By Colin Angell

Grant Bollmer offers to conversations of media theory — and specifically the ontology governing the metaphysical relationship between humans and media — a process-focussed system theory driven by the distinction of the two as independent actors co-constitutively in broader societal progression. “Our world exists because of what matter performs, and we, too, are material. If we want to create a better world, we have to begin with what matters;” (176) the last sentences of his book Materialist Media Theory: An Introduction summarizes both the essence and the forward-facing direction of his namesake materialist theory. Through his work, he refuses to view media’s relational position as subservient to humans and instead proposes that we ought to see them plainly for what they are before our eyes: physical manifestations of matter occupying the same spaces as our own biological forms. He fronts a view that holds them accountable to their material presence — as culpable agents with the capacity to originate consequential actions felt by other actors. It is with full intention that Bollmer introduces his theory with the impact-aware declarative: “media are locations for the perpetuation of inequality and the management of social difference” (1). 

Although Bollmer defines and sharpens such a non-static system through commentary on how both actors drive broader system change, it is through an understanding of Dennis M. Weiss’s essay Seduced by the Machine: Human-Technology Relations and Sociable Robots that this materialist framework becomes visible as lacking a distinct moral or ethical framework with which to conceptualize relational connotations of media agency. Writing that “we don’t begin with technology but with human cultural life,” (231) Weiss similarly questions a representational ontology of humans and media while offering to supplement the materialist theory with a mandate for human-centred authenticity. While Bollmer teases ethical concerns, the purpose of this essay is to highlight how Weiss’s argument of the necessity for a human-based, empathic evaluation of human-technology interactions lend materialist media theory with the ethical foundations it presently lacks.

Notes on Bollmer

Bollmer’s materialist media theory is one that observes the physical forms of media as constituent objects in reality and their embedded meanings as aspects of their unique, fundamental traits. In introducing his book, he defines it as orienting academic discourse to how human reality has been altered by technology “beyond conscious knowledge of most individuals” in a manner that “representation alone cannot acknowledge. (Bollmer 3)” In challenging representation, Bollmer is referring to a perspective that sees media objects as primarily snared in idealism — as objects whose value exists only through an internal interpretive lens of their content — and instead suggests such items are “material, performative” actors in their own right with corresponding “material effects in organizing bodies, objects, and relations in the real world” (25). Referencing how video game portrayals of gender come to drive not simply individual conceptions of gender stereotypes but wider models of performed identity, he asserts that “to be represented in a democracy is directly articulated to media representation of identities, behaviors, and norms” as it through one’s identity being public that one is “acknowledged as a political actor” (32-33). Although a person exists independent of their portrayal, individual roles become attributed and applied to them through actors with entirely different life-cycles than that of themselves. 

It is here that the fundamental ontology of this materialist theory can be drawn. There is the presence of a clear distinction between a human and media that may act separately from one another but remain conjoined in co-producing each other’s meaning. Described further in his appeal to phenomenological affect theory, the materiality of a medium is understood as subject undergoing a “process of mattering” into a physical medium, leaving “subjects and objects are linked in relation, but in which these relations are inequivalent, even oppositional” (145). Transposing Heidegger’s distinction between things and objects, he argues that it is through an object “independently “support[ing] something independent” (147) that relational value can be observed as necessary for definition of one another while existing as separate entities entirely. For Bollmer, the ontology dictating human and media relations is one which reconciles both of their co-shaping capacities with the material confines with which they both exist in and perpetuate.

Weiss’s Ethical Suggestion

Weiss uses his article to present his belief that we require a human-centred framework from which we could ideally address the tensions of human-media relationships, progressed through a comparison of varying analyses of varying attitudes. Centreing his text around a pseudo-dialectic between the technologically-cynical Sherry Turkle and relatively optimistic views of Peter Paul Verbeek and Mark Coeckelbergh, Weiss applies both views’ gazes on the emotive relationship between humans and technology. Introducing Turkle’s notion of relational artifacts — those that “have states of mind” and call forth the human desire for communication, connection, and nurturance (219) — Weiss cites her clinically observed opinion that these increasingly advanced “machines that exploit human vulnerabilities” (221) leave us “prone to anthropomorphize relational artifacts” and incubate inauthentic, hollowed connections with smudged boundaries “between genuine and simulated emotional responses” (222). However, he argues that Verbec proposes such a pessimistic view is “held captive by a modernist metaphysics that insists on the separation of subjects from objects, humans from artifacts” (223) when, in reality, “human beings are fundamentally interwoven with technology” that “structures and organizes the world” and “shape[s] our existence” relationally (224). 

One end result from this cross analysis is that of the conclusion offered by Weiss; that we must recognize a “view of the human condition, one in which technology takes a central place” (225-236). The potential stored in external media to progress social change while shackling our evaluations to a human-first approach. However, to further progress such a theory is stifled by paradigm shift regarding what we mean by the moniker external. External to what? Within our broader societal systems, it becomes necessary to distinctly conceptualize that humans and media are ontologically independent — where they exist external to one another — while exerting intimate influence over one another. Writing that “we don’t begin with technology but with human cultural life,” Weiss pointing out that “contained within human culture is technology” places the previously described relationship as evidence of fundamentally distinct actors who are intimately woven into the identities of either or (231). 

Analyzing Ontological Agency

Bleeding through Bollmer’s book sporadically are statements suggestive of some scale of moral concern on the author’s end when proposing his theory. Returning again to his introductory proclamation that “media are locations for the perpetuation of inequality and the management of social difference,” (1) he waffles between wax and ernest laments that “materiality means we all exist together.” The latter quote, drawn from his tenth summative thesis, bottlenecks his opinion that “our world exists because of what matter performs, and we, too, are material. If we want to create a better world, we have to begin with what matters” (176). Bollmer flirts with ethical concern, qualifying his critiques of representational theory by reaffirming “we must think critically about how female bodies are represented” (23) and decrying questions to the relevancy of such interpretations as a “reactionary position” basking in “discrimination, prejudice, and hatred” (24). However, it is only from a theory-orientational concern that he suggests this concern, continuing later that it’s a “task of media critique” to interpret representations as malleable “processes into which we have been indoctrinated through cultural and institutional forms.” (27)

It is here that we can underline Bollmer’s aversion to naming what ethical standards ought to guide our evaluation of human-media relationships — something that Weiss is less apprehensive toward. Similarly analyzing gendered technological objects, Weiss argues that there’s a “profound significance of human beings caring for vulnerable others” (230) that is “seldom given attention in philosophy of technology (228) which makes Turkle’s arguments so relevant. Placing “the cultural and institutional factors that shape the need for relational artifacts” (227) as a crucial vertex of analytical attention, Weiss underlines that our analyses must serve humans and not other actors. While Bollmer pulls his theory away from conflict in suggesting that “images and representations” ought to be analyzed in terms of their “performative materiality” (25), Weiss almost directly rebuts the former’s ethical apathy, articulating that “our focus ought not to be on the object world and the status of relational artifacts so much as on the role of caring for others in sustaining a human world” (231). 

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From here, we are presented with two places from which we might move forward. First, it is the reaffirmation of the need to constantly critique new theoretical perspectives with contemporary critiques not from an antagonistic angle but one that seeks to corroborate new creative directions. Second, it is the potential call for the author of baseline theories which present themselves as neutral to rise to the challenge and offer a more pronounced opinion regarding ethics. Commentaries on society cannot be neutral, especially when our argued ontology posits that we “we all exist together” (176). Rather than place appendaged cliches in conclusions out of convenience — even if meant well — it is the responsibility of media scholars to seize our capacity to challenge a priori conceptions as the independent agents are.

Works Cited

Grant. Materialist Media Theory An Introduction. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019, https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/materialist-media-theory-9781501337093/.

Weiss, Dennis M. “Seduced by the Machine Human-Technology Relations and Sociable Robots.” Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman, Bloomsbury Academic, 2016, pp. 217-232. Canvas Materials.