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Postphenomenology
and Media
 Postphenomenology and the Philosophy of Technology

Editor-in-Chief: Robert Rosenberger, Georgia Institute

of Technology

Executive Editors: Don Ihde, Stony Brook University, Emeritus;

Peter-Paul Verbeek, University of Twente

Technological advances affect everything from our understandings of ethics, politics, and
communication, to gender, science, and selfhood. Philosophical reflection on technology
helps draw out and analyze the nature of these changes, and helps us understand both the
broad patterns and the concrete details of technological effects. This book series provides
a publication outlet for the field of the philosophy of technology in general, and the school
of thought called “postphenomenology” in particular. Philosophy of technology applies
insights from the history of philosophy to current issues in technology, and reflects on how
technological developments change our understanding of philosophical issues. In response,
postphenomenology analyzes human relationships with technologies, while integrating
philosophical commitments of the American pragmatist tradition of thought.

Postphenomenology and Media: Essays on Human–Media–World Relations, Edited by

Yoni Van Den Eede, Stacey O. Irwin, and Galit Wellner
Diphtheria Serum as a Technological Object: A Philosophical Analysis of Serotherapy in
France 1894–1900, by Jonathan Simon
Digital Media: Human–Technology Connection, by Stacey O. Irwin
Acoustic Technics, by Don Ihde
A Postphenomenological Inquiry of Cell Phones: Genealogies, Meanings, and Becoming,
by Galit P. Wellner
Postphenomenology and Technoscience: The Manhattan Papers, Edited by
Jan Kyrre Berg O. Friis and Robert P. Crease
Postphenomenological Investigations: Essays on Human–Technology Relations,
Edited by Robert Rosenberger and Peter-Paul Verbeek
Design, Meditation, and the Posthuman, Edited by Dennis M. Weiss, Amy D. Propen, and
Colbey Emmerson Reid
Postphenomenology
and Media
Essays on Human–Media–
World Relations

Edited by
Yoni Van Den Eede
Stacey O’Neal Irwin
Galit Wellner

Foreword by
Don Ihde

LEXINGTON BOOKS
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Lexington Books
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com

Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB

Copyright © 2017 by Lexington Books

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN 978-1-4985-5014-7 (hardback : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-4985-5015-4 (ebook)
∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

 Contents

Foreword: Shadows and the New Media vii

Don Ihde
Acknowledgementsxv
Introduction: “What Media Do” xvii
Yoni Van Den Eede, Stacey O. Irwin, and Galit Wellner

PART 1: EXPLORING MEDIA ENVIRONMENTS WITH

POSTPHENOMENOLOGY1
1 Mediating (Infra)structures: Technology, Media, Environment 3
Heather Wiltse
2 Transparent Media and the Development of Digital Habits 27
Daniel Susser
3 Body, Technology, and Humanity 45
Shoji Nagataki
4 Magic, Augmentations, and Digital Powers 63
Nicola Liberati
PART 2: POSTPHENOMENOLOGICALLY INVESTIGATING
MEDIA CASES 79
5 Extensions and Concentric Circles: Exploring Transparency and
Opacity in Three Media Technologies 81
Robert N. Spicer
vi Contents

6 Multimedia Stabilities: Exploring the GoPro Experience 103

Stacey O. Irwin
7 Digital Images and Multistability in Design Practice 123
Fernando Secomandi
8 On the Immersion of E-Reading (Or Lack Thereof) 145
Robert Rosenberger
PART 3: SHAPING POSTPHENOMENOLOGICAL MEDIA
THEORY165
9 Sublime Embodiment of the Media 167
Lars Botin
10 Thinking Through Media: Stieglerian Remarks on a Possible
Postphenomenology of Media 185
Pieter Lemmens
11 I-Media-World: The Algorithmic Shift from Hermeneutic
Relations to Writing Relations 207
Galit Wellner
12 The Mediumness of World: A Love Triangle of
Postphenomenology, Media Ecology, and
Object-Oriented Philosophy 229
Yoni Van Den Eede

Index251
About the Contributors 259
 Foreword
Shadows and the New Media
Don Ihde

One lesson learned from now over 40 years of studying the history and
philosophy of technology, is that early stages of new technologies elicit initial
exaggerations of expectations: on the one side there is always utopian hype, a
new technology is thought to promise more than it delivers; and equally there
is dystopian hype, expressing fears that the introduction of new technologies
will deskill, displace, or distort our very being-in-the-world. Yet, over longer
periods of time, most newly introduced technologies “settle down” into much
more taken-for-granted uses, usually more mundane than either utopian or
dystopian trajectories. The second long-term lesson regarding technologies
over time is that all technologies have shelf lives, but over eons these shorten,
or speed up. As I have pointed out in numerous places, the 1.4 million year
shelf life of the Acheulean hand axe, from 1.8 million BP to 400,000 BP is
the longest life single technology known to me. If we look at the inventions
and shelf lives of cellphones, perhaps the single most ubiquitous technology
ever, the shelf lives of these technologies are extremely short.
As the various authors here point out, we are going through a shift in media
technologies. The older and established media include print, radio, cinema,
television, and more. But with the exception of print, which in the West is
now approximately four centuries old, the audio-visual media are largely
20th-century developments. And yet we have come some way from early
20th-century astonishment, with radio and recording listeners astonished at
how “realistic” or “lifelike” Caruso sounded, or the startled “screams” and
“jumps” of Lumière cinema viewers—experiences the contemporary listener
or viewer finds puzzling, given the flaws of reproduction and fidelity to our
senses, and our taken-for-granted clarity now.
The new media, growing ubiquitous, now find presence everywhere to
the point of intrusiveness and near-constant demand. Email, the Internet,

vii
viii Foreword

social media, “smart” technologies of the Internet of Things, big data, driven
by algorithms which seek out our every move, desire, taste. These media,
electronic, often wireless, even if not literally attached or implanted, go with
us everywhere. Social scientists estimate that cell or mobile phones are now
accessible to 95% of the world’s population, and as a resident of Manhattan
the number of these devices on the Metro, in restaurants and theatres, and in
our homes, is simply pervasive. Social media, too, generate arguments about
how young users should be, whether or not limits should apply to children, or
uses restricted for drivers. Today the tale of Thales falling into a well while
watching the skies, would be replaced by a hiker falling into a manhole while
jogging with an iPod. The “Thales Effect,” in our time, includes distracted
driving while text messaging, phantom vibrations from pocketed or even
imagined cellphones, and the experience of being called at any time or place.
Robert Rosenberger has taken note of widespread phantom phone vibrations
among college students (see Daily Mail n.d.).
Postphenomenology and Media is due out spring 2017. I am writing this
foreword late 2016, just after an event which paused my communications
network of conversations from November 8, for approximately 10 days:
the aftermath of the U.S. Presidential election. It was interesting that as
communications resumed, virtually all my mostly academic interlocutors
admitted the silence was related to a kind of “mourning” felt as the direction
of an era reversed. The reversal, to my mind, was from a trajectory into the
21st century characterized by growing multiculturalism, urbanization, global-
ization, to a retro-trajectory more in keeping with the 19th century, including
nationalism, revival of white dominance, insularity, racism, and worse. But it
also had to do with media technologies.
Actually, the election events took place in an overlapping old and new
media juncture. Newspapers played a major role, often in what now seems a
more sober role of investigative reporting but also with partisan politics obvi-
ous on both sides. What those of short sight miss is the rather long history
of newspapers slowly attaining standards of “objective” and “investigative”
reporting. Early newspaper reporting, in the 18th and 19th centuries, was
often quite crude. Television was highly present with the debates and again
partisan positioning between cable news and the networks. Again, a history
which included the emergence of Fox News with its notion of “balanced
reporting” which often balances a 97% consensus—say on climate issues in
the scientific community—on the one side with 3% often paid deniers on the
other side. Merchants of Doubt (Oreskes and Conway 2010) revealed that
the very same group of people who guided the campaign for tobacco against
its negative health effects also peopled the early attacks on climate change
doubts. Today fossil fuel and big sugar corporations are employing the same
strategies. But, the new and social media were also pervasive. Trump’s
 Foreword ix

smartphone Twitter hit-backs were notorious. False news, fact checking,

“pants-on-fire” ratings soared. Today’s media reports are filled with attempts
to correct, counter, and reform the distortions so rampant during the cam-
paign. These new media clearly have not (yet) attained mature conventions.
As I see it, this recent set of events was a dark cloud—dystopian regarding the
media—contrasting with so much utopian hope about how the wider access
for larger and larger numbers of people would introduce a more democratic
and egalitarian politics to the world. Instead, the 21st- to 19th-century trajec-
tory reversal introduced a darker side of media possibilities. Ironically, both
sides had true insights: the actual popular vote is likely to be one of the largest
ever over the founding fathers’ antiquated mechanism, the electoral college.
Popular democracy has now twice lost in this millennium.
I am reminded of an old ploy of mine during the Cold War. Then, it was
argued, the MAD (mutual assured destruction) strategy had kept the war-
ring sides from nuclear war. So, I fantasized placing an earth-destroying
nuclear device deep underground, with every human given a button which
could set it off. Here, the logic was that directly and totally democratized,
we would have the ultimate MAD. My question was: Would this make us
feel safer? An ultimate, democratized MAD? Here the question relates, in
a similar way, to the ultimate democratization of media for news. What if
everyone could publicize a storyline, globally? For example, one piece of
false news targeted a pizza parlor, claiming it was a front for a child abuse
ring funded and directed by the Clintons. This was a blog from a single indi-
vidual. The owner of the pizzeria received many death threats, yet the news
was totally false, circulated on Facebook. Nevertheless, I remain bothered
by the implications which could lead towards a dystopian weighting. How
does one gain wider media democracy, yet restrict false news which has
distinct harms? Clearly the extreme thought experiment, while capturing
part of the expert/non-expert arguments for media use, does not address a
broader need for checks and balances and mature use conventions. Widely
public use of even radio is still today short of a century old. The social
media are much younger.
All the above points to a more generalized ambiguity which characterizes
any technology. In postphenomenology, a more precise notion relates to
multistability, or to a range of multiple uses and developmental trajectories.
Print, a now “old” medium, very deeply structured into our lifeworld, is just
beginning to shift stabilities. A new development, only a few decades old, is
3D printing. Here, very unlike standard print technologies which have been
dominantly 2D, the objects “printed” are three-dimensional. The simplest
of these machines usually uses some powder-like substance to “build up” a
pre-designed object—let us imagine something like a 3D snowflake. The pre-
design can be very complex; examples of student projects in our Stony Brook
x Foreword

Engineering College are often exhibited in hallway displays. Note several

things about this process: 3D objects are not print-linguistic, but are fully 3D
objects, at the least visual-tactile. Then, in an easily imagined step, one devel-
ops such objects in size—many new 3D printing technologies already make
large objects, including handguns and projected automobiles. And in medical
applications, artificial esophagus and bone printing of joints are imagined on
the horizon. Many flesh, blood vessel, and body parts are envisioned.
Work backward now; 2D printers traditionally and dominantly have
printed linguistic objects—texts. Our “Gutenberg Revolution” led to books,
newspapers, pamphlets, and print. But today, large 2D printers are used for
printing out circuits, solar panels, flexible film and a whole series of non-
linguistic print objects, a very different stability than earlier uses or designer
intent. All this could be something like a second printer revolution. One
of my favorite examples is a new, layered solar panel. Current panels are
able to turn sunlight into electric current only from a limited range of the
optical spectrum—but new techniques promise capturing a wider range of
the spectrum, which calls for various layering processes, all possible from a
2D+ printer.
In my most recent state-of-the-art articles, I have been pointing to the
preponderance of micro processes in the new technologies. Nanotech, ICT
(information and communication technology), biotech, the new biologies,
femto-photography, the new microscopies, surface science, all employ nano
processes. And while there are some large developments—for example bio-
mimetic slippery-skinned submarines and torpedoes—most such technolo-
gies take a micro trajectory. Even attack drones are much smaller than B-52s
and many are bumblebee size. Surveillance devices detect micro vibrations
through laser reading processes and a whole range of acoustic detectors find
ways to penetrate ground surfaces, foliage and the like to produce clearer
images. My Acoustic Technics (2015) points to medical diagnostic acoustic
processes which acoustically display sounds which differentiate between
healthy and malignant cells. Optic-acoustical surveillance technologies can
even detect cement column vibrations to project what goes on inside a build-
ing. My physics colleague, Harold Metcalf, recently just missed a Nobel
for his work in “trapping” individual atoms—he was the fourth on a team
and Nobels can only be split three ways. Micro visualization is pervasive.
Pill-sized cameras are used medically: swallowed and then these devices
photograph the entire digestive track. Similarly in low-angle photography
adumbrated with infrared, micro X-rays are used to examine paintings to
determine how many times they have been retouched. And for affordable
prices, one may buy an infrared attachment for a smartphone to photograph
heat loss—my son-in-law just showed me how the biggest losses from his
18th-century house were from the basement sill area. These are all imaging
 Foreword xi

media which as the dominant trajectory has it, are usually visual or audio-
visual. See also Galit Wellner’s A Postphenomenological Inquiry of Cell
Phones (2016).
One can see here the temptations for techno-utopians. “Apps” such as
the infrared photo device for a smartphone camera to detect heat loss are
practical. But “enhancement” apps are also available, running from fantasy
creatures in Pokémon games to “enhanced reality” apps for other forms of
voyeur-about-town activity. Yet the very old and very mundane money-mak-
ing activity drives much of this trajectory, epitomized in the recent meeting
of business and political interests of the election.
With new media, multistability accelerates: the cellphone has audio capac-
ity—a telephone—visual capacity—camera—text, Internet, many “apps”
ad infinitum. As many have pointed out, it is a sort of electronic rather
than mechanical “Swiss Army Knife.” The just now developing Internet of
Things, with more new media, opens the way to more ways to interfere—
hacking possibilities multiply. Think of the intrusion-control possibilities for
any sort of autonomous machine, like driverless cars or drones. Any watcher
can also be watched. Any listener can also be heard. Or, anything which can
be “controlled” can be counter-commanded by others.
But this is actually nothing new—at least in principle. In my own case,
I grew up on an isolated Kansas farm. We did not get electricity until after
WWII, but we did get a hard-wire, battery-powered phone line earlier, a com-
munity line. Our ring was one long three shorts, but we knew that anyone
on the line could pick up and “listen in,” and in keeping with rural culture
everyone knows what everyone is doing, knew that certain people always
listened in. Much later, after my undergraduate days, I spent a summer in
Chicago in an urban studies project. I was hired by the Illinois Bell Company
in a post-college job which entailed both manhole and pole wire work. One of
my tools was a probe which could be stuck into the bundles of copper wires
and if some wire had a conversation in progress, I could hear it. Of course one
purpose of the tool was to avoid working on any “live” wire and work only
on silent ones—but, like unintentional hacking, I could, in principle, listen in.
From both these experiences a lesson was learned: this wire medium is not
really private, it may at any time be heard by another. The same obviously
applies to the Internet—so a reasonable question would be: Why would one
ever treat such a medium as “private” and thus put on it any embarrassing or
incriminating evidence? Yet, in the early days of the Internet, one also recalls
the proliferation of “flaming” incidents still prolific in tweets and social
media. Again, this past campaign illustrates profusely precisely this lack of
caution and sense of consequence.
Look briefly at a spectrum of social media affects: sexting, selfies, earlier
flaming, tweets, and all the sharing moves associated with these uses. In each
xii Foreword

case there is an exaggerated exhibitionism tendency. I have always been an

anti-determinist regarding technologies. Technologies do not make us do
things as such, but I have taken note of what I have called “inclinations.”
Technologies in use make certain actions easier than not. Older flaming:
email makes the quick response easier. Not only is a quickly typed response
easy, our emotions, if angry, are immediate and on the surface, it is easy to
flame. Similarly, selfies with the camera cellphone are easy. Indeed all the
phenomena listed are immediate and easy, and if somehow there is an inclina-
tion toward exhibitionism, then these inclinations are understandable. Esca-
late a level up: video selfies, in action, are only one step harder. They entail a
minimal kind of casting. Take the adolescent drinking selfie video. A young
person takes a self-video of himself or herself draining a bottle of alcohol—
maybe thinking “cool” but not cautionarily thinking “future employers might
not think ‘cool.’” And then we reach what is hard. All these social media
actions are easy and easy to record—but they are difficult to remove, particu-
larly if already sent to a cloud storage or other permanent resource. Europe
now rages with a right to remove items from the Internet, a right to be forgot-
ten. Easy to get on, hard to get off; an asymmetry.
What emerges is a pattern of asymmetries and interrelations. Overall, elec-
tronically powered media exhibit many reciprocal interrelations. If you can
hear or see the other, then it is possible also to be heard or seen. Asymmetries
include the easy to get on, hard to get off phenomena, or also easy for one to
broadcast widely, whether true or false, or the asymmetry used in this election
cycle, tweets asymmetrically overwhelming traditional news sources. I have
hinted in this foreword that while many of the new media remain immature,
without balancing conventions, and thus easily enhance various exaggera-
tions, it seems unlikely that any kind of restraining conventions will soon
appear or overwhelm the distortions. Thus I wish to turn to a back-up notion:
the critical user.
In its simplest form, a critical user is a self-aware user who is like a “buyer
beware” while shopping. This is to be critically aware of what is asymmetri-
cal and what is reciprocal. For those who like rules or guidelines, to know
that to hear and to see entails the reciprocity of being heard and seen. To be
hacked in some form is an ever-present possibility. At a higher level, one can
develop sensitivities to any manner of “sales pitch” and can carry a sense of
fact checking as part of one’s media awareness. But, a warning—all criti-
cal awareness carries a resistance to instantaneity which characterizes new
media.
Yet this is no different from the role of philosophy in any new enterprise.
There is some degree of the cautionary in any critique. Yet this can also be a
responsible burden of doing critique.
 Foreword xiii

REFERENCES

Daily Mail. (n.d.). “Robert Rosenberger Describes Phantom Phone Vibration.”

MailOnline Video. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/embed/video/1240524.html
Ihde, D. (2015). Acoustic Technics. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Oreskes, N. and E. M. Conway. (2010). Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of
Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.
New York: Bloomsbury Press.
Wellner, G. P. (2016). A Postphenomenological Inquiry of Cell Phones: Genealogies,
Meanings, and Becoming. Lanham: Lexington Books.
 Acknowledgements

What is it like to have our being in the midst of our technology? This is a
central theme of postphenomenological work, and certainly this volume is no
exception. Postphenomenology and Media: Essays on Human–Media–World
Relations is largely about being in the midst, because today’s world always
seems to be in the midst of some kind of media technology.
But there are other ways we can be in the midst—in the hub, the focus, the
core, and the thick of things. Immersion into a community or collaboration
of like-minded individuals is also a way of being in the midst. This acknowl-
edgement serves to recognize those who have allowed us to study at the hub
of postphenomenology for some time now and to honor the many conversa-
tions and contributions we have been in the midst of, as we experience and
try to build this growing philosophical movement.
The collective we fondly call the Postphenomenology Research Group
is somewhat formally clustered around the “Postphenomenology and the
Philosophy of Technology” book series but also informally gathered at con-
ferences and research homes for many of its scholars. It is at the informal
gatherings, often, after formal presentations have been given and drafts have
been shared, that the authentic work of thinking through the postphenom-
enology framework occurs, and for this we are grateful. First, we’d like
to thank Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, Stony Brook
University of New York, Don Ihde, in big and small ways, for his foreword
to this volume, and his work as an Executive Editor of the series. But more
importantly, his vast knowledge, deep understanding, warm friendship,
and continuous encouragement have meant the world to us. Not only Don
encouraged us but also Robert Rosenberger, as a colleague and as the Editor-
in-Chief and co-founder of the postphenomenology book series. In addition,
Executive Editor Peter-Paul Verbeek has been an exemplary scholar in our

xv
xvi Acknowledgements

postphenomenological circles and a source of inspiration to further expand

the limits of postphenomenology. We have also had the good fortune to be
in the midst of the group of scholars that came together from many countries
and continents to form this volume. Many thanks for your stellar contribu-
tions Lars Botin, Pieter Lemmens, Nicola Liberati, Shoji Nagataki, Robert
Rosenberger, Fernando Secomandi, Robert N. Spicer, Daniel Susser, and
Heather Wiltse.
We would also like to thank Marc Veyrat, Société i Matériel, 2017 Artiste
and Associate Professor in Digital Art at Université Savoie Mont Blanc, for
the cover art for this volume. Explains Marc, “This i+D/sign (information +
Design/sign) is what we could call a semantic terminal arc, that is to say a
linguistic arc creating an undeniable visual tension between several signs. For
each constituent element (each primary key) of the i+D/sign, the placement is
achieved by bonding signifying associations; these being progressively oper-
ated through various attributes (color, signifying or informational potential,
logotype). There is thus always a semantic functional dependence on a sign
between two attributes (a) and (b) of this sign when the knowledge of a value
of the attribute (a) makes it possible to find a value of the attribute (b). On
this signifying junction table producing the semiosis of this i+D/sign, the key
identifying these attributes; what allows us visually to identify them depends
on the signifying potentiality of the links put in form—between (a) and (b)—
by this linguistic collage.” The image has pulled together nicely the emergent
themes in this volume.
Obviously this book could not have been realized without the good work
of the staff of Lexington Books, especially Jana Hodges-Kluck and her staff.
And finally, we would like to thank our media technologies that enable us
as part of the Postphenomenology Research Group to meet online and con-
tinue the face-to-face discussions in many other digital ways.
 Introduction
“What Media Do”
Yoni Van Den Eede, Stacey O. Irwin,
and Galit Wellner

Not so long ago, typical illustrations about the use of contemporary media
would go like this:

You get up in the morning, put on clothing, and pour yourself a cup of coffee.
Then you start checking your phone for messages, put on the TV, check your
e-mails, read the news online,….

This little stage setting, of course, is meant to underscore the ubiquity of

digital media and information and communication technologies (ICTs) in our
lives. Nowadays we’re more and more forced to adjust our illustrations, for
instance as follows:

You get up in the morning. Or no, wait, before you get up, you have already
checked your phone for new messages. Or no, wait, before waking up, you
might have been tracking your sleeping patterns via your smartphone or a dedi-
cated device. That device might even have woken you up at the right moment
in your sleep cycle….

There seems to be a movement “inward” here. In a literal-physical sense,

media are moving into our bodies, or at least into our bodily activity and
behavior. They are getting “closer.” It takes less and less deliberate action
on our part to engage with media or ICTs. No longer do we need to place
ourselves behind a computer to go online; we carry “the online” constantly in
our pockets or on our wrists. It is always there, at our fingertips.
This is exhilarating, but we might easily forget that corresponding to this
process is also a movement “outward.” And if that is not really manifest just
yet, a near-future illustration might unfold like this:

xvii
xviii Introduction

Your sleep-monitoring device, connected to your home Wi-Fi network, tells

your coffee machine you will be woken up in the next phase of light sleep—time
to start percolating. The heating system has already switched itself on based on
that same information. But wait, at that very moment a traffic accident happens
on your route to work. Algorithms start calculating the projected traffic jams for
the next three hours. The cloud, organically pouring into your home network,
transmits that info onto your devices, while you are still blissfully asleep. You
will never be able to arrive at your morning appointment on time, the system
determines for you, so an automatic cancellation message is sent to your contact
(explaining in detail the reasons and proposing another date for the meeting).
But wait, your extended machinic consciousness notes now that you have been
building up some sleep deprivation in the last couple of days. Since there is
really nothing else to do at this time, the system “decides” to let you sleep for
another series of cycles. Percolating and heating are put on halt. Somewhat later,
you wake up, feeling refreshed. A computer voice tells you your schedule has
been rearranged….

The scene may appear like science fiction, but developments of this type are
on the horizon. In fact, the illustration might be obsolesced even quicker than
we think, as self-driving cars may someday—ideally—make road accidents
rare.
What does this tell us? Media creep upon us. But they also spread their ten-
tacles. They flow “in between,” are woven throughout our existence. Where
are they actually? What are they actually? How do they relate to, impact
upon, withdraw from human action, experience, awareness? These are all
complex questions with which we are confronted in our contemporary world
and can expect to be dealing even more intensely in the future.
In this volume we investigate these issues by deploying the framework and
insights of postphenomenology.

POSTPHENOMENOLOGY AND MEDIA

Postphenomenology is a branch in philosophy of technology that has in

recent years attracted ever more attention among a variety of scholars who
have found in its concepts and images ways to fruitfully express their insights.
Postphenomenology, as developed first and foremost by Don Ihde, stays
grounded in classic phenomenology, hermeneutics, and pragmatism, and so
still revolves around central notions such as perception, embodiment, practice
(or praxis), experience, and interpretation. But it “updates” these notions in
order to put them to work for the philosophical study of technologies and
their usage. Technologies are seen to transform things such as perception
and interpretation in particular ways. Our experiences are “technologically
 Introduction xix

mediated,” our lifeworld is “technologically saturated,” and the empirically

oriented methodologies of postphenomenology are crafted to map the speci-
ficities of this saturation and mediation.
Yet it is striking that postphenomenology has up until now, notwithstand-
ing a few exceptions and beginnings (more on them shortly), paid relatively
little attention to the developments in media hinted at above. Certainly given
the core theory of technological mediation, one could suspect a more direct
focus on mediation, as “what media do”—to paraphrase Peter-Paul Verbeek’s
book title, What Things Do (2005). Instead, postphenomenology has focused
first and foremost on technologies, with media perhaps being implicitly con-
sidered a technology. But the distinctions between these terms, if they were
ever clear, are blurring, as was demonstrated in the foreword and as we will
shortly explicate. Moreover, we might be in need of, paradoxically, at the
same time a clearer and a wider definition of media as such, in terms of these
developments.
We believe thus that “mediation theory”—as the postphenomenological
conceptual framework is sometimes referred to1—should shed its light on
media more specifically. While media and their current evolution may con-
fuse us, postphenomenology might bring order in the chaos and can provide
a theoretical framework for media and technology. The postphenomenologi-
cal toolbox holds many conceptual instruments that can be put to good use
here: human-technology-world relations, the transparency versus opacity
distinction, embodiment, multistability, focus-field-fringe distinctions, and
more. Postphenomenology may contribute to existing approaches to media by
invoking new questions that push forward our understanding of the effects of
contemporary media on humans and our surrounding world. But in parallel,
and in a self-reflexive moment, we can and must also ask: How well is post-
phenomenology suited for a substantial treatment of media? To that extent,
thinking about media is also a way of taking postphenomenology further.
In this introduction we will provide a short overview of some basic con-
cepts in postphenomenology. We will discuss the beginnings of media analy-
ses in the postphenomenological literature. These will serve as a springboard
to consider some directions to push postphenomenology forward and hint
at the possible contribution of this book. Finally, we will outline the central
issues with which the contributors to the book are engaged.

BASICS: THE POSTPHENOMENOLOGICAL TOOLBOX

There are excellent introductions to the postphenomenological research field

available (Rosenberger and Verbeek 2015; Ihde 2009); no need to reiterate
these in all-too great detail here.2 Still, we do want to put in place a few
xx Introduction

orientation points for the investigations, and describe some of postphenom-

enology’s central concepts as most of the authors in this volume engage
with them.
Postphenomenology, as said, originates in Ihde’s oeuvre. Ihde has crafted
postphenomenology as a combination of phenomenology, pragmatism,
and empirical studies of technology such as STS (Science and Technol-
ogy Studies). The result is a framework that is, in his words, antiessential-
ist, interrelational, and non-subjectivistic (Ihde 2012; Ihde 2009; see also
Rosenberger 2016). As its starting points it nevertheless takes some central
notions of classic Husserlian phenomenology: intentionality, bracketing,
and variations. In opposition to the modernist contraposition of subject and
object, phenomenology assumes observer and observed to be basically inter-
related. However one chooses to frame the relation between a conscious
thinking being and the world, at any time that consciousness is and must be
aimed at something. Consciousness always has something as its content. This
characteristic, called intentionality, Ihde terms the “foundational correla-
tional rule of phenomenology” (1998, 16; original emphasis). Simply put, it
accounts for how observer and observed “go together,” how the “subject” is
related to the “object”: consciousness and world are “correlates.”
That does not mean that the subject or observer could achieve something
like a clear or neutral view on the observed. On the contrary, our perception is
always shaped and determined by socio-cultural conditions, presuppositions,
and learned habits, and these in fact often harbor remnants of our modernist,
for a large part Cartesian heritage. The phenomenological technique of brack-
eting or epoché is meant to put aside exactly these “ordinary assumptions and
sediments” (Ihde 2012, 74), the complex of which is known as the “natural
attitude.” Leaving behind the natural attitude and acquiring the phenomeno-
logical attitude instead, nonetheless, requires effort. Paradoxically, it involves
looking for and describing as many as possible aspects of a phenomenon.
In this sense, doing phenomenology entails something of a playful, creative
exercise, although one should go about it in a principally rigorous way. Ihde
outlines four rules of conduct in Experimental Phenomenology: (1) attend
to experiential phenomena as they appear; (2) describe instead of explain;
(3) equalize or horizontalize all phenomena in their immediate givenness, that
is, treat them all as equally real; and (4) find invariant or structural features of
the phenomena (2012, 18–22). Nevertheless, in order to find structural invari-
ants, one must in the first instance explore variants or variations—like when
one walks around a house and tries to take in as many aspects and dimensions
of it as possible, with the aim of grasping precisely the idea of this very house.
This last point is crucial, as here the Ihdean framework departs signifi-
cantly from Husserlian orthodoxy. In distinguishing what is variant from
what is invariant, Husserl claims to be able to determine “essential structures”
 Introduction xxi

or “essences,” but Ihde purports to find something altogether different: multi-

stability. Here we are reminded of his famous exercises in looking for varia-
tions in phenomena such as the Necker cube (Ihde 2012, 63–76). Traditional
experiments in psychology usually outline two variations, that are in Ihde’s
terminology “passive”: they appear without much effort on the observer’s
part. In the case of the Necker cube, this concerns the—three-dimensional—
gestalt switch between a “top” and a “bottom” view. When one, however,
applies a more “active” form of observation, Ihde proposes, more variations
become possible. For instance, the Necker cube may also be perceived two-
dimensionally as an insect trapped in a hexagon. The exploration of such vari-
ations that exceed the binary possibilities to which passive perception stays
confined, often requires some work of the imagination: some story needs to
be told in order to let the image “appear.” Nevertheless, once variations have
been discovered, one can relatively easily switch between them, while each,
as such, can be held in view on a fairly stable basis—hence the multistability
of experiential phenomena.
This project of finding surprising variant gestalts is of great importance
as it shows the “hidden potential” of phenomena. “Variations ‘possibilize’
phenomena” (Ihde 2012, 23). But even more importantly, the notion of mul-
tistability is central in Ihde’s philosophy of technology. In putting phenom-
enology to work in the context of technologically enhanced perception, for
instance in the case of scientific imaging technologies like the telescope, Ihde
eventually finds that technologies mediate the human-world correlation. Here
the addition of pragmatism and empirical technology studies to the frame-
work becomes crucial. First, technologies are always embedded in some prac-
tical situation, in a praxis, that usually involves some level of embodiment.
Even the handling of a purely “visual” instrument such as a telescope requires
some bodily technique or incorporation. Second, technologies are no neutral
means or media because they shape our perception and the ways in which
we experience the world. But, that does not mean that they wholly determine
us, as more classic philosophers of technology would have it: they are “non-
neutral.” This we learn by looking at specific practices in which technologies
may be deployed for certain usages, but are soon readapted, by users for
example, to suit other purposes. All across the human-world correlation, to
put it in grand terms, multistability reigns: praxes as well as technologies, by
the logics of variational theory, harbor multiple different forms, of which one
or another at any time may become at least temporarily stable.
All of this, in Ihde’s work as well as in phenomenology, is in the first
instance grounded in an ontological analysis. Of course, the framework has
epistemological and practical consequences, but these sprout from this onto-
logical base: human/subject/noesis and world/object/noema are essentially
interrelated. None exist as autonomous entities. What is more, their (inter)
xxii Introduction

relation—through for instance the mediation of technologies—constitutes

them, and not the other way around. The mediation makes the mediators, not
vice versa. However, the ontological differs from the methodological, and so
the principal methodological guideline from phenomenology is: “[t]he analy-
sis begins with what appears (noema) and then moves reflexively toward its
how of appearing [i.e., noesis]” (Ihde 2012, 31; original emphasis). In other
words, in following the rule of conduct that we attend exclusively to the phe-
nomena that present themselves to consciousness, we always find the world
first. The subject is enigmatic (ibid., 11). Only “reflexively” we discover the
thinking “I.” (Notice that this entails the exact opposite procedure of Des-
cartes’ “methodic doubt” of the cogito, that poses a thinking ego as certain
and from there deduces the rest of the world.) In this way, (post)phenomenol-
ogy is non-subjectivistic and non-introspectivist.

***

There are obviously different accounts of the human-world interrelation and

different branches of phenomenology that provide different angles—cogni-
tive, praxical, existential, or linguistic-hermeneutic. Ihde, in a pragmatist
spirit, blends all these angles in an approach that perhaps has as its pin-
nacle the famous analysis of diverse forms of human-technology-world
relations known under the rubric of the “phenomenology of technics” (Ihde
1990, 72ff.). For, it is not only a choice of theory which aspect gets most
highlighted: some technologies happen to relate more to our bodies, others
function mostly on a hermeneutic basis, and so on—hence Ihde’s distinction
between four relations: embodiment, hermeneutic, alterity, and background
relations.
In embodiment relations one “incorporates” the technology. The technol-
ogy is embodied, such as in the case of glasses. As someone who wears them
knows well, glasses—luckily!—mostly disappear from view. One focuses on
the things, on “world” instead. The intentionality is directed at world, while
user and technology become “merged” to an extent, at least phenomenologi-
cally speaking.
This is different in hermeneutic relations. There the visible/invisible border
shifts, so to speak, in the direction of technology and world. The technology
is positioned for a human being to interpret, to “read” world. One example
concerns the dashboard of a car. By definition one simply cannot perceive
what happens in or around the car’s engine, especially while driving. So one
“reads” the situation on the meters and dials in the dashboard. Intentionality
is now aimed at the technology (the metering instruments) through which one
learns something about world (the engine). But in a phenomenological sense,
technology and world are hardly distinguishable; they become merged.
 Introduction xxiii

It should be clear that in the description of these different types of relations,

it does not only matter what the human subject does with a technology in rela-
tion to a world: embodying or interpreting. Just as important is what appears
and disappears. Ihde in Technology and the Lifeworld conceptualizes this
in terms of transparency and opacity—and as we will see, these notions are
about to play a crucial role in this volume. There is always a balance between
transparent and opaque elements in a human-technology-world relation, like
communicating vessels: where transparency diminishes, opacity increases,
and vice versa. For the wearer of glasses, the instrument is transparent, but the
world is opaque (one cannot see “through” it as one does with the glasses).
For the reader of dials, the technology-world unit is opaque. One does not get
a clear perception of the car’s engine; any perception of it is always enmeshed
with the instrument. But in between instrument and world (the engine), some
kind of transparency comes about: one sees indeed through the instrument.
It cannot be stressed enough that Ihde’s analysis of human-technology-world
relations must (also) be seen as an investigation of such transparency-opacity
ratios, situated on a spectrum of sorts in which however pure transparency
can never be realized.3
This is made even clearer by looking at the other two relation types that
Ihde outlines. With alterity relations, the transparency-opacity ratio is differ-
ent again. One interacts with a technology as if it were an “other,” such as
with an ATM machine. World disappears here almost completely from view.
The interaction is exclusively with the machine as such. Technology becomes
opaque, world transparent.
In the case of background relations, finally, the technology becomes trans-
parent, while world takes on an opacity again. The prime example is a central
heating system, that just sits there without us noticing it except maybe for a
hum sometimes or when the temperature is off. We just mind our business
while these background technologies (another example is a refrigerator) do
their work unnoticed.4
In classic phenomenological terms this spectrum can also be made sense
of by way of the terms figure, field, and fringe, as Ihde points out (Ihde
2012, 40; see also Rosenberger 2014). Figure is what we focus on, the target
of intentionality. However, a figure always relates to a wider ground or field
within which it is situated. There is never a figure in isolation. But the focus
on a figure (opaque) presupposes the invisibility of a ground (transparent).
We can nevertheless try to get that environing context, the field, in view by
practicing variational analysis. But in turn the field ravels out into an even
wider context: the horizon or fringe, what is situated really on the border
of our perceptual grasp. Here, too, we can attempt to widen our perception,
and get a grasp on the fringe, but it takes great effort. This three-component
structure helps to point out that it is often not just a matter of balancing two
xxiv Introduction

(in)visibilities. When one invisibility is put into focus, another one looms—
literally—on the horizon. And, this structure can be made instrumental in the
context of an investigation of media as well.

BEGINNINGS: POSTPHENOMENOLOGICAL
RESEARCH INTO MEDIA

As mentioned, the investigation and analysis of media have remained in

the fringes of postphenomenology. Yet Ihde himself already for example
in Technology and the Lifeworld discusses media as we commonly know
them—for example, mass media, television—to a considerable extent. Look-
ing somewhat more closely, one notices a tight interwovenness between
his mentions of media such as television on one hand, and the conceptual
dichotomy he makes between microperception and macroperception on the
other hand. Microperception is what his “phenomenology of technics” is
centrally concerned with: the immediately given in the “here” and “now.”
But this “here and now” is always affected by larger socio-cultural contexts:
macroperception. And the two types of perception are essentially intertwined.
A good part of Technology and the Lifeworld is actually devoted to the scru-
tiny of that intertwinement. And implicitly a lot of the contributions in this
book build on Ihde’s analysis of micro vs. macro dynamics, looking at what
goes on “beyond” immediate use. A focus on media, we will find, in a sense
forces us to do so.
The beginnings of a postphenomenological approach to media can be
found in several corners of the postphenomenological household, so to speak.
The editors of this volume have done and are doing work in this area. Yoni
Van Den Eede (2012) fuses postphenomenology with among others the
media theory of Marshall McLuhan, an exercise resulting in an encompass-
ing “medial” ontological outlook; an effort he continues and extends in his
chapter in this book. Galit Wellner with her A Postphenomenological Inquiry
of Cell Phones (2016) has crafted the first comprehensive postphenomeno-
logical study of the cellphone, diving also deep into ontological waters and
showing how the cellphone as a technology dovetails with some of our most
essential metaphysical assumptions. Stacey O. Irwin, then, focuses full-force
on digital media in her book of that title, Digital Media: Human–Technology
Connection (2016). Exploring and mapping the “technological texture” with
which digital media overlay our lives nowadays, she collects an array of case
studies informed by postphenomenology.
Of course these are not the only ones. As editors we selected the contribu-
tors to this volume on the basis of an interest we knew they have in media
or of work they are doing in the area. All authors have related their research
 Introduction xxv

in one way or another to media, and the investigations in this volume can be
seen as either a further surfacing of what were maybe already dormant foci,
or a consolidation and elaboration of clearly present conceptual angles.

PUSHING FORWARD: THE

POSTPHENOMENOLOGY OF MEDIA

The reader might ask: What makes media such a special case that we should
delineate it/them from the “ordinary” treatment of technology by postphe-
nomenology? Is it appropriate and proportional to reserve a special place for
media, as this book does? This leads us straight to the fundamental question:
What are media in fact?
Traditionally media—also “the media”5—are defined as “means of com-
munication”: press, radio, television, and so on. In everyday discourse,
media are still largely thought of in this way. Yet Marshall McLuhan, usually
regarded as one of the first media theorists (if not the first), already in the
1960s widened this classic definition substantially. His Understanding Media
(2003) from 1964 is filled with case studies of all sorts of “media” such as
clothing, housing, roads, clocks, weapons—things many people would rather
categorize under, if anything, “technology.” Indeed, McLuhan simply equates
the terms medium and technology (the logical implication also being that his
famous phrase “the medium is the message” thus counts for technologies just
as much). By the end of his career, McLuhan even winds up defining media
as all things made by humans: all artifacts—material as well as immaterial.
Coffee pots, electric guitars, consumerism, the state—all of these “things” are
“made” by humans. Hence they are media. Hence, and most importantly, they
act as media: they do “what media do.”
The McLuhanist definition is so broad that it might provide little concep-
tual leverage. If everything is a medium, what’s the use of a definition at all?
Nonetheless, from a certain viewpoint, some recent technological develop-
ments have been validating McLuhan’s approach (this is also one of the main
reasons for the revival of his thought in the last years). If many things were
not already media in the fundamental-philosophical sense that McLuhan was
envisioning, then they became or are now becoming medial in—if only—a
practical-technical sense.
Media as we know them are starting to become “blurred.” We already
referred to this evolution at the beginning. With the onset of mobile com-
munication technology, media are no longer “over there”; they are moving
toward us, into us. Looking at the history of media, one perceives almost the
evolution of an organism becoming more and more complex, diverse, and
ubiquitous. While only half a century ago well-defined media dominated
xxvi Introduction

our lives—books, newspapers, radio, television—now media are becoming

increasingly invisible, transparent, “seamless,” interactive, and predictive
(they “guesstimate” our next move). Thanks to contemporary technologies
such as the cellphone, media have become not only what we read, hear, and
see but also what we constantly have around us.
In parallel, things that were not usually perceived as media are now acquir-
ing an “information and communication” or ICT character by taking on traits
formerly reserved for media in the classic definition alone. Think of develop-
ments such as Internet of Things, “smart” homes, and location-based services.
Through the incorporation of new technologies like radio-frequency identifi-
cation (RFID) tags, sensors, and microchips, previously “dumb” things such
as household appliances, medical tools, automobiles, or even clothing are
acquiring a form of “intelligence” as they are taken up in a data network and
made to transmit and process information, algorithmically react to events, or
generally act and decide “on their own.” Here then is a movement “outward.”
As a result, media are becoming a significant part of our everyday lives
in very real, very tangible ways, but paradoxically, we cannot be so sure
anymore about what they are (if we ever were). Instrumental in this context
is obviously the shift from analog to digital. It is “the digital” that has made
a lot of these technological developments possible from the start. Media
by way of omnipresent digital networks become fused with our everyday
lives to the extent that they are indistinguishable from it, but simultane-
ously—because of this invisibility—we partly lose our grip on them. This is
a problem tailored to the phenomenological outlook, and surely, the instru-
ments provided by classic phenomenology already offer a useful toolbox for
the study of media; witness the important work done by such organizations
as the Society for Phenomenology and Media in the last decade and a half
(see Majkut and Canán 2010). But postphenomenology is eminently placed
to make sense of these developments, given how it is specifically oriented
toward an analysis of transparency-opacity ratios, multistability, multiple
types of human-technology-world relations, perception and understanding,
micro- and macroperception dynamics.

***

So what are the central issues for a postphenomenology of media, then?

As such, this kind of investigation cannot but bring several different angles
together. There are fundamental reflections: How to define media? Is there a
difference between media and technology(/ies)? Can media ground an ontol-
ogy? What role do media play in the production of knowledge (media as, to
use Ihde’s term, “epistemological engines”)? Of course we need to look into
typical phenomenological themes: perception, understanding, interpretation;
 Introduction xxvii

media and the senses, media and (“expanded”) hermeneutics. There should be
a substantial consideration of those aspects that have started to characterize
our contemporary media environments: What is the status of “the digital”? Is
the digital something new? How should we look upon the history of media
from a postphenomenological standpoint? Thus shifting toward a more com-
prehensive inquiry of societal implications, we can begin to ask how media—
in whatever sense—are related to morality, culture(s), politics, to name a few.
And of course, the postphenomenological framework can be deployed for
the analysis of specific contemporary problems in relation to media (perhaps
rather in the more classic sense), such as surveillance, user empowerment,
and the (online and/or “quantified”) self. All across these thematic angles, we
will find the central thread of multistability. This also means that we do not,
perhaps, need clear-cut, unified, linear definitions. We might just find that
most of these issues might be multistable in themselves, as are the technolo-
gies and media environments under scrutiny.
In a truly (post)phenomenological spirit, though, we should begin by
attending to the phenomena that impinge themselves upon us in a direct fash-
ion: our current media environments—their most striking features including
ubiquity, digitality, and seamlessness. Immediately, one is confronted then
with those hotly debated issues such as privacy, the impact of digital media—
for example e-readers—on cognitive skills, social-psychological effects of
social media use, the Anthropocene, and the like. The postphenomenological
toolkit can be put to good use to cast a new light on these issues by way of an
encompassing analysis of how these media environments are actually consti-
tuted and constituting, and generally how they “work.”
In their ubiquity, subsequently, and as said, contemporary digital media
tend to disappear from view to a certain extent. What “part” of media do we
perceive, and which other characteristics go unnoticed? Exactly the finding
that some things escape our grasp seems to be one of the most important
problems we are facing today in our usage of media. As already suggested,
postphenomenology’s transparency-opacity ratio analysis can be put to work
in the context of understanding media’s visible vs. hidden aspects. Moreover,
it can help to delineate how not only perception, but also action is shaped by
this dynamic, how media extend human capacities, and how this extension
feedbacks upon those capacities.
This theme then organically flows over another central issue: as we extend
ourselves into media, we need to ask how media impact upon our bodily con-
stitution, on bodily experience, and on perception. We thus should ask, along
the lines of Ihde’s “phenomenology of technics,” which kinds of human-
technology-world relations do media take part in, and conversely, can (con-
temporary, digital) media teach us something about human-technology-world
relations? Are they changing the nature of those relations? What kind of
xxviii Introduction

“hybrids” are we, or have we become, exactly? Even taking a step further, we
might ask whether the body is not, or is at least becoming, a medium itself.
And so as we move gradually from the “world” component, via technol-
ogy/media, to finding at last the “I” of the investigating subject, we should
dive still deeper, toward ontological and metaphysical depths. This is more-
over a good way of weaving together and synthesizing some of the insights
developed in thinking about the issues above. Questions at stake here are:
what are media actually, on the most fundamental level? To what extent
should we regard them as building blocks of reality? And which take does
postphenomenology develop on this matter? Moreover, inversely, do we
need to adapt or fine-tune the postphenomenological framework on the basis
of the analyses deployed here in function of media (in either a generic or a
contemporary-digital sense)?

OVERVIEW OF THE VOLUME

The volume is divided into three parts. Part I looks at our current digital
media environments somewhat from a distance, in order to get a general
feel of the issues we’re dealing with. As such, by scouting the perimeters
of the domain under scrutiny, this part provides a framework for the rest of
the investigation. Part II then goes into more detail and develops, true to the
postphenomenological mission, case studies of specific technologies/media.
This part of the collection offers some reflections on digital media with which
many people are familiar. Following this, we become a bit more theoretical
and self-reflexive, and ask in Part III to which extent postphenomenology as
a conceptual toolbox itself should be fine-tuned and/or expanded to be able
to adequately deal with media, digital media/ICT and media environments.
Part I Heather Wiltse sets the tone by attempting to grasp an essential
aspect of new media technologies: as they surpass mere human intentionality,
we need new ways of understanding them. Her notion of “mediating infra-
structures” is meant to make sense of the way in which these media are start-
ing to live a life of their own, so to speak. Working toward the formulation
of that notion, Wiltse explores the boundaries and overlaps between media,
technology and—introducing an important term for the study of media—
environment, to arrive at an intriguing matrix that seeks to map the complex
interactions between those realms.
Continuing the spirit of critical distance, Daniel Susser looks at a crucial
difference between the physical and the digital world. While the physical
world is opaque—our bodies literally bump into it—the digital world is trans-
parent: unlike the action-reaction patterns we know from physical reality,
the effects of our digital actions often stay hidden. But this has far-reaching
 Introduction xxix

consequences for the possibilities of developing good behavior online. Susser

analyzes the situation meticulously and offers possible solutions that are set
to (re)introduce feedback processes into the digital “flow,” coercing users
into awareness and self-reflexivity.
The following two chapters elaborate these themes further, but each in
their own way. Shoji Nagataki’s chapter zooms in on the body, deploying the
notion of the “body as medium” and asking how in—impending—times of
human enhancement the body will play a role in constituting a sense of self.
Will robots or humanoids be able to have a real sense of identity? Nagataki
provides, via a survey of some instances of science-fiction literature through
the (post)phenomenological lens, a challenging answer: the identity of a per-
son is constituted by having memories of oneself, but also by memories of
one’s environment, and by others having memories about the person.
Nicola Liberati then closes off this part by taking a closer look at the
transparency-opacity dichotomy, coupling it to the concept of magic. He does
this by way of Arthur C. Clarke’s third law of technology—“any sufficiently
advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”—and helpful illus-
trations from fantasy and magic performances. New digital media, Liberati
proposes, have the effect of appearing as “magical” to their users. On the
one hand this is because of the way their workings stay invisible—transpar-
ent—and appear like “sleight of hand.” On the other hand, the “magic” is
also grounded in an opacity: we do not understand the way those media work.
Part II Continuing the discussion on transparency and opacity, and at the
same time kicking off the second part that revolves around case studies of
specific media technologies, Robert Spicer investigates three cases: the Apple
Watch, drones, and virtual reality. These may not have much to do with each
other at first sight, but superposed onto each other—Spicer talks of them
in terms of concentric circles—their analysis exquisitely demonstrates how
different media technologies play out differently with regard to transparency-
opacity ratios, in function of their distance from “us.” On a fundamental
level, it helps to describe how digital media relate to the visible/invisible
dichotomy.
Stacey Irwin neatly continues this thread, with a case study of the mobile
GoPro camera from the perspective of the evolution of “mediamaking” and its
tight relation to multimedia. Multimedia in a sense instantiate multistability as
such, an idea Irwin conceptualizes through the notion of “multimedia stabili-
ties.” The concept, together with the notion of the postphenomenological pivot
(elaborated in recent times by Kyle Whyte), can help to clarify how contempo-
rary multimedia technologies—cameras, visual editing tools, et cetera—take
their place in the historical trajectory they have been and are tracing.
The chapter by Fernando Secomandi takes the discussion on media mul-
tistabilities further. He studies the interaction with the visual interface of a
xxx Introduction

service designed by the Dutch corporation Philips to help people self-track

their fitness activities. Secomandi observes the work of designers and pro-
grammers “from the inside,” at the stage in which the interface is still being
designed, developed, and tested. This makes him eminently placed to map
the multistability of digital images in relation to (actual or anticipated) user
experience during design practice. What becomes clear is how pertinent the
notion of intersubjectivity is in this context.
Robert Rosenberger concludes this part with a study of e-readers from the
perspective of Ihde’s analysis of human-technology-world relations, comple-
mented by his own work on how technologies mediate a user’s field of aware-
ness. As a counterpoint to his argument, he engages with Anne Mangen’s
critique of “hyperlink-laden text.” Arguing against the technological deter-
minism inherent in that critique, Rosenberger explicates how reading prac-
tices cannot be just the effect of the technological device, but are also rooted
in long-developed, sedimented habits, and can thus be potentially changed.
Part III The third part takes stock, and entails sometimes critical,
sometimes self-reflexive inquiries. Authors here examine the postphenom-
enological framework itself and/or supplement it with new approaches or
perspectives, as ignited by thinking on media. Lars Botin in a wide-ranging,
provocative exploration asks how we should relate to the ongoing accelera-
tion of media environments. Prominent voices on this theme, such as Paul
Virilio’s and Hartmut Rosa’s, often tend to be pessimistic. In line with
postphenomenology, that would claim that technologies are not harbingers
of doom—they are malleable and open to positive change—Botin searches
another way, through an exploration of the notion of the sublime. From this
angle, ever-accelerating media can be seen as forms of “sublimating" our-
selves in a constructive manner.
Pieter Lemmens also moves “beyond” and critically approaches postphe-
nomenology as a theory, superposing the work of French philosopher of
technology Bernard Stiegler onto it. Unlike postphenomenology, Lemmens
argues, Stiegler is able to make sense of the concept of technology as such, as
that which conditions our existence. And that can exactly be brought out by
zooming in on digital media, or with Stiegler, “mnemotechnologies.” Lem-
mens lays bare how the two frameworks dovetail with each other and how
they diverge, showing that an analysis of media may press postphenomenol-
ogy into critically scrutinizing its ontological underpinnings.
Still another kind of “going beyond” is offered by Galit Wellner. Observ-
ing that the discussion on media has been dominated by attention to her-
meneutic issues and thus the “reading phase” of media, she proposes to
supplement this viewpoint with a thorough investigation of their writing or
recording modalities and histories. Employing amongst others the “phenom-
enology of technics” and extensions of it by Verbeek, Liberati, and Wiltse,
 Introduction xxxi

Wellner’s chapter weaves together a lot of the threads developed throughout

the volume. In the process she, too, helps to make clear how digital media
urge postphenomenology to “adapt.”
Yoni Van Den Eede, finally, continues this synthesizing effort as well as the
“expanding” exercise by looking again at the definition of media and valuing
the notion of “everything as a medium.” His starting point is the challenge
recently posed to postphenomenology by Diane Michelfelder to attend more
to the “world” component in human-technology-world relations. In order to
meet that challenge, Van Den Eede suggests, postphenomenology can join
forces with two other frameworks that are actually much less removed from
it than one would expect: McLuhanist media theory and Graham Harman’s
object-oriented philosophy.

NOTES

1. Especially Verbeek (2005) uses this term, but the concept of mediation by tech-
nology (or technological mediation) is already elaborated in Ihde’s Technology and
the Lifeworld (1990).
2. See also for helpful collections showcasing the diversity of the field, the com-
panion volumes Friis and Crease 2015 and Rosenberger and Verbeek 2015b, and
Selinger 2006.
3. An important lesson in itself; see Ihde’s admonishments with regard to the wish
for “total transparency” (1990, 75).
4. Additional relations have been developed based on the I-technology-world for-
mula, as for example in the work of Verbeek (2008).
5. Or media used in the singular form: “media is” instead of “media are.”

REFERENCES

Friis, J. K. B. O. and R. P. Crease (eds.). (2015). Technoscience and Postphenomenol-

ogy: The Manhattan Papers. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Ihde, D. (1990). Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden to Earth. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
———. (1998). Expanding Hermeneutics: Visualism in Science. Evanston (IL):
Northwestern University Press.
———. (2009). Postphenomenology and Technoscience: The Peking University Lec-
tures. Albany (NY): State University of New York Press.
———. (2012). Experimental Phenomenology: Multistabilities. Second Edition.
Albany (NY): State University of New York Press.
Irwin, S. O. (2016). Digital Media: Human–Technology Connection. Lanham:
Lexington Books.
xxxii Introduction

Majkut, P. and A. J. L. Carrillo Canán (eds.). (2010). Phenomenology and Media: An

Anthology of Essays from Glimpse, Publication of the Society for Phenomenology
and Media, 1999–2008. Bucharest: Zeta Books.
McLuhan, M. (2003). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Critical Edition.
Corte Madera: Gingko Press.
Rosenberger, R. (2014). “The Phenomenological Case for Stricter Regulation of Cell
Phones and Driving.” Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 18 (1–2):
20–47.
———. (2016). “Notes on a Nonfoundational Phenomenology of Technology.” Foun-
dations of Science Online First (January): 1–24. doi:10.1007/s10699–015–9480–5.
Rosenberger, R. and P.-P. Verbeek. (2015a). “A Field Guide to Postphenomenology.”
In R. Rosenberger and P.-P. Verbeek (eds.), Postphenomenological Investigations:
Essays on Human–Technology Relations. Lanham: Lexington Books, 9–41.
——— (eds.). (2015b). Postphenomenological Investigations: Essays on Human–
Technology Relations. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Selinger, E. (ed.). (2006). Postphenomenology: A Critical Companion to Ihde.
Albany (NY): State University of New York Press.
Van Den Eede, Y. (2012). Amor Technologiae: Marshall McLuhan as Philosopher
of Technology—Toward a Philosophy of Human-Media Relationships. Brussels:
VUBPRESS.
Verbeek, P.-P. (2008). “Cyborg Intentionality: Rethinking the Phenomenology of
Human–Technology Relations.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7 (3):
387–95.
———. (2005). What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency,
and Design. Trans. R. P. Crease. University Park (PA): The Pennsylvania State
University Press.
Wellner, G. P. (2016). A Postphenomenological Inquiry of Cell Phones: Genealogies,
Meanings, and Becoming. Lanham: Lexington Books.
 Part 1

Exploring Media Environments

with Postphenomenology
 Chapter 1

Mediating (Infra)structures
Technology, Media, Environment
Heather Wiltse

When asked recently if Facebook is an “editor” of news, founder and chief

Mark Zuckerberg responded: “No, we’re a tech company, we’re not a media
company.”1 He went on to say that although Facebook builds the “tools,” they
“do not produce any of the content.” But he also later described social media
as “the most diverse form of media that has ever existed” (Fiveash 2016).
In light of these comments, one might be excused for being rather confused
about what, exactly, Facebook is. Yet this distinction can actually have cru-
cial consequences for how Facebook operates. Zuckerberg’s insistence that
Facebook is a technology company came in the context of European leaders
calling on it to police extremism by quickly removing hateful and illegal
posts; but if it does this and is thus labeled a “publisher” it would then be open
to domestic libel laws (Fiveash 2016).
Choosing to think in terms of technology, media, or something else also has
implications for analysis and understanding, for highlighting certain aspects
and dynamics while leaving others in the unexamined background. And, as
evidenced by Zuckerberg’s comments, many of the things we now live with
can be viewed in multiple ways; there is no obvious, given, or unproblematic
starting point. Yet there do seem to be significant aspects of our technologi-
cally textured lifeworld that call for responsible and response-able (Haraway
2015; Wiltse et al. 2016) accounts of the increasingly pervasive and sophisti-
cated things that can be described using words such as digital, computational,
media, networked, sensing, responsive, customized, active, and smart; and for
which “use” might involve actions such as clicking, liking, sharing, curating,
monitoring, remixing, collecting, sending, reading, creating, profiling, col-
laborating, perceiving, configuring, tracking, tagging, finding, interpreting,
embedding, targeting, customizing, and connecting.

3
4 Heather Wiltse

Of course, these sociotechnical practices are studied and accounted for in

many different ways; and since they involve and implicate many different cul-
tural forms and practices, technologies, application areas, and so on, there is a
confluence of many different perspectives that are brought to bear. In fact, the
present book is an example of such a confluence, combining the perspectives
of postphenomenology and media. With all of this attention and combination of
perspectives it might seem that there should be, in total, quite thorough cover-
age of contemporary technological things and the practices they support. Yet
one potentially troubling consideration is that analytic lenses come “pre-loaded”
with basic conceptions of the nature of their objects of study, ones that have
been developed in relation to earlier cultural forms and practices and which may
thus not be best suited for highlighting qualitatively different aspects of newer
ones. For example, Heidegger’s (2010) famous tool analysis and example of
the hammer, how it becomes present-to-hand or ready-to-hand through use, has
been highly influential and is still relevant in many ways; and yet the transpar-
ency of a technology that can occur in skilled use and occlude awareness of it
as such is of a somewhat different order when we consider digital tools that
not only recede from awareness in use, but are actually inaccessible.2 Another
concern is that although different perspectives may relate to some of the same
terminology or ostensive objects of study they may in fact have quite different
conceptions of what these objects actually are, making their simple combination
potentially problematic. For example, a smartphone is something that is possible
to point to as an object of study; but whether it is conceived of as a medium for
communication or as a technological tool has implications for the conceptual
and analytic frames that are used. This will be further elaborated later.
There are also more fundamental reasons to care about the consequences of
the concepts we use. One is that they inevitably draw our attention to certain
things while occluding others. As Deleuze and Guattari put it, “a concept
always has components that can prevent the appearance of another concept
or, on the contrary, that can themselves appear only at the cost of the disap-
pearance of other concepts” (Deleuze et al. 1994, 31). Going even further,
according to Barad’s agential realist account, the material and the discursive
are intra-actively constituted. As she says, “discursive practices are specific
material (re)configurings of the world through which local determina-
tions of boundaries, properties, and meanings are differentially enacted”
(Barad 2003, 820–821; original emphasis). This means in turn that we are
all accountable—whether technology executives, philosophers, designers,
engineers, technologists, citizens, critical theorists, or researchers—for the
particular material discursive practices that produce the things and phenom-
ena with which we intra-actively engage (Barad 2003, 2007).
The goal in this chapter, then, is to explore what different ontological/
analytic perspectives point us toward when it comes to what might be called
 Mediating (Infra)structures 5

“media technologies,” and to probe for blind spots and openings for further
investigation. Specifically, it will begin by considering three strong candi-
dates for what these things might be like and how they might then be studied
(and which are already suggested by the focus of the present book): tech-
nology, media, and environment. It will then look at how they can intersect
in ways that might bring into focus certain key dynamics of contemporary
networked computational things. Finally, the analytic concept of mediating
(infra)structures will be developed as a way to synthesize and develop these
matters that have been foregrounded, and to point toward new analytic direc-
tions and sensitivities that are required in order to adequately and incisively
account for them.
The underlying argument of this investigation is that it is crucially impor-
tant to (re)consider the intellectual tools that are brought to bear on phenom-
ena and practices involving contemporary networked computational things.
These are things that are often very active and interconnected; and they have
functions and behaviors that are hidden beneath user-facing surfaces and may
even be very different from the functionality and character a person experi-
ences during interactions with and through them. This state of affairs calls
for new conceptual and analytic lenses that build on the strengths of existing
ones, but also recognize the inadequacies of existing perspectives and thus
develop in the new directions that are required.

TECHNOLOGY, MEDIA, ENVIRONMENT

Inquiring into the roots of notions that seem appropriate for considering
the things we encounter can be instructive in terms of highlighting specific
aspects and dynamics of interest, and also for being conscious of how those
notions and their histories can set us out on a particular analytic path. In
postphenomenological terms, we might think of this as the various kinds of
multistabilities we are able to brainstorm and explore. While this will by no
means be an exhaustive or definitive study, even a relatively straightforward
and commonsense survey can be informative.
However, it should be noted that this brief survey will inevitably be reduc-
tive and simplistic, and will not do justice to the richness and nuance that can
be found in these traditions. The reason for zooming out to such a high level
is in order to see something else that is more to do with basic conceptions
and ideas of what things are, what dynamics are at play, and what is at stake.
The three terms that will be explored here as lenses that frame certain
types of things are technology, media, and environment. No doubt others
could be chosen, although some of these other terms will also make appear-
ances in the discussion of technology, media, and environment. These three
6 Heather Wiltse

terms were chosen because they seem to be some of the most commonly used
and relevant ones when it comes to addressing contemporary computational
things; and because they entail corresponding conceptions of basic orienta-
tions toward how humans relate to them. Environment is perhaps a less obvi-
ous candidate than the other two, but there seem to be compelling reasons to
include it that will be explicated later on.

TECHNOLOGY

Terms already in common use (and which emerged in Zuckerberg’s com-

ments) are technology and media. Technology commonly implies some kind
of tool that is actively and intentionally used, typically by a human. In fact,
technology-use has been said to be one of the things that makes us human
(Nelson and Stolterman 2012). Moreover, technology is often seen as being
used in an instrumental fashion for some particular purpose.3 This purpose is
often in focus in design processes in which specific objects, applications, and
systems are created with certain forms in order to serve particular functions
and use cases. Of course, once these designed things are released into the
world the designers’ intentions may not be followed by those who use them
(cf. Akrich 1991), as the multistability of any given thing allows for achieving
a variety of relations to it (Ihde 1990). But even then there is still a purposeful
design—just one that comes from the side of use (Redström 2008).
Technology has historically been strongly associated with (masculine)
projects of domination and control (Wajcman 2000; Faulkner 2001), and
specifically with science. The academic field of science and technology stud-
ies grew out of the sociology of science as the result of the perceived need to
extend analyses to the technological tools of applied science (Bijker, Hughes,
and Pinch 1987; Collins and Pinch 1998). The roots of postphenomenology
are also connected to this tradition (Ihde 2008), and a number of postphe-
nomenological cases are scientific tools. Examples include microscopes and
telescopes (Ihde 1990), obstetric ultrasound (Verbeek 2008), visual render-
ings in science (Hasse 2008), and the Mars rover (Rosenberger 2013). Owing
to its roots in phenomenology, postphenomenology considers how the world
and humans are mutually present to each other, but with a special emphasis
on the technologies that often mediate human-world relations. The focus is
on mediated perception of and access to the world, and action in it. While it
would by no means be claimed that humans can have access to the world in
any direct or unproblematic way, and there is a decidedly non-foundational
orientation (cf. Rosenberger 2016), there is also a sense (particularly through
the connection to science) that what is at stake has to do with how we can
connect to, know something about, and engage with what is “real.”
 Mediating (Infra)structures 7

When speaking of technology, human agency is typically in focus.

Technology is at the heart of Western narratives of progress, from the first
time an early human picked up a bone and turned it into a weapon or other
kind of tool, to the Industrial Revolution, to any of the more recent technol-
ogy-based “revolutions.” Breathless predictions of the “coming age of [insert
specific advanced technology here]” have become commonplace. Other pre-
dictions take the form of dystopic visions of robots that become smart enough
to rebel against their human creators; these thus flip the script of technologies
being subject to human agency and control, yet through doing so also play
off of and reinforce typical conceptions of technologies as tools (or perhaps
servants, in the case of anthropomorphic robots) created by and for humans.
Somewhat less dramatically, popular and widely accessible social media
technologies that enable the relatively easy creation, manipulation, and shar-
ing of media content are regularly blamed for making us dumb, distracted,
unable to converse with each other, and generally disconnected from the “real
world.” This is particularly intriguing and noteworthy given the traditional
role of technologies in science as instruments that connect to and reveal the
world, rather than detract from it. But the perspective of media can provide
more illumination here.

MEDIA

Media is a term associated with communication, messages, content, social

practices, and creation.4 These practices can be characterized by their perfor-
mative character: in other words, what people communicate and create can
be seen as culturally shaped and embedded performances of self and identity
(Goffman 1959). Participation and collaboration are also key aspects of more
recent sociotechnical developments and media practices (cf. Jenkins 2006;
Löwgren and Reimer 2013; Meikle and Young 2011). Here what is in focus
are cultural practices that are enabled by and enacted through media, and the
ways in which those practices also shape the development of the associated
media technologies.
More recently, media technologies have been considered from a postphe-
nomenological angle in order to elaborate the multistable human-technology
relations they enable and support. For example, Irwin (2016) considers the
texture woven by sociotechnical practices around things such as dubstep
mashups, photo manipulation, self-tracking, and earbuds; while Wellner
(2016) explores relations to and through cellphones.
But this combination of a perspective honed on technologies (postphenom-
enology) with media as object of study has inherent internal tensions. While
(especially scientific) technology relates to what is “real,” media is “not real”
8 Heather Wiltse

(or at least not necessarily real). Or rather, while the existence and effects of
media might have a very real character, there is no direct, stable, or reliable
connection between signifiers and signified. Already before the advent of the
Internet Baudrillard argued that modern society is ordered by simulation and
can be characterized by a play of simulacra—signs with no originary points
of reference (Baudrillard 1994). This could be seen also in at least the early
Internet that was regarded as a place to play with identity (Turkle 1997),
which was made possible because of the dissociation of physical body and
communicative capability that enabled performances of self unencumbered
by the realities of physical presence and embodiment (Hayles 1999).
In more recent years, however, there has been a trend away from online-
only identities separate from those in “meatspace,” and toward online
accounts that are accurate and “verified” in various ways (meaning: con-
nected to offline, more or less official identities). The “verified account”
badge on Twitter is one example. Another is Facebook’s policy on identity, as
set out in its terms of service. It is interesting to note the number and variety
of ways in which these seek to maintain and enforce a connection between
online and “real” identities:

Facebook users provide their real names and information, and we need your
help to keep it that way. Here are some commitments you make to us relating to
registering and maintaining the security of your account:

1. You will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create
an account for anyone other than yourself without permission.
2. You will not create more than one personal account.
3. If we disable your account, you will not create another one without our
permission.
4. You will not use your personal timeline primarily for your own commercial
gain, and will use a Facebook Page for such purposes.
5. You will not use Facebook if you are under 13.
6. You will not use Facebook if you are a convicted sex offender.
7. You will keep your contact information accurate and up to date.
8. You will not share your password (or in the case of developers, your secret
key), let anyone else access your account, or do anything else that might
jeopardize the security of your account.
9. You will not transfer your account (including any Page or application you
administer) to anyone without first getting our written permission.
10. If you select a username or similar identifier for your account or Page,
we reserve the right to remove or reclaim it if we believe it is appropriate
(such as when a trademark owner complains about a username that does
not closely relate to a user’s actual name).

(https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms)
 Mediating (Infra)structures 9

Of course it is technically possible for users of the Facebook technology to

not follow these terms, but it is worth noting that there is a strong legal and
social pressure to maintain a stable link between online and offline identi-
ties. And, significantly, this cannot be enforced entirely through the technol-
ogy, which is why legal frameworks are brought to bear in order to regulate
behavior.5 The combination of “authentic” identity and “performed” content
presents a tension along the same lines as that between the conceptual lenses
of technology and media (i.e., scientific tool that reveals some aspect of real-
ity versus means for socially situated performances of self), and is one that
will be further explored later.

ENVIRONMENT

Another, relatively more recently used, concept for describing the role and
character of contemporary networked computational technologies is environ-
ment. That is to say that these things have become so pervasive that they have
come to constitute something that is more like an environment we live in than
isolated tools we pick up and use but then put down and leave (Meikle and
Young 2011; Deuze 2012)—even if it is an environment that is more messy
and less seamless than those envisioned in traditional narratives of ubiquitous
computing (Dourish and Bell 2011). These networked computational technolo-
gies can not only function as environments themselves (Wiltse and Stolterman
2010) but can also shape experiences of “real” space (Coyne 2010). To use
Puech’s (2016) term: we live in a technosphere of ambient, pervasive technolo-
gies, and ones that increasingly sit at the interface between self and world.
In addition to resonating with common experiences of a life that is thor-
oughly textured and mediated by these technologies, the environmental
lens also suggests some more aspects that are illuminating. Specifically, an
environment is something that is always there, and often in the background.
It is something with which we typically have a “background relation,” to
use Ihde’s (1990) terminology, just as it is also something we can navigate
and leverage more intentionally.6 An environment involves infrastructures,
foundations on which other structures are built and which often remain hid-
den to a greater or lesser extent. This can be noted from even a commonsense
survey of manifestations of infrastructure: things such as phone and power
lines, utility holes, roadways, plumbing, and similar kinds of pervasive,
systemic resources that typically do not warrant second thought (as long as
they continue to function normally). But infrastructures are always there, and
often active in the case of infrastructural services that are always running.
Infrastructures also imply interwoven and continuous structures, even as they
are composed of many smaller components.
10 Heather Wiltse

Importantly, environments are things that surround us, that we can move
around in to varying degrees and get out of only by entering another environ-
ment. Even leaving a particular local environment entails a process of tracing
a connection between it and wherever else one arrives at. There are no clean
edges, firm boundaries, or absolutely exterior positions. An environment is
not something we pick up and use like a tool, but rather something that sur-
rounds and incorporates us.
The relatively recent tendency to view contemporary networked computa-
tional things in terms of environment might relate to some of these qualities.
These technologies are something we cannot get “out of,” as they are all
around. Even many basic transactions of everyday life are now made through
them, such as managing finances; communicating with colleagues, friends,
and family (and indeed strangers); playing games; making purchases; read-
ing the news; keeping personal records; and many more. And rather than the
free play of identity that was thought to be enabled by a boundary between
real and virtual lives, online and physical interactions are increasingly
enmeshed—as are the technological systems themselves. Looking beneath
the surface, we might also recognize the existence of lower-level infrastruc-
tures—everything from the protocols used for information exchange on the
Internet to cloud computing service providers to APIs that turn applications
into resources for other applications.
Environments are thus underneath and all around, and we are in relation to
them, whether we like it or not.

COMBINING, PROBING, DETERRITORIALIZING

For each of the “things” referenced by the terms technology, media, and
environment we can identify corresponding (and correspondingly simplified
and general) human activities that are involved and that are at the heart of
why each of them matter. Media can be said to be about communication,
about exchanging information, expressing oneself, and, perhaps most of
all, connecting and being present with and for others. Technology relates
to action and perception, what people can do and perceive, their ways of
being and acting in the world. Environment is about dwelling, how people
inhabit and navigate their everyday material lifeworlds and the possibilities
they afford and constrain, and how they flourish through connection with an
environment (Puech 2016).7 These activities and core concerns can provide
the lenses through which we view the significance of the things in question
(see Figure 1.1).
Now, the purpose here is not to reduce and mangle rich areas of investiga-
tion and scholarship beyond recognition, but rather to get to a point where it
 Mediating (Infra)structures 11

Figure 1.1 Thing and activity lenses.

might be possible to recognize basic orientations and assumptions that are not
necessarily easy or possible to see while in the thick of that richness. It is also
for the purpose of what follows, which is an intentional exercise in disturbing,
perturbing, deterritorializing, and looking for new lines of flight.

Roles, Relations, Agencies

Adding to the simple table above, we can also note that in each of the activi-
ties and relations, human involvement and relative position can be in differ-
ent modes: active or passive, sending or receiving, creating or interpreting,
navigating or following, and so on. For example, in terms of media, a person
can at different times be a creator or a recipient of messages, a producer or a
consumer, encoder or decoder, and so on. In relation to technology, we can
see that humans make use of technologies to mediate their perceptive access
to the world, but they can also be in the position of “world” (in the sense of
the basic I-technology-world relation of postphenomenology) that is made
perceptible to another human through the mediation of technology. And when
it comes to environment, a person can actively navigate and utilize it as a
resource, or just inhabit and be in it more passively.
So we can see this mode as a sort of modulator that affects the character
of the activity in question, and that can be used to articulate the perspective
from which relations are analyzed and perhaps also to identify a relevant

Figure 1.2 Thing, mode, and activity lenses.

12 Heather Wiltse

converse perspective (see Figure 1.2). It is also worth noting that the more
passive modes indicate a significant difference from what is typically consid-
ered from the perspectives of user experience, phenomenological intentional-
ity, and so on. What is there to see if we look for what is going on with and
through things outside of these frames that place humans in the active role?

Opening Up the Matrix

Another possibility for charting potentially interesting territory is to combine
the “things” in question with an activity lens more typically associated with
a different conceptualization of its object of study. We can try this out by
opening up the first simple chart such that rather than “things” and “lenses”
corresponding directly to each other, they each become an axis that opens
up a matrix that includes the typical conceptions but also new possibilities.
The point here is not to literally fill in this matrix, but rather to use it as a
conceptual tool for teasing apart complex dynamics and as a lens for opening
up other relevant vantage points that can be used for finding other trajectories
and territories worth exploring (see Figure 1.3).
n
tio
ep

ica r)
n
& t)

un ive

g e)
tio
rc
n bjec

llin ssiv
m ce
Pe
tio t/O

m r/Re

we Pa
Ac ubjec

D tive/
Co de
en

c
(S

(A
(S

Technology

Media

Environment

Figure 1.3 Opening up the matrix.

 Mediating (Infra)structures 13

In some ways this is straightforward: it might seem obvious that media

(thing) can mediate perception of the world (activity lens), for example.
But it gets more interesting when we note that media are not neutral tools,
but rather involve communicative performances; a hermeneutic strategy for
understanding the workings of a technology and how they shape its output8 is
significantly different from one for understanding the contexts and meanings
of a cultural text. We can also go back to the distinction between the active
and passive modes and see that a person might enter into a relation with tech-
nology in which she or he is in the “world” position as that which is made
available for another person to perceive, and that this might take the form of
media that is created. For example, a digital photo that can be easily seen as
media is also the result of a technological process that leaves traces (Wiltse
2014) of its production that are more along the lines of a “neutral” scientific
instrument. These might include location, date and time, equipment used, et
cetera that typically show up in photo metadata. Thinking of even a simple
action of digital media consumption, when viewing a webpage the very act
of loading that page becomes visible to the owners of the site. Through the
“back end” of even consumer website creation and management platforms
one can see how many people visited certain pages, when, from which
countries, through referral from which sources, and so on. Indeed, through
separating these things, activities, and modes it becomes easier to see that
in many cases there is an overlapping and intertwining of them—and disen-
tangling them can be a productive (and indeed important) analytic exercise
when the goal is to understand the character of the human-technology-world
relations that are at play in particular cases.
Applying the lens of technologically mediated action and perception to
environment, we can begin by simply noting that these technologies have
become so pervasive that they have become integrated into and taken on the
character of an environment. In one sense this means that there is now a wide
variety of commonly available tools at our disposal, and there may be tech-
nological resources actually embedded in environments. One might think of
the open Wi-Fi networks that are widely available in many urban areas, for
example, or even sensors that allow for opening doors or turning on water
taps. But if we once again switch to considering the passive mode of action
and perception, it becomes possible to see that many of the technologies we
use and live with also turn us into objects of perception and even surveillance
and control, both actual and potential. In urban areas we are physically moni-
tored by surveillance cameras that may even have facial recognition capabili-
ties. When using the Internet we are tracked, monitored, and profiled, across
sites, platforms and devices, to be later targeted with advertising content.
Here we can see the interconnected structural character of this environment.
As one of Google’s advertiser-facing pages explains one of their products:
14 Heather Wiltse

“Audience Center 360 brings together all your data—analytics, campaign,

search, email, and CRM—and enhances it with third-party and Google exclu-
sive data. The result helps you understand who your most valuable customers
are across channels, devices, and campaigns” (https://www.google.com/ana-
lytics/audience-center/capabilities/). These technologies allow for not only
targeting, but micro-targeting and excluding.9
These sociotechnical practices point to interesting and arguably quite
significant and pressing areas for investigation from the perspective of tech-
nologically mediated action and perception. What is the “world” that is made
available and accessible to those who do the tracking and surveilling? What
is the character of this relation, how is it perceived (or not) and experienced
by both parties involved (tracker and tracked), and what possibilities do they
each have (or not) to configure it?
More fundamentally, in the context of these underlying and interconnected
infrastructures, what exactly is the character of the technology in terms of
what and how it mediates? Put more concretely, and to take one example:
when a person accesses a web service, where and how is that action regis-
tered, and with what consequences? What chain of actions is propagated,
what effects does it have, and at what time scales? What other networked
technologies are involved and activated? What kinds of data are produced
and stored, where, and by what entities? Who can access the data, and under
what conditions? These questions take on increased practical, legal, and ethi-
cal importance in an age of pervasive and highly sophisticated government
surveillance, and potential for personal activity data to be used to configure
differential access to information, services, and other resources.
Moving on, we can use the lens of communication to look at technology as
an object of study. Of course there is again the straightforward case of media
technologies: those that are used to mediate communication. But if we take
a somewhat broader angle we can also consider how technologies facilitate
connection and mutual presence in other ways. For example, the sociotechni-
cal practice of using hashtags on social media makes it possible for people
to connect, communicate, and simply become aware of each other’s presence
around a common topic. It is a practice of creating and consuming media, but
also of technologically mediated perception.
This technologically mediated perception is also, more specifically, a case
of digital material mediation (Wiltse 2014) in which the presence and activ-
ity of these other people are attested to not only by the claims of the media
content itself, but also by the underlying technological infrastructures. The
messages are not free-floating, but rather connected to a particular account
identity with a particular history of activity; and each message typically has
some kind of associated metadata, such as a time stamp, that is not freely
performed/created by the sender but is rather added “objectively” by the
 Mediating (Infra)structures 15

technology. In these cases we can see both performative communication in

the sense of the content created and sent, but also technological mediation
of a relation between sender and receiver in which the sender—or, more
specifically, the action of creating and sending a message—is recorded and
made visible by the technological platform. Interpretation of the message on
the part of the receiver thus entails both typical textual hermeneutics and a
hermeneutics of the functionality of the mediating technology. To take a very
simple example of the latter: a time stamp of 10:31 a.m. can be read as an
indication that the sender of the message clicked the send button at or around
10:31 a.m. However, particularly if the account owner is a brand, a savvy user
might (quite rightly) suspect that the content was scheduled in advance to be
published at 10:31 a.m. through a social media marketing platform rather
than actually manually posted at that moment. It gets even more complicated
in the case of Twitter bots (and no doubt other scenarios that could be added
here as well).
Now, it can certainly be said that such readings of traces of technologi-
cally mediated activities are quite common and unremarkable. Yet this is
also precisely why they call for attention. These traces of activities and the
technological infrastructures in and through which they are produced have
come to constitute and reveal our environments, and to reveal us to each other.
They provide a means by which we can find out and more generally get a
sense of what is going on. They can be used for surveillance and as evidence
in judicial contexts. These dynamics point toward the environmental charac-
teristics of being always there in the background, potentially active, generally
less than transparent, and not entirely (or even at all) under our control. At a
more intimate scale, we might also think of what it could mean to live with
computational things that are designed to reveal the ways in which we engage
with them in their sociomaterial contexts through traces of use (Robbins,
Giaccardi, and Karana 2016).
Indeed, and moving on to consider things through the lens of dwelling,
we can ask: What does it mean to dwell with mediating technologies turned
environment, and environments permeated by interconnected technologies?
What are the implications of living with these over time, having traces of
our activities build up as sedimented history and as datafied standing reserve
available for future use? How do we come to move, act, perceive, understand,
perform, and communicate in these environments? How does the presence
of these things and their potentials affect how we conceive of our own pos-
sibilities and the kinds of selves we become (Kiran 2012)? What forms of
life should we cultivate as “technosapiens” (Puech 2016)? And how can we
develop incisive accounts of these matters that do justice to what is at stake?
As part of an analytic toolkit for such an enterprise, I suggest the concep-
tual lens of mediating (infra)structures.
16 Heather Wiltse

MEDIATING (INFRA)STRUCTURES

The preceding analysis highlighted the fact that our contemporary landscape
is populated by things that do not fit neatly into single stable categories, and
that often entail multiple kinds of functionalities that enable a wide variety
of sociotechnical practices and relations. Just as it is necessary to do detailed
analyses to get beneath the surface of things in order to see the full spectrum
of dynamics that are at play, it is also important to zoom out in order to get
a sense for the connections between things and underlying infrastructures.
I suggest the term mediating (infra)structures as a pointer to these matters
of concern discussed in the previous section, and an associated theoretical
and analytic enterprise that seeks to grasp the texture, dynamics, and impli-
cations of mediating technologies (i.e., technologies that mediate action,
perception, relations, communication) become infrastructural. It involves
structures that mediate communication, action, and perception and that are
often infra—hidden beneath the surface. Mediating (infra)structures are also
always around and potentially doing things we did not ask them to do and
mediating relations we did not intentionally initiate, perhaps even serving
others without our awareness or permission. They are technology, media, and
environment; and they are implicated in action and perception, communica-
tion, and dwelling (see Figure 1.4).
In order to begin to flesh out what mediating (infra)structures entail, it will
be helpful to briefly highlight a few more characteristics, dispositions, and
sensibilities that seem to be key matters of concern (and which have also
emerged in relevant current discussions). Characteristics considered here are
infrastructure, proliferating relations, ecosystems and fields, and fluid assem-
blages and their multi-instabilities.

Infrastructure
Perhaps one of the most significant aspects of the technologies that now pop-
ulate our collective landscape is their infrastructural character. As architect
and writer Keller Easterling (Easterling 2014, 11) says:

The word “infrastructure” typically conjures associations with physical net-

works for transportation, communication, or utilities. Infrastructure is consid-
ered to be a hidden substrate—the binding medium or current between objects
of positive consequence, shape, and law. Yet today, more than grids of pipes and
wires, infrastructure includes pools of microwaves beaming from satellites and
populations of atomized electronic devices that we hold in our hands.

These technologies are infrastructural in the sense that they are and/or rely on
networked and pervasive enabling resources (Bowker et al. 2010) running on
 Mediating (Infra)structures 17

Figure 1.4 Mediating (infra)structures.

widely shared protocols, platforms, and formats. Interacting with and through
even a single device that one can hold in one’s hands thus often entails inter-
acting with many layers of interconnected infrastructure and platform compo-
nents,10 often with only a vague awareness of them. The various trackers that
are loaded as part of most webpages now are one simple example of this, as
is any smartphone app that uses the Internet and location services.
Technological infrastructures exist beneath the surface, at levels typical
users cannot easily access (if at all). Moreover, we as humans may not even
be capable of comprehending the structural character of our networked real-
ity (Van Den Eede 2016). This means that when considering the role of these
technologies in the world it does not suffice to begin and end exploration with
the ways in which humans can experience and intentionally relate to them.
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