Whitehead and Media Ecology

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-253
Author(s):  
Matthew T. Segall ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Media Theory ◽  
Media Ecology ◽  
First Century ◽  
Feed Forward ◽  
New Directions ◽  
The Future ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Terminological Confusion ◽  
The Way

This article brings media ecology into conversation with Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy of organism in an effort to lure the former beyond its normally anthropocentric orientation. The article is divided into two parts. Part 1 spells out the way Whitehead's approach can aid media ecology in developing a less anthropocentric theory of communication. Part 2 engages more specifically with Mark B. N. Hansen's Feed-Forward: On the Future of Twenty-First-Century Media. Hansen's work is an example of the exciting new directions opened up for media theory by Whitehead's panexperientialist ontology, but I argue that Hansen's attempt to "invert" Whitehead's theory of perception is based on a terminological confusion

Fate, Choice and the Birth of Risk

Futureproof ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 19-41
Author(s):  
Jon Coaffee
Keyword(s):  
Early Years ◽  
First Century ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Scientific Explanations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
The Future ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Way

This chapter tells the story of how ideas of resilience emerged as the go-to futureproofing idea in the early years of the twenty-first century. It has a long history dating back to pre-modern times and extends through the advancement of associated ideas of ‘risk’. Tracing the deeper development of changes in the way hazards and disasters have been historically viewed, and vulnerability felt, by human civilisations of the past, is vital to understanding the roots of contemporary dilemmas and the growing influence of ideas of resilience in the twenty-first century. There are long-term historical processes that have defined the contours of society and the slowly evolving structures that collectively symbolise how the need to be able to account for hazards and disasters has reshaped our world. As such, this is a story of religious versus scientific explanations, and of enhancing the ability to control the future through better knowledge about what is in store and the likelihood of certain events occurring.

The Platformization of Culture: Webtoon Platforms and Media Ecology in Korea and Beyond

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Heekyoung Cho
Keyword(s):  
Digital Age ◽  
Media Analysis ◽  
Media Ecology ◽  
First Century ◽  
Serial Production ◽  
Digital Platform ◽  
Cultural Medium ◽  
Art Production ◽  
Twenty First Century

This article examines the webtoon (wept'un)—a term coined in Korea to refer to webcomics—which is arguably the most pervasive and powerful form of digital serial production in twenty-first-century Korea. Webtoons have developed by utilizing various potentials that the digital platform offers, such as open solicitation, (partial) free web/mobile distribution, profit from advertisement and page viewing, and transmedia production. As a new cultural medium, the webtoon is thus inseparable from its platform and organically tied to its distinctive platform ecology, which is different from the ecosystems that other (global) mega-platforms create. Engaging with the insights from recent studies of platforms and utilizing empirical media analysis, I argue that Korean webtoon platforms demonstrate the continuing and intensifying dependency of art on platforms—a process that I call “the platformization of culture”—and that this specific type of platformization is reinforced by what I call “the artist incubating system.” The case of webtoon platforms reveals a number of telling aspects of media ecosystems for art production in the digital age—aspects that are spreading and expanding to various fields of art.

A short ethnography of twenty-first century consumers: On retail rage and one-dimensionality

2021 ◽  
pp. 146954052110396
Author(s):  
Kevin P. Bingham
Keyword(s):  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Retail Trade ◽  
First Century ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Unique Position ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Sociological Interpretation ◽  
The Way

This article begins with two central ideas – that feelings of rage appear to be on the increase in present modernity and that one of the main sources of rage is directly linked to consumer culture and the retail experience it fosters. Although retail trade allows twenty-first century individuals to spend their money on material goods and experiences which provide structure and a sense of meaning and belonging, what it also causes is ambivalence, insecurity and anxiety. These are formidable feelings that cause irritation, frustration and anger to gradually fester until it accumulates into something violent that distorts the way an individual thinks, acts and treats other people. With these points in mind, what this article provides is a thorough sociological interpretation of twenty-first century retail rage. Veering away from existing interpretations of rage by drawing on Herbert Marcuse’s analysis and image of a one-dimensional society, what this article explores is the idea that retail experiences turn people into individuals who are bound and controlled by a consumer duty. As I contend, based on my unique position as a researcher turned retail worker, it is this administered, one-dimensional kind of lifestyle that cultivates rage. To support my argument and understand more comprehensively how and why retail breeds frustration and anger, I use a selection of narrative episodes to unpack three key sources of consumer rage in the twenty-first century. These sources have been labelled instantaneity, performativity and unfulfillment.

“Is an Archive Enough?”: Megatextual Debris in the Work of Rachel Blau DuPlessis

Genre ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-165
Author(s):  
Bradley J. Fest
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Media Ecology ◽  
First Century ◽  
Long Poem ◽  
Cultural Logic ◽  
Television Film ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Rachel Blau Duplessis ◽  
Film And Video

In the twenty-first century, digital technologies have made it possible for writers and artists to create massively unreadable works through computational and collaborative composition, what the author has elsewhere called megatexts. The ubiquity of texts appearing across media that are quite literally too big to read—from experimental novels to television, film, and video games—signals that the megatext is an emergent form native to the era of neoliberalism. But what happens to other long forms, such as the twentieth-century long poem, when written in an era of megatextuality? Rachel Blau DuPlessis's work, including Drafts (1987–2013) and Traces, with Days (2017–), readily suggests itself as a case study for thinking through a megatextual impulse in the twenty-first-century long poem. Though her work is plainly indebted to its modernist precursors (H.D., Pound, Williams, etc.) while disavowing at every level of its composition a patriarchal will toward totality, DuPlessis's various experiments in the long poem are also thoroughly contemporary and respond to the economic, military, political, and environmental transformations of the neoliberal era by drawing upon and producing fragmentary, megatextual debris. This essay positions DuPlessis's work amidst a larger twenty-first-century media ecology, which includes both the megatext and the big, ambitious novel, and argues that rather than simply (and futilely) resist the neoliberal cultural logic of accumulation without end, DuPlessis hypertrophically uses the megatext's phallogocentric form against itself in order to interrogate more broadly what it means—socially, culturally, economically—to write a long poem in the age of hyperarchival accumulation.

Editors’ Notes: New Directions: Latinx Studies for a Twenty-First-Century Church

2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (4) ◽  
pp. 567-571
Author(s):  
Altagracia Pérez-Bullard ◽  
Jennifer Hughes
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Twenty First Century
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