbstractUsing McLuhan and McLuhan’s tetrad of media effects, I analyse some of the challenges posed by limited label choices in social media environments. While social media programmers develop their platforms with a dual intent of usability and as a data-gathering instrument to aggregate useful demographics and psychographics for monetization purposes, users seeking social connections are not necessarily interested in programmer constructs resulting from assumed norms in database logic, particularly when those constructs limit the user in a way that is inappropriate to the users’ needs.
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Marshall McLuhan’s New Science as a case of reflection concerning common ground for art, science and technology
Authors: Bartłomiej Knosala and Aleksandra KuziorAbstractThe main aim of this article is to present Marshall McLuhan’s Laws of Media in the context of the philosophies of Francis Bacon and Giambattista Vico. Understanding the interconnection between language, senses and cognition is crucial in philosophically joining the three new sciences: Bacon’s Novum Organum, Vico’s Scienzia Nuova and McLuhan’s New Science. At the same time, we point to the fact that such a theoretical basis allows us to understand art, science and technology not as distinct forms of human activity but as integrally linked ones. In this sense, McLuhan’s thought can inspire further studies, the object of which is to overcome the so-called problem of two cultures.
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Extending McLuhan (L)
Authors: Liang Yi and Robert AlbrechtAbstractIn this article, the authors illustrate some of the multiple applications of the seminal idea planted by McLuhan that technologies are extensions of human faculties or abilities. The intention of the article is not to break new ground but rather to demonstrate that this McLuhanist idea remains relevant and vital in the contemporary era.
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Default play mode text: Writing (Arteroids)
By Jim AndrewsAbstractThe following text is from my shoot-em-up poetry game Arteroids (vispo.com/arteroids). The player drives the Id Entity text (‘desire’) around the screen like it was a spaceship. Each line of the Outer Green Text moves randomly around the screen (not all at once) in straight lines. The player shoots these texts. When they are shot, they explode into a circular array of letters – the letters of the corresponding line of the Inner Green Text. If the player runs into a green text, the player dies. Each line of the Outer Blue Text is also out to kill the player; each line of that text hunts the player down; the player must shoot these ones too. When shot, a line of the Outer Blue explodes into the corresponding line of the Inner Blue. The goal of the game is to max out the Meanometer which rises with each text the player shoots. This text is editable in Word for Weirdos, a facility in Arteroids where the player can save poetry from themselves.
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Book Reviews
Authors: Karen Lollar, Thomas D. Zlatic, Robert K. Logan, Ron Jacobson, Ira Nayman, Arthur W. Hunt III and Bill PetkanasAbstractMore Sensible Thinking, Martin H. Levinson (2012)
New York: Institute of General Semantics, 210 pp.,
ISBN: 9780982755969, p/bk, $15.95
Walter Ong’s Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication, Thomas J. Farrell (2015)
Revised edition, with an introduction by Robert A. White and a new afterword and bibliography, New York: Hampton Press, 354 pp.,
ISBN: 981572739505, h/bk, $41.95
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari (2014)
Toronto: Signal: McClelland & Stewart (Canada) (2015), New York: Harper Collins (US), 464 pp.,
ISBN-13: 9780062316097, h/bk, $35.00, ISBN-13: 9780062316110, p/bk, $22.99
Writing Myself into Existence: Notes on a Literary Life and Other Adventures, Arthur Asa Berger (2016)
Seattle, WA: NeoPoiesis Press, 174 pp.,
ISBN: 9780990356561, p/bk, $16.95
McLuhan in an Age of Social Media, Paul Levinson
Connected Editions, 63 pp.,
ISBN: 9781561780501, p/bk, $9.99
The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, Rod Dreher (2017)
New York: Sentinel Press, 262 pp.,
ISBN: 9780735213296, h/bk, $25.00
Confronting Technopoly: Charting a Course Towards Human Survival, Phil Rose (ed.) (2017)
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 252 pp.,
ISBN: 9781783206889, p/bk, $100
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Volumes & issues
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Volume 22 (2023)
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Volume 21 (2022)
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Volume 20 (2021)
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Volume 19 (2020)
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Volume 18 (2019)
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Volume 17 (2018)
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Volume 16 (2017)
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Volume 15 (2016)
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Volume 14 (2015)
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Volume 13 (2014)
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Volume 12 (2013)
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Volume 11 (2012)
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Volume 10 (2011)
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Volume 9 (2010)
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Volume 8 (2009)
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Volume 7 (2008)
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Volume 6 (2007)
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Volume 5 (2006)
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Volume 4 (2005)
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Volume 3 (2004)
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Volume 2 (2003)
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Volume 1 (2002)