Monthly Archives: November 2025

Critical Comparison

The Invisible Interface: Materializing Morality in Media Design

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In Materialist Media Theory: An Introduction and Materializing Morality, both Bollmer and Verbeek argue that media and technology play a performative and biased role in influencing human actions and the world. Though written almost 20 years apart, both pieces share critical concerns that can be productively examined through a relevant design-centered foundation. The Double Diamond Design Process, developed by the British Design Council in 2005, provides a fitting and contemporarily relevant lens for this comparison. Consisting of four iterative stages—Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver—the Double Diamond represents the cyclical research, prototyping, and evaluation phases of designing a product or experience. Through this framework, I position both theorists as offering insight into the ethical and material conditions of design, and all of us as designers who must understand and critically navigate the systems we create and inhabit.

The 4 Ds of the Double Diamond design-thinking model (Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver). From Dwass, S. (2023, January 30).

In the Discover phase, designers start by researching and reframing challenges through human needs and contextual insights (Design Council, 2019). Bollmer and Verbeek both provide extensive research to argue against the common misconception that media and technology are neutral, immaterial tools. Instead, they argue that technologies are deeply performative—they shape how we act, think, and relate to the world around us. Bollmer’s (2019) point of performative materialism states that in order to know what media are, the concentration should not be on the content that it presents but rather what actions they create in the material world. Verbeek echoes this sentiment through his concept of technological mediation, or the role of technology in human action (how we are present in their world) and human experience (how the world is present to us). A clear example of this is eyeglasses: the user’s focus is not on the glasses themselves but rather the world they reveal and the visual experience that they mediate – the tool becomes an extension of the body and human life (Verbeek, 2006, p. 365). To exemplify this, both scholars reference philosopher Martin Heidegger notion of “readiness-in-hand”: tools disappear into the background of use until they malfunction and become present-at-hand (Heidegger, as cited in Verbeek, 2006, p. 364). In UX design, this principle aligns with the notion that effective interfaces “disappear” so users can focus on their tasks (Fowler, 2019). This invisibility can become negatively habitual: gestures like swiping left or right on a phone are now so deeply internalized that users forget the device’s mechanics, effectively training the body to perform unconsciously (WIRED, 2022). These examples illustrate Verbeek’s and Bollmer’s shared critique: technologies mediate our relationship with the world by prescribing ways of seeing and acting. From this phase, we learn that media artifacts should be approached not as transparent tools but as active participants in human-world relationships.

In the Define phase, designers synthesize insights into a clear, actionable human need which becomes the target of the design solution (Design Council, 2019). As we delve deeper into the arguments of media and materiality present in these two texts, Bollmer and Verbeek converge on the underlying problem: the need to design with awareness of technological intentionality: the ways technologies amplify certain realities while reducing others. Verbeek (2006) draws from Don Ihde’s notion that technologies have “intentions” embedded in their design. For instance, we have a hermeneutic relation to a thermometer that does not result in a direct sensation of heat or cold but gives a value that requires interpretation to make a statement about reality. Similarly, ultrasound imaging renders the fetus visible as a diagnostic object, shaping moral decisions about birth and health. In this sense, technologies do not merely represent reality, they also construct what counts as real and morally actionable. However, these intentionalities are not fixed – they are shaped by the relationship humans have with the artifacts. This idea, which Idhe coined as “multistability”,  can be seen in the telephone and typewriter being originally developed as equipment for the blind and hard of hearing instead of mass communication and writing technologies (p. 369). Bollmer (2019) parallels this with his engagement of the encoding/decoding model from cultural studies: although media texts are encoded with intended meanings, audiences are creative in their interpretations and may very well receive a message that is antithetical to the creator’s intent. He draws on the controversial claim of “the death of the author” (Barthes 1977, 142–48) because the true control of a text’s meaning for a reader comes not from the text itself, but from the context in which it is read. We can now see how the design of technology and media is an inherently moral activity when we are creating technologies that appear to give material answers to ethical questions. Verbeek stresses that as media creators, we have a unique responsibility of “materializing morality”, and considering the mediating role that technologies will eventually play in society, whether aligned with our intention or not (2006, p. 370). Bollmer (2019) complements this by situating materiality within power and politics, arguing that “relations of opposition and conflict” are inseparable from design’s performative agency (pp. 174–176). The problem statement arising from this Define stage could then be: how might we design media and technologies that make their mediating influence visible and ethically accountable, so that users and creators alike can recognize how design choices shape perception, interpretation, and moral action?

In the Develop phase, designers prototype and test potential solutions, iterating toward a design that balances functionality, context, and ethics (Design Council, 2019). Both Bollmer and Verbeek highlight the importance of anticipating the mediating role technologies will play once situated in society. Verbeek introduces the concept of scripts, or implicit instructions that artifacts have embedded in their material design. For example, a stop sign has the script “stop when you see me”, and we follow this instruction because of what it signifies, not because of its material presence in the relation between humans and the world (2006, p. 367). Bollmer (2019) complements this with his focus on semiotics, noting that while media operate through systems of meaning and representation, designers must move beyond mere symbolism to engage with how technologies act materially in the world (pp. 41–46). However, both scholars agree that semiotic methods cannot be the sole philosophy of design today. Technologies are able to exert influence as material things, not only as signs or carriers of meaning, and should be created with this in mind. Because technologies are multistable, their future uses and mediations are inherently uncertain. Verbeek therefore recommends conducting mediation analyses, or imaginative exercises where designers envision possible user interactions and ethical consequences. This anticipatory reflection bridges the gap between the context of design and the context of use (2006, p. 374). A classic example is the speed bump: it embodies moral intention (“slow down”) through physical form, while simultaneously limiting perceived freedom for drivers. These trade-offs illustrate that every design choice creates a negotiation between competing values and stakeholders. Bollmer (2019) extends this to and asserts that design prototypes not only mediate actions but also perform political struggles. Materiality is not neutral; it structures who can act, who can speak, and whose perspectives are amplified or reduced (pp. 175–176). Thus, the Develop phase becomes an important exercise in iterative ethical reflection: designers must continuously test how their material decisions mediate power, freedom, and meaning in lived contexts.

In the Deliver phase, designers refine and release a final design that responds to user and ethical insights gathered through iteration (Design Council, 2019). For both Bollmer and Verbeek, this stage is not merely about delivery but about accountability and understanding design outcomes within larger material and moral environments. Bollmer’s concept of neurocognitive materialism (2019, pp. 171–175) highlights how the body, brain, and media form a single interactive system. To deliver responsibly, designers must recognize that the artifacts they produce literally shape the embodied experience of being human. Verbeek (2006) shares this concern, emphasizing that designers cannot simply “inscribe” a desired form of morality into an artifact. Delivery of media artifacts requires the acknowledgement that once a design enters the world, it becomes co-authored by users and contexts, and morality becomes a shared responsibility between humans and technologies (as illustrated in Figure 1). Altogether, Bollmer and Verbeek remind us that delivering a media product to the public is a reflective act of material responsibility. Through this lens, delivering a design no longer means finalizing product details, it means nurturing an ongoing relationship between humans, matter, and ethics. As Bollmer concludes, “Materiality means we all exist together, in one world… If we want to create a better world, we have to begin with what matters” (2019, p. 176). As media consumers and creators, we must remember that what matters is not only the usability or efficiency of media systems but also the ethical weight of their mediations and the ways in which design makes, and remakes, our shared reality.

Sources of Mediation. From Verbeek, P.-P. (2006).

Citations:
Bollmer, G. (2019). Materialist media theory: An introduction. Bloomsbury Academic.
British Design Council. (2019). The double diamond: A universally accepted depiction of the design process. https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/our-resources/the-double-diamond/history-of-the-double-diamond/
 Fowler, D. (2019). The design of everyday things: How design makes us think. MIT Press.
Verbeek, P.-P. (2006). Materializing morality: Design ethics and technological mediation. Science, Technology & Human Values, 31(3), 361–380.
WIRED. (2022). How phone taps and swipes train us to be better consumers. https://www.wired.com/story/phone-interface-trains-us-to-be-consumers/

Book Review

The realities of being a Media studies student

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Understanding Identity Through Media: Reflections on Identity and Digital Communication by Rob Cover

Recently, I’ve been watching a lot of reality television due to my attention span being short and reality television has become my go to form of background entertainment that is easy to consume. However, beyond its surface-level drama and bad acting. I have realized that reality T.V can also act as a lens into the current anthropological state of society. It reflects how people communicate, form identity and authenticity in a digital age. Before taking an anthropology course on media I never truly recognized the depth this type of content holds over our culture and social lives. Through several other media related classes my understanding of how media operates has evolved. It’s no longer just entertainment, it’s a mirror for how it impacts our identity. 

Introduction

As a Media Studies student this awareness has deeply affected how I engage with content. It’s difficult now to simply watch or scroll without analyzing what I’m consuming. Media analysis has become a part of my daily thought process, even my identity. Rob Cover’s book Identity and Digital Communication confirmed many of my observations about how media shapes selfhood while also challenging me to think about the deeper relationships between digital communication, technology, and identity. Reading his work expanded my understanding of media as not just a cultural product but as a social force that continuously influences who we are and how we interact with others. 

Who is Rob Cover?

Rob Cover is a social theorist and media scholar whose research focuses on digital harms, youth well-being and gender and sexuality diversity within media context (Wikipedia Contributors, 2025). His book Identity and Digital Communication explores how identity and technology intersect in modern life (Rob Cover, 2015). Cover’s work helps readers understand that technology is not just a neutral tool but a space where identity is reconstructed. Through his ethnographic approach Cover examines the social process behind digital behavior, looking beyond the surface-level assumptions about media addiction or influence. Instead he explores the deeper questions of how our engagement with media platforms both express and transform our sense of self. 

Analysis of Identity and Digital Communication

In the introduction, Cover states that ’’Much of our everyday lives involves having to undertake activities that relate to a sense of self-identity’’ (Cover, 2023, p. 1). As a full-time student I find this statement relatable. Every decision I make whether it’s starting a new hobby, applying for a job, or planning a trip must be considered in relation to my identity as a student. This role defines not only my schedule but also how I perceive myself and how others perceive me. Cover’s point illustrates how identity is not fixed but constantly constructed through the decisions we make within the social systems we inhabit. Media and digital communication now play a major role in this construction.

Cover identifies three core principles of identity: that “true identity” does not exist, that identity is always changing, and that identity is at the center of our everyday lives(Cover, 2023, p. 2) . To illustrate this, he references the 2020 attempt to ban TikTok in the United States, a moment that reemerged again when Donald Trump, reelected in 2025 (Cover, 2023, p. 155) . Although the ban lasted only about seventy-two hours, it sparked widespread panic and discussion online (Restrictions on Tiktok in the United States, 2023) . Many creators shared intimate details about their lives or broke down publicly over losing their platforms. Watching these reactions unfold was interesting but also deeply telling. For many influencers, TikTok had become intertwined with their sense of purpose, income, and identity. Losing access to the app felt like losing a part of themselves.

This situation perfectly demonstrates Cover’s argument that digital communication platforms shape our sense of self. Our identities are now closely tied to the spaces where we share, express and validate them. When a platform like TikTok disappears, it doesn’t just disrupt communication but it disrupts people’s identities. Creators had to confront who they were without their audience, their algorithmic visibility, or their digital communities. This example shows how identity in the digital age is not just expressed online but built through constant interaction with these technologies.

Is Media really addictive or are we the problem?

The debate over whether media is “good” or “bad” for society often oversimplifies this complexity. As a Media Studies student, I tend to view media positively, not because it’s inherently good, but because it is an essential part of human communication and creativity. However, it’s undeniable that certain design choices, like algorithmic targeting or endless scrolling, can encourage compulsive behaviors. Cover writes that this is achieved through “persistent adjustments… ensuring the ‘right’ advertisements are going to the ‘right’ user based on identity assumptions gathered from viewing habits” (p. 143). He clarifies that technology itself is not addictive. Instead, “compulsive behaviors in relation to digital technologies” are the result of broader social processes and learned behaviors. In other words, it’s not the phone or app that creates addiction, but how society, culture, and individuals use and integrate it into their lives.

This distinction reframes the entire “addiction” narrative around technology. Instead of blaming devices, we must examine our relationship with them. Why do we turn to our phones when we’re anxious or bored? Why does validation through likes or views feel so rewarding? These habits reflect social and emotional processes tied to identity formation. For media students, this raises an even more difficult question: how can we analyze and engage with media critically without letting it consume or define who we are?

This idea connects directly to our class discussions on evocative objects. Sherry Turkle argues that “objects help us make our minds, reaching out to us to form active partnerships” ((2011, Turkle, p. 2). We form emotional and psychological attachments to the media and technologies we use every day. Cover expands on this by showing how social norms and bodily behaviors emerge around these digital objects. For example, he notes that touching someone else’s phone is considered an invasion of privacy or a “breach” that provokes discomfort or even fear (Cover, 2023, p. 68). This small social boundary reveals how deeply personal our digital devices have become. They are not just tools but extensions of our identities.

These bodily and emotional responses illustrate how media objects evoke specific feelings that shape social interaction. The same principle applies to our digital relationships: following a classmate on social media can create an unspoken expectation to engage with their posts, transforming a casual acquaintance into a performative connection. Over time, these micro habits shape not only our emotions and feelings but also our identities. The media we consume and the norms we internalize become intertwined with who we believe ourselves to be.

Individual Reflection?

Reading Identity and Digital Communication has made me more aware of these subtle dynamics. It has pushed me to examine my own behaviors and my dependence on digital communication for social validation. While Cover doesn’t offer a direct solution for how to detach from these patterns, his analysis encourages reflection. He reminds us that technology is not inherently harmful; rather, it is the meanings and attachments we create that make it feel inescapable.

In the context of studying media, this realization is both challenging and liberating. It’s challenging because it means that detaching from the media is nearly impossible when it forms the foundation of our academic and personal lives. But it’s liberating because it shifts the focus from guilt and self-blame to awareness and understanding. Instead of rejecting technology, we can aim to use it with intention and recognize how it shapes us while still maintaining agency over how we engage with it.

Overall, Cover’s book invites media students, scholars, and everyday users to ask more critical questions: How do our digital practices shape our sense of self? What emotional and social patterns are reinforced through our use of technology? And most importantly, how can we engage with digital communication responsibly without losing sight of who we are outside of it?

Conclusion

This analysis has made me more mindful of my own identity as both a media consumer and creator. It has also deepened my understanding of the complex relationship between media and identity. The media we engage with does more than entertain and it structures how we think, feel, and exist. Identity and Digital Communication encourages us to confront these realities, not with fear, but with curiosity and critical awareness. As Media Studies students, our challenge is not to separate ourselves from the media, but to engage with it consciously and recognize that understanding media ultimately means understanding ourselves.

Bibliography

Sources: 

Rob Cover. (2015). Rmit.edu.au. https://www.rmit.edu.au/profiles/c/rob-cover

Wikipedia Contributors. (2025, May 27). Rob cover. Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Cover

Restrictions on tiktok in the united states. (2023, April 25). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_TikTok_in_the_United_States

Cover, R. (2023, January 1). Identity and digital communication : Concepts, theories, practices. Routledge. https://go.exlibris.link/8tBDJxXSTurkle, S. (2007). WHAT MAKES AN OBJECT EVOCATIVE? In S. Turkle (Ed.), Evocative Objects: Things We Think With (pp. 307–327). The MIT Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5hhg8p.39

Images:

(2025b). Pexels.com. https://images.pexels.com/photos/267350/pexels-photo-267350.jpeg



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From Object to Ongoing: Ingold’s Response to Gell on Art and Agency

In Ingold’s Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, he identifies a major theoretical source of anthropologist Alfred Gell’s Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory, published in 1998, in which he uses as a point to expand, challenging Gell’s focus on the finished artwork and its social functions, and discovers for an anthropology that emphasizes process, practice, and correspondence.

About Alfred Gell

Alfred Gell (1945–1997) was a British social anthropologist who was trained by professors of both Cambridge and the London School of Economics. He was known for sharp, concept-driven writings mostly based on ethnographic cases. Gell was deeply interested in how humans use material objects to act, communicate, and exert influence, and his research varied across topics such as symbolism, ritual, the cognitive dimensions of art, etc. 

About the Source

Gell’s book, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (1998), has became famous for changing the way many scholars think about art. Instead of treating art mostly as a vehicle for aesthetics or cultural meanings, Gell claims artworks as parts of social action. He argued that artworks help to make things happen as they guide attention, influence decisions, and carry the presence of people across time and space. Gell further claimed that objects can be understood through the ways in which they connect to people and their original intentions. Moreover, he stated that the “anthropology of art” is the study of a set of social relations that an object stands in a special, “art-like” relation to a social agent. In other words, it is to start from the object, map the social relations around it, and then reconstruct the intentions and meanings that brought it into being.

Ingold’s Citation

Ingold cites the above idea in his book that Gell’s definition captures a widespread habit in the anthropology of art, in which specifically, the process of taking a finished object, placing it in the social context, and reading it backwards from the object to the maker’s intention or cultural meanings. From this, Ingold suggested that Gell refers to that  “it should be possible to trace a chain of causal connections, in reverse, from the final object to the initial intention that allegedly motivated its production, or to the meanings that might be attributed to it” (Ingold 7). Ingold further thinks this move turns art into a static thing to be decoded, and that it hides the actual, living work of making, which is the growth of form in materials and the skilled perception of practitioners as they act and respond. In this case, Ingold sets out his own alternative that rather than an anthropology of art that reads in reverse from object to intention, he is convinced that it would be an anthropology with art that moves forward along with practice, and following how forms arise in time through attention, action, and material response.

Ingold’s Application of Source

Gell tends to reject the idea that artworks are only aesthetic objects or only symbols. As we mentioned before, he treats them as parts of action. In this view, it was further argued that an artwork is an index of a person or event and that it can stand in for a maker, bind a promise, intimidate, attract, or persuade. From Ingold’s perspective, he thinks that starting from the finished object leads us to miss or pay less attention to the ongoing movements, adjustments, and sensitivities through which forms actually come to be and these are the most vital parts. While Gell’s tool helps us to analyze how objects work in social networks after they are made, Ingold tends to want a tool for staying with the momentum growth of the work during its making process. Therefore, we suppose this was the reason that Ingold distinguishes the anthropology of art from the anthropology with art, in which further emphasizes the learning from art as a practice that trains perception and judgment in real time.

Across the book, Ingold argues that anthropology, archaeology, art, and architecture are not only fields that study things, but they are crafts of inquiry and that they share a basic commitment of that knowledge grows by working with materials, paying careful attention, and adjusting to it as we gain them. From this, he raises the term participant observation. According to Ingold, participant observation is not just a technique for gathering “qualitative data” to analyze for later, it is also a way of knowing from the inside. 

Applying Gell’s insights, he stated a clear statement of a dominant approach that he wanted to challenge which is it focuses on the object and reconstructs intentions in reverse. Ingold calls this a “reverse-reading, analytic approach” and mentions that it leads to a dead end for the relation between anthropology and art, as it encourages anthropology to make other practices into objects for study instead of learning along with them. He proposes a different relation of that to think of art and anthropology as companion practices that both “reawaken our senses” and let knowledge grow “from the inside of being.” 

We would say that Ingold uses Gell’s views as motivations to sharpen his own terms. Gell offers “agency” as an answer to the problem of how objects can matter in social life. In this case, Ingold responds by shifting the starting point that instead of asking how finished objects “act back” on people or stand in for them, he perhaps question how the work would involve materials, and how creators follow the lines of movement, force, and flow as they bring the work alive. 

Overall, Gell provides us a strong analysis of art as part of social action, in which Ingold does somehow agree, but Ingold comes up with his own insights towards that with the living processes of making and seeing. By citing Gell’s views and then offering his own insights on “anthropology with art”, “knowing from the inside”,  and “correspondence”, Ingold redirects the vision from what an object leads to how a work would process through time. This shift also reshapes his view of method, in which participant observation becomes a craft commitment to learn by moving with people and materials. 

Contributors

Christina Zhao

Jacqueline Shen

References

Alfred Gell. Editorial Herder Mexico. (2022, February 21).

Claude Smith. (2015, April 9). A messy studio is a happy studio….work in progress.

Gell, A. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon.

Ingold, T. (2013). Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture (1st ed.). 

Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203559055

Critical Comparison

Are We Living Authentically?

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How should we define authenticity? As humans grow more attached to digital media, the distinction between the virtual world and authentic, “real life” grows convoluted. Alison Landsberg’s chapter, “Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner”, demonstrates the tendency of viewers to adopt emotional movie scenes as authentic memories of their own. In “The iPhone Erfahrung: Siri, the Auditory Unconscious, and Walter Benjamin’s ‘Aura’”, Emily McArthur demonstrates how Siri, a voice-activated personal assistant, situates users in seemingly authentic human power dynamics. Both Landsberg and McArthur emphasize the “posthuman” nature of our modern world where memories and identities, manufactured by media, become injected into our bodies. Together, their texts question whether mediated memories and identities can be deemed authentic.  

Landsberg believes authentic human representation exists in mediated memory. Unlike Baudrillard who believes modern society is divorced from the “‘real’” and entrapped in “a world of simulation” (qtd. in Landsberg 178), Landsberg argues such a distinction never existed in the first place since “information cultures” and “narrative” have always mediated “real”, lived experience (178). She expands her belief by discussing how movie scenes can feel just as real as lived memories. Like Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer, she emphasizes cinema’s ability to produce societal change and “political” collectivism (181). During a moving cinematic experience, audience members may identify with characters and their on-screen adversities; as a result, Landsberg notes films hold “potential to alter one’s actions in the future” (179-180). To Landsberg, movie scenes are not mere fragments of mass media, but “prosthetic memories” which audiences adopt as their own. Unlike natural memories–experienced individually and firsthand–prosthetic memories are acquired virtually, without truly experiencing them (180). Nevertheless, like all memories, prosthetic memories construct identity and how we empathize with others (176). 

As suggested in the title of her text, Landsberg explores the portrayal of prosthetic memories in popular dystopian films such as Total Recall and Blade Runner. In Total Recall, the protagonist, Quade, discovers his life has been manufactured by “the Agency” (Landsberg 181). As a result, he recollects a past he has not experienced; his life has been constructed of injected memories, raising the “question of his identity” (181). His privileging of these memories over his natural self is especially prominent when he is unable to recognize “his face on a portable video screen” (181-182); he associates his authentic self with his prosthetic memories, rather than his facial features, posing the question of whether Quade’s implanted memories are more authentic than his own human body (182). Blade Runner similarly investigates the difference between authentic and inauthentic memory. Rachel, the love interest to Deckard, the film’s protagonist, is an enslaved humanlike robot known as a “replicant”; her memories are manufactured by her employer, Mr. Tyrell, who ensures control over replicants by manipulating their pasts (Landsberg 177). When Rachel plays the piano for Deckard, she states she “‘remember[s] lessons’”; here, Deckard ignores her fabricated past (185). She plays “beautifully” regardless of whether her lessons were prosthetic or “‘real’”, posing the question of whether lived, self-produced memories are better than prosthetic ones (185). To Rachel, her memories of these lessons are real, authentic, and personal even though they are manufactured. Altogether, Landsberg interprets the film as a demonstration that memories, regardless if they are prosthetic or lived, construct meaningful, seemingly authentic identities. Like Total Recall, Blade Runner obscures our distinction between inauthentic, manufactured memories and real, lived experience. 

While Landsberg merges the worlds of prosthetic and authentic memory, McArthur blurs the distinction between machine and human by discussing Siri, a virtual voice-activated assistant. McArthur defines Siri as a “natural language processor” (NLP), a machine that communicates with users through “human language” (116). She notes that “language ability” is typically defined as the factor that “‘makes us human’”; however, digital programs like Siri who produce human speech subvert this notion (116). She notes that Siri produces a humanlike voice through invisible processes of “translation and synthesis” (117). She can be similarized to a being, rather than a set of machinic parts, since a user only hears Siri’s personalized speech that uses “colloquial language” and addresses the user by their name (117). While a traditional Google search produces innumerous results, Siri replicates authentic human communication by providing a singular response to its user’s inquiry (117). In addition to prosthetic memories, Siri’s computer-engineered, anthropomorphic state obscures the difference between inauthentic and authentic. 

Overall, Landsberg and McArthur demonstrate the ability of media to construct identity. Landsberg demonstrates how prosthetic memory defines “personhood and identity” by citing Herbert Blumer’s studies of young adult reactions to films (187, 179). In his studies, Blumer found several respondents practiced “‘imaginative identification’”–the unconscious projection of “‘oneself into the role of hero or heroine’” (qtd. in Landsberg 179). Landsberg illustrates “imaginative identification” as especially impactful; she emphasizes that one respondent who adopted the identity of The Sheik’s “‘heroine’” even felt the kisses of a fictional love interest (Blumer qtd. in 179). Conversely, McArthur demonstrates how NLPs like Siri produce “social hierarchies ” in addition to identity (116). She notes Siri imitates classist and gendered human dynamics by resembling a “‘personal assistant’” who answers to the wishes of her user (119). Additionally, Siri’s effeminate voice accentuates her “secretarial” tone; by acting as an assistant, her user adopts the identity of a master (119, 120). Furthermore, the user, regardless of their class, becomes a “bourgeois subject” by gaining an immediate “sense of power” over Siri (119).  In combination, Landsberg and McArthur demonstrate how media and technology form authentic human identities. 

Prosthetic memory and NLPs are also theorized to produce authentic bodily effects. For example, Landsberg mentions the “Payne Studies” which aimed to calculate the ability of film to physically affect “the bodies of its spectators” (180). Observations of spectators’ “electrical impulses”, “‘circulatory system[s]’”, “respiratory pulse and blood pressure” revealed the potential of film to cause “physiological symptoms” (180). This hypothesis aligns with “‘innervation’”, a Benjaminian view that “bodily experience” and “the publicity of the cinema” can generate collective social movements (Landsberg 181). While films potentially induce diverse biological responses, NLPs like Siri, transform the human body’s processing of sound. McArthur notes humans unknowingly  “tune out” noises, transferring them to their “unconscious”; she equates this instinct to seeing “‘without hearing’” (Simmel qtd. in 121). Siri, a “disembodied technological voice”, however, forces users to hear “‘without seeing’”; her lack of physical form forces users to rely on different senses (122). As a result, prosthetic memory and NLPs alike produce authentic, corporeal effects.

In our lectures and tutorials, we have often discussed media’s establishment of body standards, virtual identities in video games, and avatars on dating sites; this comparison of texts expands this discussion by showing a melding of virtual and “real” life through film and NLPs. The authentic and anthropomorphic qualities of new media demonstrate that the “posthuman” era is not a faraway prediction embedded in dystopian futures; rather, it is situated in our present. Modern reliance on media as a guide for identity formation is prominent in our adoption of cinematic prosthetic memory and our widespread use of humanlike NLPs. While Landsberg demonstrates films’ abilities to implant prosthetic memory and construct identity, McArthur demonstrates natural language processors’ abilities to construct identity by placing users in power dynamics. The impact of prosthetic memory and natural language processors  can also be perceived through their corporeal effects. Altogether, these powerful forms of media entangle the concepts of inauthentic and authentic. 

Works Cited

McArthur, Emily. “The iPhone Erfahrung Siri, the Auditory Unconscious, and Walter Benjamin’s ‘Aura’.” Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman, edited by Dennis M. Weiss, Amy D. Propen, and Colby Emmerson Reid, ch. 6, Bloomsbury Publishing, 14 Aug. 2014, pp. 113-127. 


Landsberg, Alison. “Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner.” Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment, edited by Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows, SAGE Publications, 1995, pp. 175-189.

Photo Credit

Yap, Jeremy. turned on projector. Unsplash, 9 Nov. 2016, https://unsplash.com/photos/turned-on-projector-J39X2xX_8CQ.

Written by Emily Shin

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Prosthesis of Reality

Sherry Turkle, in her book Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (2011), dives into a continuous theme within the contents of this comparative essay and the readings Prosthetic Memory by Landsberg and The iPhone Ehrfarung by McArthur. It is the idea that a progression of media and technologies has aided a prosthesis in the interaction between man and machine in what she refers to as the cognitive process of “tethering”. The machine becomes part of the identity of the individual, making them connected and alone. Both texts included in this comparison do not stray greatly from Turkle’s arguments. Prosthetic Memory and Erfahrung (to shorten) rely heavily on the idea of an expansion of the human. A tethering of external factors that impact how we define human experience. Although the texts initially seem parallel to each other, I would argue that they both give a collaborative account of how media and mediation create a continuation of the posthuman as a tethering to external factors. These two texts, however, differ greatly when discussing the parameters of reality and authenticity when discussing the nature of the human and the now posthuman. 

Landsberg’s text talks about the inclusion of prosthetic memory in the relationship with experience and identity. She illustrates this idea through different movies that relate to individuals who have a composition of memories not belonging to them. The prosthetic memory is defined as experiences never lived. An example is watching a film. A position where experiences become an imposition. She defines memory as the locus of humanity, connecting it to an aspect of experience. For her, memory is not specifically a recollection or authentication of the past but about impacting actions in the present. On this note, media breaks the notion of experience, and as such blurs the line between the memories that are authentic and prosthetic or simulated. 

Landsberg refers to Baudillard’s claim that, because of the proliferation of different media, this dichotomy between the real and simulated has been destroyed to the point that individuals can “no longer distinguish between the real… and hyperreal”. When returning to movies, identification is a critical point for this. She quotes Blumer on the emotional possessive effect with regard to experiencing films. This possessive effect leads to the decentering of lived experience as it intertwines with the emotional connection to fiction, constructing a sense of identity. They “become a part of their own personal archive.”. This connects to Kracauer’s conception of cinema having a bodily component but with a collective aspect. Memories then have circulation and don’t have a single owner, but rather prosthetic memories are circulated by mass media and worn by its consumers. The general argument she establishes is thus a synthesis of the authentic with the prosthetic and inauthentic as the creation of memory. 

McArthur’s text The iPhone Erfahrung follows authenticity in a different scope. As it is a text relating to Walter Benjamin, authenticity is referred to as being part of an object’s aurality. The text follows an analysis of the usage of Apple’s Siri as an explication of the preservation of aura in a mass commercialised form. The aura is regarded as a mystical sense of authenticity, and the posthuman aura created by this technology has created a hierarchical standpoint between the user and the assistant. The user has a feeling of power over technology while simultaneously being in awe of its aurality. Posthuman aura is defined as the coexistence of futuristic technology with human-like interactions. An extension of oneself or, in a sense, a prosthetic experience. Siri maintains this element of aura since its system functions on synthesis and translation rather than reproduction, which would break the aura. This awe and subjugation to the posthuman aura is then disrupted by what McArthur refers to as the auditory unconscious. A sense of critical thought through the ears that undermines the power hierarchy of this prosthetic relationship as being inherently capitalistic and an industrial extension of the unreal. Siri is a prosthetic tool. You utilise it for tasks and interactions that are revealed as regressive to human interaction and development. While prosthetic memories, on the other hand, are used for the development of experience and identity.

Landsberg argues through her analysis, argues that films create these states of prosthetic memories where the consumer connects to empathetic means in the creation of experiences that shape identity. In a sense, it diminishes the idea of the optical unconscious as it breaks through from the analytical sense of an awakened state and enters the stage of emotional possession. One can be critical, perhaps of the meaning and ideologies that are mediated through film, but the consciousness, or as Benjamin puts it, the shield for our deeper selves, is exploited by the emotional experience of prosthetic memories. Although McArthur argues that the optical unconscious has some limitations, she continues the thought of medium permeability into the sensory unconscious, arguing more for the auditory unconscious as a stronger force. One can’t block out shocking images but can easily block shocking sounds in the conscious mind, but while quoting Ryder, the “penetration and surroundability” of sounds creates a relationship of rejection of conscious reflection and an unnoticed internalisation into the unconscious. She exemplifies this with Christmas music that impels you to keep buying, which can be connected to memories, prosthetic or not, that affect decisions, actions and identity per Landsberg.

A shared theme between both texts is the Freudian concept of the uncanny. The uncanny, as described in Prosthetic Memories, is an encounter with something familiar and unfamiliar. Both Landsberg and McArthur agree on the idea that the lack of authenticity removes the uncanny. For Landsberg, the uncanny is connected to the prosthetic memories in the sense that an individual with prosthetic memories doesn’t necessarily experience this, since it doesn’t partake in their identity. Whereas McArthur agrees with this idea in the sense that Siri, through its mythical sense of authenticity embedded in its aura, creates an uncanny relationship with the user through its disembodied technological voice. The uncanniness then connects to Freud’s return of the repressed, as it places the user in a “shock of modern life that has been subsumed under the auditory”. 

A key difference between the texts is the synthesis and parallelism of the real and the unreal. For Landsberg, the different processes of acquiring prosthetic memories are a rejection of postmodern thought, as this relationship creates the absence of experience. Rather, she argues that there is no value in the distinction between types of memories since the expansion of mass media dissolves the divide between the authentic and inauthentic when it comes to memories. Authentic experience then is extended to the point where it can’t be identified for its realness. Although prosthetic experiences perhaps have a different medium in which they are created, they still have the same sensual and physiological impact as the “normal”, and we cannot create a safe position for their distinction. She argues that memories are utilised not for the reflection of the past but for the authentication and usage in the present. The culmination of an identity. When memories diverge from or to lived experiences, issues of identity arise. 

Now, a large counterargument to this relationship is the arguments of McArthur regarding Siri. She compares the relationship between the human nature of the user and the technology in some instances as a hierarchy of power between the user and their “assistant”. This could be interpreted as an extension of the posthuman, where these interactions can be regarded as a new form of thinking of the human experience as a collective between man and technology. However, she offers a counter to this argument when mentioning how simulated human conversation under the guise of authenticity emphasises interpersonal distance. Siri is created in a sort of black box by developers and utilises layers of translation and synthesis that create a feeling of closeness but a distance between the user and the recipient. 

McArthur argues that this relationship between the real and simulated doesn’t merge like for Landsberg but creates a human relationship bound under late-stage capitalism. It is also important to note that, considering the empathetic relationships with this divide in Prosthetic memory, the reality of Siri’s nature does not have the empathetic and sensory component that merges the dichotomy between the real and simulated. The sensory components, such as the auditory, and in terms of their unconscious, allow the separation between them. McArthur makes it clear that the process of interaction facilitates the awareness of the human distance and the fetishisation of the product, as well as the exploitative capabilities for and against the user. Another distinction can be connected to Siri’s lack of understanding of the uncommon or exceptional, where only the ordinary drives. In this sense, it cannot completely immerse itself into the identity of the user, as in terms of memory, human complexity is not ordinary. She argues that this is all a “revelation of the auditory unconscious: the intensely personal cannot be wholly conscripted in the service of capitalism”.

In conclusion, both texts create arguments for the nature of the human and posthuman as a culmination of external extensions that alter identity and experience. Prosthetic Memories argues for the inclusion of the unreal and imposed into the creation of an identity, while iPhone Erfahrung warns about the dangers of blurring the lines between the real and the unreal. What both texts can aid in the understanding of the present is the ability to divide the experiences that we process into our prosthetic memory, and the experiences we critically analyse in our unconscious. With the troubling rise of AI experiences in the visual and auditory have blurred the gap between our interaction with technology and the empathy and application we place on what we consume. Landsberg concludes in a form that is applicable to both texts. Memories cannot be for a self-conforming narrative, and we must have a set of ethics of personhood based on empathetic relations, which I would extend to the real in terms of the human. 

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Escaped Hell by the Skin of my Teeth: Semiotic Systems and Context

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“Uh- Just the usual. Totally wing it, risk life and limb escape by the skin of my teeth.” – Gnomeo & Juliet (2011) 

If one imagines “by the skin of my teeth”, literally, a visceral image can be imagined. Usually, it is not taken as a literal term and is only used as an idiom to describe something else. The saying “by the skin of my teeth” is usually spoken as an expression to describe a narrow escape. However, this idiom is only the latest iteration in the evolution of the term. The original term “I escaped with only the skin of my teeth” was first used in the Bible, in the passage Job 19:20, where he was left with only himself and gained nothing. “By the skin of my teeth” and other idioms pertain to the study of semiotic systems, systems of signs and symbols (language), which can apply Roland Barthes’ concept of denotation and connotation in semiotic systems.

Denotation

In Roland Barthes’ book Elements of Semiology, Barthes describes denotation as the literal; recognizable images that consist of the literal object. Thus, when using the idiom “by the skin of my teeth” as something literal, one may imagine an image like this: 

[imagine a photo of a layer of skin over a set of teeth]

image created by Bridghet Wood

Gross, right? For Barthes, denotation was the first step in a semiotic system of a two part model which describes a transformation of messages (Griffin, 2012).  A denotation is a single-step process from an object to its literal meaning, the signifier to the signified. It is a sign that requires a minimal amount of context to understand. This object is called “an apple” and it is accepted. However, it starts to get more complicated when the literal words start to mean something different. 

Connotation 

Connotations are the second part of Barthes’ two-part model, where the already signified object is reinterpreted as a signifier, which ultimately makes a sign (Griffin 2012). In other words, there are initial signs that are literal, which mean the definitional meaning of the signified, and signs that represent a meaning in the actual-use of life. This is the progression of denotations and connotations. Therefore, when the term “by the skin of my teeth” is used, it is not about gums, but it is about a narrow escape. The different meaning is a result of overlapping perspectives that a semiotic system, of which a community has in common, provides. One cannot differentiate a literal meaning of a term versus an ironic one, unless there is context that provides the knowledge to know how to differentiate the two. 

Systems of Context 

What is the process where detonations become connotations? The Bible depicts the tale of Job, a righteous man that lives a privileged life. It is not until Satan challenges God to test Job’s faith, where Job loses everything. Through the trials, Job has lost his wealth, his health, and his community around him. Job pleads with God that he has nothing left to give. “I am nothing but skin and bones. I have escaped with only the skin of my teeth (Job 19:20).” “Skin” is defined by Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary as “an outer covering or surface layer.” Teeth, notably, do not have an outer layer, and if they did it would be so thin it would be unnoticeable. Therefore, the skin of his teeth meant Job had nothing. 

While there is no event that can be pinpointed when and where the Bible verse of Job became an idiom, there are theoretical processes that could explain how the term’s new meaning came to be. The Henry Ford Museum defines an idiom as “non-literal expression whose meaning cannot be deduced from the true meaning of its individual words (2022).” As it has been stated, the origin of “by the skin of my teeth” originated from Job, and the new meaning means to escape by a narrow margin. So, it can be assumed that a community used that term in the context of an escape where the chances of success had a margin of almost nothing. It must have been a community because as stated in class lecture, a language of one is not a language at all. This is because, if only one person speaks a language then it is not a shared system of communication that is used to mediate signs to others. Therefore,  “by the skin of my teeth” is most likely a term that was popularized by others because of the perpetual use, thus changing the meaning from the origin.

Conclusion

Roland Barthes’ two-part model of the analysis of semiotic systems reveals that denotations invoke the creation of connotations. Communities take literal meanings of signs and use them in the context of their own culture and events, resulting in new meanings. Semiotic systems are systems which are ingrained in a society’s lives, signs and symbols are actively used and manipulated to fit in certain contexts in the pragmatics of a society. The only way to understand those pragmatics is to understand the context of that system. If one is not a part of a system, then they cannot make use of it. However, one does not need to know the origins of a sign or symbol, there just needs to be the context of how it is used in that system. To use “by the skin of my teeth” as an example once more, many people hear this term in daily-life or in pop culture and understand what is being referred to in that conversation. Not as many people know that term had originated in the Bible. Certainly, this illustrates that it is how the term is used in the semiotic system that one is privy to, where it actually carries meaning. Ultimately, showing the evolution of denotations and connotations and how they are used in a person’s everyday life and solidified in the pragmatics of a society.

Citations 

Barthes, Roland. Elements of Semiology. Translated by Annette Lavers and Colin Smith, Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1967.

Exploring the Origins of Idioms. Henry Ford Museum, 25 February, 2022, https://www.thehenryford.org/explore/blog/exploring-the-origins-of-idioms/.

Gnomeo & Juliet. Directed by Kelly Asbury, Walt Disney Studios, 2011.


Griffin, E.M. “Semiotics of Roland Barthes.” A First Look at Communication Theory. 8th ed., McGraw Hill, 2012

“skin.” Merriam-Webster.com. 2011. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/skin (5 November, 2025)

The Bible. International Children’s Bible, 1981.

Feature image is from Gnomeo & Juliet (2011).

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Feeling What We Never Lived: Prosthesis and Prosthetic Memory

Critical Concept Explication, by: Meha Gupta

Feeling What We Never Lived: Prosthesis and Prosthetic Memory

The term prosthesis is derived from the Greek pros-tithenai, which translates to “to add to” or “to place onto.” The Oxford English Dictionary states that it initially emerged in medical literature to indicate the substitution of an absent limb or body part. Over time, it has come to describe any external enhancement that boosts or broadens human ability, eyewear that improves sight, instruments that extend reach, or even language as a replacement for experience. This root idea of adding on is what makes prosthesis such a useful concept in media theory. If every medium functions as an extension of human senses, then all media are, in some sense, prosthetic. When we move from mechanical prostheses to cinematic or digital ones, the “added” component becomes experiential: media allow us to feel or remember things beyond our direct lives.

In Alison Landsberg’s concept of prosthetic memory, introduced in Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (2004), the prosthesis moves from the physical to the psychological and emotional. Landsberg argues that modern media, particularly film, enable viewers to “experience” memories that they never personally lived. Watching Schindler’s List, for example, can give a viewer an embodied sense of what it might have felt like to live through the Holocaust, even though they were not there. These memories, she writes, are not “false” or “fake” but real emotional impressions formed through mediation. They become part of who we are, influencing our ethics, identities, and sense of history. In Landsberg’s view, mass culture produces empathy through these prosthetic experiences, allowing memory to become collective and connective rather than private and individual.

Landsberg’s version of prosthesis isn’t the only one. Earlier theorists such as Bernard Stiegler and Friedrich Kittler have also used the term to describe the relationship between humans and technology. Stiegler, in Technics and Time (1998), argues that all technology is prosthetic because human life has always depended on externalizing memory and knowledge. Tools, writing systems, and media are all “memory supports” that make culture possible. For him, prosthesis is not a supplement added to an already-complete human, it is what makes the human possible in the first place. Kittler, meanwhile, focuses on machines themselves. In Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (1999), he describes these devices as prostheses of perception and memory: they record, store, and reproduce sounds and images that human senses cannot retain. Where Stiegler emphasizes philosophical dependence, Kittler highlights technological replacement. Both show how the human body and mind rely on external systems of recording and mediation.

Compared to these more technical perspectives, Landsberg’s “prosthetic memory” centers the emotional and ethical. While Kittler and Stiegler see prostheses as tools that store memory, Landsberg sees media as creating new memories. Her version of prosthesis works on the level of empathy, not machinery. It bridges affect and technology, showing that cultural memory is mediated not just by devices but by feelings that circulate through them. In this way, Landsberg extends Stiegler’s argument about externalized memory into the realm of shared experience and social consciousness.

For students of media theory, this term is valuable because it reframes what media actually do. Rather than treating media as neutral channels that transmit information, the concept of prosthesis reminds us that every act of mediation changes how we think, feel, and remember. It ties directly to McLuhan’s idea of media as “extensions of man,” but adds a moral dimension: prosthetic media don’t just extend our senses, they extend our capacity for empathy. In an age dominated by screens and simulation, the line between experiencing something and remembering it becomes blurred. Prosthetic memory makes that blurring visible.

A clear example of this can be seen in contemporary digital culture. Virtual-reality projects like the Holocaust Memorial VR experience or immersive museum exhibits allow participants to step into other people’s histories. Even short-form platforms such as TikTok produce similar effects when users encounter raw, emotional content about war, displacement, or injustice. Viewers may never have lived these events, yet they “remember” them through the intensity of mediated experience. This exemplifies prosthetic memory at work, a technological extension of emotion that influences how individuals perceive global occurrences and their positions within those events. Nevertheless, it also prompts inquiries regarding authenticity and saturation: when empathy is mediated, can it diminish its intensity? Does ingesting excessive prosthetic memories result in compassion fatigue instead of comprehension?

Notwithstanding these conflicts, the concept of prosthesis continues to be a significant metaphor in media theory. It captures how technologies not only extend our bodies but also our minds and emotions. From Stiegler’s technical human, to Kittler’s mechanical memory, to Landsberg’s empathetic imagination, prosthesis maps the evolving relationship between humans and their media. It helps us see that mediation is never passive: each new form of media rewires our ways of knowing and remembering.

Ultimately, thinking about prosthetic memory shows that media theory isn’t just about analyzing devices, it’s about recognizing how those devices shape our inner lives. Media becomes the connective tissue between the individual and the collective, between personal experience and cultural history. They are, quite literally, the prostheses through which we feel what we never lived, and remember what we never saw.

“I realized how often my emotions toward global events are shaped by images I’ve never witnessed firsthand.”

That personal insight would make it feel more dialogical (what Schandorf values).

Tags: prosthesis, memory, mediation, embodiment, empathy, technology

References:

  • Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. Columbia University Press, 2004.
  • Stiegler, Bernard. Technics and Time, Vol. 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. Stanford University Press, 1998.
  • Kittler, Friedrich. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Stanford University Press, 1999.

Critical Comparison

Human-Technological Relations: An Exploration of McArthur and Van Den Eede

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Emily McArthur and Yoni Van Den Eede, through an exploration of Siri via Walter Benjamin’s definition of the ‘aura’ and self-tracking technologies through Marshall McLuhan’s extension theory of media, explore the relationship between humans and technology and the ways in which interactions between the two shape the media ecology. In this post, I will be comparing the two texts in order to find common ground and points of difference between the two and point out the ways in which each author conceptualizes the boundaries between the human body and technological mediation.

McArthur

McArthur builds a case for the aura of technological devices and programs. Walter Benjamin’s definition of aura is ‘the sense of uniqueness’, which deteriorates due to forces of technological reproduction. However, he has a positivist attitude towards technological development, as the destruction of aura also destroys the mysticality inherent in it, and essentially leads to a democratization of art (McArthur 115). 

Originally, Benjamin’s definition of the aura had been applied to aesthetic works such as art and literature, with technology merely being the means of reproduction in this equation (McArthur 114). But what McArthur proposes is a reimagined view of the aura; a posthuman aura which allows technologies like Siri, which teeter on the edge of humanity and artifact, to gain a unique kind of authenticity (115). This new conception of aura, as proposed by McArthur, is based on the technology’s simultaneous proximity and distance from the user. It appropriates human mannerisms and functions well enough to lull the user into perceiving it to have a ‘quasi-human’ face, while also drawing a clear boundary through its robotic tone of voice, reminding the user that it is a technology created by man (117). It also performs a democratizing function, by making available a technology to everyday users, that had only been available to people working within the tech industry up until then (McArthur 117). All in all, McArthur presents a determinist approach to perceiving human-technological relationships. She raises concerns about such algorithms collecting data and surveilling users for corporate gain, fracturing human relationships as a result of excess proximity to technology, and encourages readers to critically engage with media.

Van Den Eede

On the other hand, Van Den Eede uses self-tracking health technologies as a case study to examine the extensionism theory, often championed by media theorists. He presents arguments for and against the extensionist perspective, specifically expanding upon Marshall McLuhan’s theory of extensionism and putting it into conversation with Kiran and Verbeek’s critique of the instrumentalist nature of the extension theory. Van Den Eede himself seems to take a stance against the extensionist theory, citing it as a useful way of examining media technologies but one that ultimately reduces human-technology interactions to a binary of complete ‘reliance’ or ‘suspicion’ (156). He instead ‘superposes’ McLuhan’s extensionism theory with Kiran and Verbeek’s argument that the relationship between humans and technologies should be one of trust, in which the user learns to critically engage with the technologies (168).

Translation and Linguistics

Both McArthur and Van Den Eede bring up translation as a crucial element of the human and technological relationship. McArthur talks about how natural language processors do not actually comprehend human speech; rather it goes through a series of translations (116). From sound waves to code and then back to sound waves. The magic of the translation process, the fact that information is converted into multiple different forms before being reflected back to the user is part of what gives the technology its aura (117). She argues that this appropriation of human language simultaneously performs the function of ‘mystifying’ and ‘demystifying’ language. While technology’s ability to comprehend and respond to humans in a language they understand grants it an exalted status, human speech is wrested out of human hands, causing them to lose the unique connection they had with the language (116). 

On the other hand, Van Den Eede argues that McLuhan’s media theory is deeply rooted in linguistics, citing McLuhan’s idea that media are translations of human organisms and functions into material forms (159). He refers to media as metaphors, suggesting that these media constitute a language through which humans make sense of the world around them. Van Den Eede contends that analysing media through a linguistic framework allows us to understand them by linguistic means. He examines the etymology of media and finds that it originates from the human, which, he argues, lends weight to McLuhan’s extensionist claim that the body from which media originates should hold significance (160).

Reciprocity and Control

McArthur cites Benjamin to explore technology’s ability to ‘gaze back’ at us, noting how, in the case of traditional art, this gaze once afforded value to bourgeois works. Essentially, she argues that this returned gaze grants the object a form of social control over the human (119). While it constructs a hierarchy that gives users the illusion of mastery over a human-like apparatus, there remains an imbalance, as the data collected by these corporations is used to refine algorithms and exercise corporate control over users (McArthus 125). Moreover, just like the aura of bourgeois art, the aura of Apple’s products gain control over the masses through the strengthening and construction of social hierarchies, with Siri adding onto its exclusivity. Though McArthur claims the aura has been ‘democratized’ by the value of it being available to the common people, Apple is still a brand whose products can only be acquired by a certain class of privileged individuals. Rather than democratizing aura, it furthers commodity fetishism and the aura of technology simply becomes another part of the equation of corporate profitmaking endeavours (120). 

Van Den Eede also addresses similar concerns, drawing on McLuhan’s theory of the environment’s reciprocal relationship with human extensions. He comments on a transformative process in which humans and media continuously reshape one another. By translating ourselves into media, ‘we reach out into the environment, but this also makes it possible for the environment to reach back into us’(160). He claims that the extensionist theory creates an illusion of  one-way traffic between humans and media, leaving humans unable to notice the effects media have on them. He advocates for a ‘two-way traffic’ approach towards technologies, arguing that they shape us just as much as we shape them (166). In this sense, Van Den Eede champions a co-shaping relationship between humans and technology, in which technology and humans exist within the same environment, on equal footing.

Posthumanism

McArthur describes the aura of technologies as posthuman, meaning a type of aura that is not inherent, but is instead imbued in a device through the painstaking efforts of engineers (120). In line with her technological determinist view she seems to be skeptical towards posthumanism. She claims that the posthuman aura of Siri is broken when it fails to process spoken instructions, which happens quite frequently. It reminds the user that Siri is not actually an autonomous entity, but rather a program developed by engineers which is liable to fail (124). 

McArthur’s view on the posthumanism of technology is in line with the McLuhanian extension theory and the concept of Narcissus narcosis, the idea that humans are unaware of the fact that these technologies originate from us. Van Den Eede seems to be critical of the anthropocentric implications of the extension theory, claiming that the idea of becoming aware of the ‘origin’ of technologies from the human still prioritizes human body over technology (160). He does admit, however, that Kiran and Verbeek’s idea of ‘trusting’ oneself to technology is also based in a certain negotiation of the boundaries between the two, which has a hint of a humanist character as well (168). All in all, while he does support a posthuman approach towards technology, he also encourages readers to critically engage with technologies.

Conclusion

McArthur appears to be more skeptical of human-technology relations, raising concerns about surveillance, data collection, algorithmic control, and the varied ways in which the capitalist system harnesses technology to exercise social control over the masses. She adopts a more humanist stance, echoing the McLuhanian notion of the human body assuming a superior position in  human-technology relations by value of it being the source of technology.

In contrast, Van Den Eede adopts a more optimistic stance toward technology. He only briefly touches upon surveillance and data collection, primarily using it to support his argument for a ‘trust’ approach to human-technology interactions (165). Though he ends up finding a middle ground between extensionism and Kiran and Verbeek’s alternative ideas of human-technology interaction, it is clear that he values the posthumanist notion of a two-way relationship between humans and technologies. Despite these differences, both authors share confidence in the user’s capacity to critically engage with media, emphasizing the importance of reflection and awareness in navigating technological environments.

Works Cited

  1. Van Den Eede, Yoni. ‘Extending “Extension”.’ Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman, 151-172.  https://doi.org/10.5040/9781666993851.ch-008. 
  2. McArthur, Emily. “The Iphone Erfahrung.” Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman, 2014, 113–28. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781666993851.ch-006.
Critical Comparison

Landsberg, Van Den Eede, and Extension through Media

Where the Body Ends

It is widely accepted today that technology has become an extension of the human body and mind. We scroll, track, record, respond, and refresh as automatically as breathing. Devices do not feel like external objects we pick up; they function as parts of our perception, our attention, our memory.

Sherry Turkle argues that we have become “tethered selves”(Turkle, Alone Together 152), living in constant connection to our devices in ways that dissolve the boundary between where our inner life ends and technology begins. We remain perpetually connected, not because we consciously choose to, but because connection has become a condition of contemporary life. Turkle’s point is not just that we depend on our devices, but that they weave themselves into our emotional and cognitive routines so seamlessly that we start to experience their presence as ordinary, even necessary. Her work opens up a larger question that runs through this week’s readings: what happens when technologies stop feeling external and instead operate as part of our inner life?

The well-known concept of the phantom limb—where an amputee still senses a missing arm or hand—suggests that the human body doesn’t simply end at its physical limits. It remembers what used to be there and, sometimes, even imagines what could be. In a similar way, memory \and technology are our phantom limbs–a lingering bodily existence without being physically there. Alison Landsberg, in her theory of prosthetic memory, shows how mass media can implant experiences that feel personally felt even when we never lived them. In contrast, Yoni Van Den Eede turns to the notion of extension, asking not only how technologies become part of us, but how they quietly reshape the boundaries through which we know ourselves and the world.

In that sense, both thinkers are interested in what happens when something non-human becomes internalized. While Landsberg explores outwards asking how memories borrowed elsewhere become part of who we are, Van Den Eede looks inward and asks how our bodies morph around the technologies we adopt.  We already know, from the phantom limb, that the body can extend beyond itself. But extension asks a different question: what happens when that extension becomes so ordinary that we no longer notice it?

Landsberg: Prosthetic Memory

In Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner, Alison Landsberg argues that modern mass media—especially cinema—creates “prosthetic memories”, which she defines as “memories which do not come from a person’s lived experience in any strict sense” and which may nevertheless “motivate his actions” and shape identity (Landsberg 175). Landsberg begins with the 1908 Edison film The Thieving Hand, where a prosthetic arm “has memories of its own” and turns an innocent beggar into a thief because the arm’s memories “prescribe actions in the present”(175). This example establishes her central claim of how memory has always been mediated, and cinema makes visible how memories not grounded in lived experience still “construct an identity.”

In Total Recall, she demonstrates how implanted memories undermine the necessity that identity must be rooted in the “real”. Douglas Quade learns that his entire life is just a memory implant though the film says authenticity is irrelevant: “Is realer necessarily better?” she asks, noting that Quade’s simulated identity is ultimately “more responsible, compassionate and productive than the ‘real’ one” (183). Landsberg uses this film to show how memories, regardless of origin, become “public” through media, and that the distinction between lived and prosthetic memories is often indiscernible. 

In Blade Runner, Landsberg argues that replicants’ humanity hinges not on biology but memory. The Voight–Kampff test exposes replicants not because they lack empathy but because they lack “a past, the absence of memories” (184). In other words, although Rachel’s photographic evidence of her childhood fails to prove anything, her implanted memories nevertheless allow her to feel, to choose, and to love. Even Deckard may be a replicant; the unicorn dream sequence suggests that his memories are equally prosthetic, and the dividing line between the human and the machine has disappeared. Ultimately, Landsberg’s instances convey one central message: that humans continually construct themselves through narratives, many of which come from cinema. And that narrative is empathetic rather than authentic.

Van Den Eede: Extending Extension

In Extending “Extension” (2014), Yoni Van Den Eede revisits the familiar claim that technologies act as “extensions” of the human body, a phrase that has often been repeated so casually that its conceptual weight gets lost. His starting point is Marshall McLuhan’s observation that we routinely misrecognize our own technological creations as if they were external, foreign objects. This misrecognition is not accidental but the result of what McLuhan calls the Narcissus narcosis: a numbness that prevents us from seeing media as “highly identifiable objects made by our own bodies” (158) . Like Narcissus failing to recognize his own reflection, we cannot perceive that technologies originate from us, nor do we notice the slow, creeping ways they gradually act upon us in return.

Van Den Eede explains that media emerge because older technologies create “irritations” that need to be relieved. When a new medium arrives to counter these pressures, it amplifies certain human capacities, what McLuhan calls “enhancement” but this amplification disrupts the balance among the senses, producing strain and, eventually, numbness (158–159).

To clarify what extension entails, Van Den Eede turns to McLuhan’s well-known “tetrad,” the framework that proposes that every medium “enhances something, obsolesces something, retrieves something previously lost, and, when pushed far enough, reverses into its opposite” (160). In thinking about self-tracking devices, Van Den Eede frames them as extensions of a specific human ability: the basic capacity to sense what is going on inside our own bodies. Tools like FitBits or sleep monitors don’t invent new forms of awareness so much as magnify the ones we already have, making patterns of fatigue, movement, or rest suddenly measurable and visible (162). The more we depend on quantified readings to tell us how we feel, the easier it becomes to discount forms of embodied knowledge that can’t be turned into step counts or sleep graphs. In this sense, extension and diminishment happen simultaneously: self-tracking heightens one mode of perception while quietly dulling another (165–66).

Seeing and Not Seeing

Although Landsberg and Van Den Eede both begin from the idea that media penetrate the boundaries of the human, the direction and implications of their arguments diverge sharply. What becomes clear, when placing them side by side, is that each identifies a distinct “blind spot” in contemporary mediated life, and reading them together reveals what we cannot see when considering either text alone.

For Van Den Eede, our primary blindness stems from not recognizing the true origin of media. Technologies emerge from us, as extensions of our senses and cognitive capacities, yet the moment they begin to shape us, “we lose sight of their origin” (Van Den Eede 158). This produces the Narcissus narcosis, a dulling of our ability to perceive the “why” and “how” of technological influence. As media amplify certain functions, they “put a strain on our sensory balance,” producing the discomfort and eventual numbness that lead to auto-amputation (158–159). His concern is epistemological: technologies blind us through familiarity. The concept of extension, he argues, is valuable precisely because it offers “an exercise of critical awareness,” training us to expect unknown effects rather than assuming media will be transparent or harmless (168). He urges us to remain suspended between reliance and skepticism.

Landsberg identifies nearly the opposite problem. The blindness she describes is not the result of the media being “too familiar” but of their ability to create experiences that feel authentic without truly being one’s history. Cinema becomes “a special site for the production and dissemination of prosthetic memories,” enabling individuals to internalize memories “not from one’s lived experience in any strict sense” (Landsberg 176). This is not numbness but absorption: viewers identify so intensely with mediated narratives that they step outside habitual behavior and experience reality through borrowed memories. Memory becomes “less about verifying the past and more about generating possible action in the present” (183). Van Den Eede fears we will stop noticing technology; Landsberg fears we will stop noticing ourselves.

Set side by side, the two theorists reveal approaches to mediated life that diverge in emphasis yet intersect in revealing ways. Van Den Eede warns that technologies become invisible too quickly, encouraging passive, unexamined reliance. Landsberg suggests that the media makes experience too vivid, drawing us into emotional identifications that may feel more real than lived memory.

Seen alongside Sherry Turkle’s “tethered self,” the accounts of Van Den Eede and Landsberg suggest that extension is never just about seeing more, it slowly teaches us how to see, training us to read ourselves through data or mediated memories even when our bodies or lived histories might be telling us something else entirely.

Works Cited 

Landsberg, Alison. “Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner.” Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment, edited by Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows, Sage, 1995, pp. 175–192.

Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Basic Books, 2011.

Van Den Eede, Yoni. “Extending ‘Extension.’” Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman, edited by K. Verbeek and C. Mitcham, Lexington Books, 2014, pp. 151–172.

Written by: Nicole Jiao and Gina Chang

Cover art: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/160300067977983085/

Critical Comparison

The Ways in Which Media Redefine the Self

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Introduction

Does technology merely extend our human capabilities, or does it redefine our human experience through prosthetic mediation? This is a question that is explored in both Alison Landsberg’s “Prosthetic Memory” (1995) and Yoni Van Den Eede’s “Extending ‘Extension’” (2014), where the development of media technologies is interrogated as they continue to reconfigure human embodiment, identity, and experience. While Landsberg argues that mass media formats can implant “prosthetic memories” to produce empathy and political subjectivity, Eede re-examines the idea that technology acts as an extension of human physical and nervous systems, as proposed by philosopher Marshall McLuhan. By comparing these two texts that explore a central tension in media theory, we can better understand how different theorists frame technology in relation to the human, shaping the questions we can ask about today’s ever-changing digital age.

Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner


In Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner, Landsberg theorised media as a prosthesis to the human being. The theorist spotlights the intriguing example of the armless beggar who was gifted a prosthetic arm by a wealthy passerby to illustrate the central concept of “prosthetic memory”. The arm, upon remembering its thieving past, seems to act on its own will as it snatches the belongings of people walking by. After unsuccessfully selling off the arm at a pawn shop, the beggar is brought into jail, where the arm finds its rightful owner, a one-armed criminal and reattaches itself to him. This example teaches us that prosthetic memories, as such, can be understood as memories “which do not come from a person’s lived experience in any strict sense” (Landsberg, 175). It is understood as an implantation of “otherness” that has the power to influence one’s identity, as with the case of the beggar turned into a thief.

This complexity between memory and experience that is brought forth by the idea of prosthetic memories lays the foundation for how Landsberg theorises the concept of “media”. With the introduction of mass media, our conception of what counts as real experience fundamentally changes. As humans are introduced to “mediated knowledge”, the line between the real and the mediated seems to merge into one, as the consumption of media is argued to be synonymous with the implantation of memories originating not from our own experiences. Landberg states that this marks the death of “real experiences”, as when the media is to be understood as prosthetics to human beings, such a conception constructs a fundamental split in which it does not belong to man, but lies outside of man as a distant “other-ness”.Thus, the formative effect that the media can exert on man’s identity is undeniable. In the example of Total Recall, Landsberg argued that mediated images have the power to intervene in “the production of subjectivity”. As a person is presented along with a mediated representation of themselves on a video screen, questions of authenticity and originality arise. The subject’s identity relies heavily on his memories, for they are proof of his lived experience and thus occupy an important foundational role in the making of subjectivity. However, the existence of media challenges this very notion simply by positing the possibility of memories being separated from real experience.

Extending “Extensions”: A Reappraisal of the Technology-as-Extension Idea through the Case of Self-Tracking Technologies

In Extending “Extensions” by Yoni Van Den Eede, the theory that media technology exists as an extension to the human being emerges. The traditional approach to understanding the concept of the “extension” technology is considered to be tools that extend the abilities of man, such as how glasses enhance vision. In this sense, there is still a separation between the self and its objects (media technology) as an external “other-ness”. Media is, as such, more like an instrument under this traditional understanding than it is an extension.

However, this conception of “extension” fails to fully account for more complex instances of technological tools, such as the introduction of self-tracking technologies, which entail “the collection and storage of various sorts of data in or about one’s body or life” (Van Den Eede, 161). They do more than just extend our capabilities, as they influence how we experience our identity through capturing our lived experiences. Van Den Eede argues that a smartwatch’s simple functions of capturing your steps or recording your sleep patterns have an effect on how you relate to yourself. Therefore, it is crucial that we adapt to the demands of the age and understand media and technology not purely as extensions but also as mediators of our reality. 

Under this new understanding, the separation that previously existed is successfully bridged, and only then can we acknowledge that these tools belong to us, through which they become an extension of ourselves in a more genuine sense than as an object of mere instrumental value. Since media, in its very definition, entails mediating, it cannot be properly understood simply as a tool for augmenting human abilities, although it extends our capacities manifoldly in this sense; thus, “media” is more properly conceptualised as an extension. Van Den Eede has successfully overcome the shortcomings of the past age and adapted the traditional approach to take into account the modern nuances of our time.

Critical Comparisons

While it is evident that both theorists share an interest in how media technologies blur the boundary between the self and other, their approaches, ontological assumptions, and political implications drastically differ. Landsberg’s “prosthetic” metaphor implies a sense of loss, replacement, and hybridity between technological supplements as a substitute for something missing. To Landsberg, this reconfiguration of the human comes from within. Alternatively, Van Den Eede’s “extension” metaphor suggests projection and expansion, emphasising how technology radiates from the human outward, even if that boundary begins to dissolve. Comparing the two texts, it is clear that “prosthesis” affects ethics, emphasising the ways the media we consume can implant experiences and emotions that reshape identity. “Extension” emphasises how technologies alter perception and define what counts as “human.” Altogether, these concepts reveal the logic of mediation, demonstrating how media can both inhabit the body and extend it into the world.

Furthermore, the differences in the work that these two authors do also inform the contexts of their arguments. Landsberg’s work is grounded in cultural studies, postmodernism, and feminist theory, referencing thinkers such as Haraway and Kracauer. Therefore, the author’s arguments often position media not simply to represent or supplement experience, but they actively produce new forms of subjectivity, enabling empathy and collective responsibility across diversity, spanning race, class, and gender. Contrastingly, Van Den Eede’s works are often rooted in the philosophy of technology and engaging with McLuhan’s theories. Therefore, his arguments position media as extensions of human capacities that are relational rather than strictly instrumental. 

In conclusion, comparing the Landsberg and Van Den Eede readings reminds us that as media studies students, our task is both critical and reflective. Landsberg teaches us to pay attention to the embodied, affective, and political forces that shape our mediated experience, revealing the underlying power of media that can implant shared memories and encourage empathy and awareness. Meanwhile, Van Den Eede urges us to examine the conceptual tools we depend on daily. Ultimately, by using these metaphors of “extension” and “prosthesis” that redefine how we think about technology in relation to the human experience, we can begin to understand that media is never merely just an instrument or supplement, but an active mediation through which self and world continue to become clear.

By Kim Chi Tran & Nam Pham

References

Van Den Eede, Yoni. “Chapter 8 Extending ‘Extension.’” Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman, Lexington Books, 2014, pp. 151–69.

Landsberg, Alison. “Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner.” Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment, edited by Roger Burrows, Sage, 1995.