Lecture 4 - McLuhan, Latour

Question 1

What is metis?

Answer 1

strategy opposed to episteme, means to do things, not as progress of reason but strategy based on tools and goals

Question 2

Difference techne and metis

Answer 2

Techne: just springs out of us without context, as opposed to metis

Question 3

What is a network?

Answer 3

Divide that divides culture from nature shifts every day
Translation/network is what is needed to understand these phenomena. Latour is in that sense phenomenological, but not human-centered

Question 4

Science according to Latour

Answer 4

With Latour there is no real science: we invented it to separate the world into understandable pieces. Science emerges out of a set of practices: humans act in a network that constructs science.

Question 5

Two dichotomy’s latour:

Answer 5

• Work of purification: separation of human world from nonhumans
• Work of translation: complex network gets subsumed to the agency of one actor (agential intent)

Question 6

Latour on Heidegger

Answer 6

• Modern technology is completely different from poesis (H)
• Modern technology is a superior (H)
• How can technology be a monster if it is merely a set of practices?

Question 7

Materialist vs sociological narrative

Answer 7

Materialist narrative: you are what you have, technological determinism
Sociological narrative: what matters is what you are not what you have, social determinism

Question 8

What is mediation?

Answer 8

program of action, the series of goals and steps and intentions

Question 9

First sense of mediation

Answer 9

• Translation: when agency’s are combined, a different or broader set of goals can be reached than before, which to some degree modifies the two agents
• Problem with materialists and sociologists: starting with subject and object, this makes it impossible for us to measure the mediation of technique

Question 10

Agent vs actant

Answer 10

Agents: humans (or non-humans)
Actant: any entity that acts in a plot until the attribution of a figurative or non-figurative role, different actorial roles and different goals and functions (=programs of action)

Question 11

First conclusion of mediation

Answer 11

Responsibility -1:
- Abandoning subject-object dichotomy
- Shared amongst actants
- Prime mover of action becomes a new distributed series of practices, to sum these we must respect mediating role of all the actants

Question 12

Second sense mediation:

Answer 12

Composition - 2:
- Action is simply not a property of humans but of an association of actants
- Action is enabled by other agents
- Even in subject-object dichotomy, f.e. you still need gun to shoot someone

Question 13

Symmetry

Answer 13

• What is conserved through transformation of the network
• Symmetry is a part of composition

Question 14

Third sense of mediation:

Answer 14

Reversible blackboxing – 3:
- Separating the different actants out of the conjunction of the black box is the work of Latour
- When put together in a black box, the separate actants lose their meaning (eg their meaning as a network)

Question 15

Fourth sense of mediation:

Answer 15

Delegation - 4:
- Techniques modify matter of expression, not only form
- Translation of action into another kind of expression
Delegation is presence of actors and actant from long ago, even disappeared actors/actants.

Question 16

Resonance symmetry with Heidegger’s poeisis as a calling forth:

Answer 16

• Latour speaks about the stage before we delineate humans and nonhumans, goals and functions, form and matter etc.
• Heidegger: Every occasion for whatever passes beyond the nonpresent and goes forward into presencing is poiesis, bringing-forth [Her-vor-bringen].
• This could be similar to Heideggers idea of essence/Wesen: wesen is about the way something essentially unfolds: this is brought out by poeisis as calling forth
• Aletheia, truth that is unconcealed as the essence of a being, is perhaps similar to the stage Latour is talking about
• With latour, the network is formed through the interaction of actants, which could also be seen as a kind of revealing
• Difference: Heidegger is concerned with the revealing of Being, Latour more with different actant and their relations

Question 17

What is shifting down (plane example)

Answer 17

Shifting down: making entire network belonging to plane concrete to a singular plane (?)

Question 18

Point of different kinds of mediation

Answer 18

what Latour tries to understand is concealed point where society and matter exchange properties

Question 19

McLuhan:

Answer 19

• Extension: technology is an extension of us
• Method: probes, process rather than the completed product or discovery
• Concern: media themselves and total cultural environment in which media function

Question 20

Media as environmental:

Answer 20

• New media-induced environment alters our sensory balance, it also becomes invisible
• Groping towards a consciousness that is unconscious, toward the realization that technology is an extension of our own bodies
• Awareness is first reflected by artists
• Media gives us a new degree of perception
• Environment only becomes visible when superseded by a new environment: we are always one step behind

Question 21

New media

Answer 21

• Instantaneous communication
• A total and near-instantaneous transformation of culture, values and attitudes

Question 22

Technological determinism McLuhan:

Answer 22

• How medium is used does not count, but what it does to us
• If we understand transformations, we can control them.

Question 23

Rationalization:

Answer 23

not only scientific or technological (as opposed to plato/Heidegger) but a media history

Question 24

Advent of phonetic alphabet

Answer 24

barrier between man and object, creating a dualism between sight and sound. Sight became dominant sense, distorting the sensory balance.

Question 25

Argument against techne

Answer 25

Literacy creates people who are less complex than in oral-tribal societies: superspecialization robs us from complex emotional blends

Question 26

Typography/television

Answer 26

Typography explodes the dominance of sight. Television is an extension of the sense of touch rather than sight, requires greatest interplay of senses. Television is a cold medium, in which a lot of viewer participation is required. A book would be a hot medium.

Question 27

Retribalization

Answer 27

television immerses us in a world-pool of information movement, an intense participation engendered by electronic media brings us back in touch with ourselves and eachother.