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Critical Comparison

The Material Life of the Smartphone: A Critical Dialogue Between Bollmer and Rosenberg

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A phenomenon occurs when smartphones are turned off: time appears to expand. Minutes lengthen, and an hour becomes tangible. The absence of screens renders the passage of time perceptible. But when a device is reactivated, time seems to contract as notifications and feeds rapidly consume attention, leaving entire afternoons to pass unnoticed.

Overview on Materialist Media Theory

The easiest way to talk about smartphones is still to talk about what we see on them. When we worry about our phones, we tend to worry about content: endless TikToks, unread messages, the feeling of being “addicted” to whatever is happening on the screen. Grant Bollmer asks us to uncover the underlying incentive. In Materialist Media Theory: An Introduction, he argues that focusing on meaning alone traps media studies in what he calls a kind of “screen essentialism”—the assumption that what we see on the screen is all that matters about digital media. For Bollmer, the “content” of a medium is like the piece of meat a burglar throws to distract the watchdog; obscuring the material infrastructures that reorganize space, time, and relation (4). It is key to know how media objects have agency, and thus Bollmer’s central thesis– media are not carriers of immaterial meaning but material actors that reorganize bodies, gestures, cognition, time, space, and social power–which is to be further confirmed by Rosenberg and Blondheim.

The Deprivation Experiment

​Hananel Rosenberg and Menahem Blondheim’s article, “What (Missing) the Smartphone Means,” provides an approach to evaluating Bollmer’s claim. Their deprivation experiment required teenagers to abandon their phones for a week and reflect on the experience of missing this personal device. While the initial focus was potentially the “addiction’ aspect, the findings are more nuanced: participants reflected differently, with positive ones such as “When I got my smart- phone back,” one participant wrote, “I merely touched it and held it—I actually had a pleasant and secure feeling, the mere contact was enough to give me a good sensation” (246). Rosenberg and Blondheim’s results support Bollmer’s argument by demonstrating that the most challenging aspect is not the loss of content but the absence of the infrastructures that transmit messages. The ‘3Ps’ identified in the absence of cellphones align with Bollmer’s principles regarding how media structure sociality through material habits and dependencies. As Bollmer asserts, “Techniques inscribe into the body particular cultural forms and practices that endure over time” (174), highlighting the prosthetic extension of media, which becomes most apparent when it is missing.

​Critical Comparison: Materiality vs Representation

Rosenberg and Blondheim diverge from Bollmer in their interpretation of loss, maintaining an ‘im/material’ distinction by framing the phone as a psychological-representational object linked to identity. Bollmer critiques this perspective, arguing that devices are not primarily symbols or objects of psychological attachment. In his view, the discomfort experienced by teenagers is not a commentary on media meaning, but rather an encounter with the material reorganization of life enacted by the smartphone. The device functions as a material actor that shapes cognition and behavior. Instead of viewing audiences’ ‘misreadings’ (26) as evidence of fluid meaning, Bollmer emphasizes how media technologies structure the very conditions of interpretation. Common feelings of unease with smartphones—such as perceiving others as ‘absent’ (4) or sensing a less ‘real’ (4) world—are often attributed to distraction or authenticity. For Bollmer, however, these responses indicate a failure to consider the materiality of media, which entangles images in processes of action, circulation, and influence. The deprivation experiment demonstrates that media objects serve as ‘tools for thinking and experiencing with,’ not because they transmit signs, but because they modulate the conditions under which signs can emerge.

​Another key distinction between the two texts is their orientation toward the human subject. Rosenberg and Blondheim analyze the smartphone deprivation week primarily through teenagers’ self-reported experiences, treating the device as a psychologically meaningful object whose significance is revealed through subjective interpretation. Their analysis remains human-centered, emphasizing the phone’s importance based on its meaning to users and its influence on cognition and emotion. In contrast, Bollmer rejects this anthropocentric perspective. He asserts that media objects possess agency not because they are interpreted by humans, but because they materially shape the world. For Bollmer, the smartphone is not simply a vessel for symbolic attachment, but an actor within a network of relations, structuring gesture, social coordination, temporality, and affect regardless of user perception. While Rosenberg interprets absence as psychological insight, Bollmer contends that this approach overlooks the more fundamental point: the significance of the smartphone arises from its material operations, which reorganize bodies and social relations.

​Tomb Raider: How Lara Croft Exemplifies Material Coupling

​Bollmer’s analysis of Tomb Raider provides a concrete illustration of his argument. Lara Croft is not simply an ideologically charged symbol, but an affective figure who embodies both empowerment and oppression, engaging viewers through sensations and identifications that transcend representational meaning (26). Bollmer critiques ideological models that conceptualize media as a ‘hypodermic needle,’ arguing that such frameworks overlook the mechanisms by which hegemony is maintained: fleeting gratifications and transient feelings of empowerment that stabilize otherwise unstable social structures (28, 31). According to Bollmer, these effects arise not from content alone, but from the material coupling between bodies and media.

​Bollmer situates this issue within broader debates on interpretation, arguing that media scholarship often treats meaning as contingent, shaped by context, ‘misreading,’ or audience response (26). Concerns about distraction or the perception that smartphone users are ‘absent’ similarly emphasize representational rather than material issues. Bollmer contends that media do not provide the stable ‘presence’ of physical objects (4), nor are humans autonomous agents outside historical context. The ideological contradictions embodied by Lara Croft are not merely interpreted; they are enacted through the player’s physical engagement. The avatar’s exaggerated agility becomes a learned bodily rhythm. Bollmer asserts that the material coupling of player and controller generates a sense of agency associated with Lara, forming an affective loop that cannot be reduced to representation, as it is experienced through embodied feedback and perceptual orientation.

​Conclusion

​All in all, Bollmer and Rosenberg & Blondheim don’t reveal two opposing stories about smartphones so much as two ways of understanding what media are. Rosenberg and Blondheim show us the experiential surface: what it feels like when a device that structures teenage life suddenly disappears. Their findings remind us that smartphones aren’t simply visual portals into immaterial worlds but anchors that stabilize rhythms of sociality, perception, and selfhood. Yet their interpretation remains tied to the logic of representation by demonstrating how phones matter because they symbolize connection, because they’re meaningful to their users, and because their absence produces recognizable psychological effects. Bollmer insists that this is precisely where media analysis must push further. What the deprivation experiment exposes is not just an emotional attachment but a deep material coupling in which bodies, habits, time, and attention have been reorganized by technical infrastructures long before anyone determines what a smartphone “means.”

Works Cited

Rosenberg Hananel, and Menahem Blondheim. “What (missing) the smartphone means: Implications of the medium’s portable, personal, and prosthetic aspects in the deprivation experience of teenagers.” The Information Society, vol. 41, no. 4, 29 Apr. 2025, pp. 239–255, https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2025.2490487. 

Bollmer, Grant. Materialist Media Theory An Introduction Grant Bollmer. Zed Books, 2021. 

Cover art: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/422281210585563/

Written by Gina Chang and Nicole Jiao

Critical Comparison

What Does Smartphone Actually Mean To Us? — Critical Texts Comparison With Bollmer

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By Micah Sébastien Zhang

The book Materialist Media Theory: An Introduction written by Grant Bollmer in 2019 provided some comprehensive yet innovative perspectives on media studies based on contemporary media atmosphere. In this blog post, we are going to see how Bollmer’s ideas in the book are being reflected and presented in one research essay on the effect and materiality of smartphones.

A Broad Introduction

The research essay by Hananel Rosenberg and Menahem Blondheim primarily focuses on an experiment on the uses of smartphone among teenagers, yet it also provides valuable insights into how we can define the materiality of smartphones, and how are those insights come in contrast of some past, predisposed beliefs.

The researchers firstly gave an overview of the materiality of smartphone. Drawing from the ideas of the Toronto School thinkers Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan — in which they think "media technologies impact the nature of social organization…and the cognitive implications…" — the researchers claim that the functional concept of smartphone has gone "beyond the prosthetic" into a form that serves as a communication organ, which belongs to a figuratively-morphed body as a communication node. The node, in this case smartphone, has come with three natural aspects of being personal, portable, and prosthetic (Rosenberg and Blondheim, p.240). It is a key element to understand the smartphone’s contemporary and figurative significance, yet the researchers also acknowledged that it is hard to understand this idea based off the Toronto School’s perspective considering the importance of smartphones in people’s daily lives.

Here, we can see some similar ideas reflected in Bollmer’s book in Chapter 5, in which Bollmer talked about the figurative definition and relationships of objects. Taking from the idea of the philosopher Martin Heidegger, he narrated that using an existing technological object withdraws its materialistic presence from our experiences, forming a "ready-at-hand" concept (Bollmer, p.143). Using an object does not equates to simply having the object as a prosthetic, but morphing it into an unifying experience; this, in my opinion, is reflecting to the point claimed by the essay’s researchers.

Altogether, it seems that we’re getting an intertwined, general idea of the extensive, prosthetic nature of an object, as it was similarly mentioned or claimed by authors of the two scholarly texts with the support from famous thinkers’ ideas. However, the results shown by the research experiment seem to contemplate the concept’s given figurative definition as from a "prosthetic" point of view. To understand this claim better, let’s take a closer look into the research experiment (Rosenberg and Blondheim, p.243-245) and its conclusion on results analysis (Rosenberg and Blondheim, p.251-252).

The Experiement

The researchers aimed to study the significance of smartphone in daily lives through voluntary deprivation, and they have put their focuses on teenagers. The researchers have chosen 80 teengaers aged 13-18 in Israel as participants; those teenagers all differ in terms of their average amount of smartphone uses and respective living conditions (Rosenberg and Blondheim, p.243). The experiment rolled out in several steps: the enrolled participants were first being asked about their cellphone uses, then their parents were being asked to sign a declaration to make sure that they’re keeping their children’s phones away from sight for the entire experimentation period, which is one week. The experiment will play out in several separate experimentation period throughout a year; researchers also asked participants to give daily diaries and do face-to-face interviews to collect information of participants’ sentiments and feelings (Rosenberg and Blondheim, p.244).

Some notable parameters of this experiment were also presented. All participants, whether followed the no-phone rules and successfully completed the experiment or not, will be granted NIS 2501 as a reward after each one-week period; researchers said that it’s not to discourage participants from using phones during an emergency (Rosenberg and Blondheim, p.244, 245). Plus, participants were not barred from other electronic devices, including TVs, music and video players, tablets, and computers (Rosenberg and Blondheim, p.243) as the collection of information is only bound to the variable of absence of phones in daily lives.

The results were a bit unexpected. 79 out of 80 participants have passed the one-week periods without the phone at all, contrasting against the predisposition held by participants that it would be challenging to endure a week without smartphones. Notably, this finding further challenges a prevalent discourse that describes the relationship between smartphones and teenagers as "addictions" (Rosenberg and Blondheim, p.245). Participants did also express some senses of uncomfort or peculiar feelings from the deprivation based on the three aforementioned natural aspects — prosthetic, portable, and personal (Rosenberg and Blondheim, p.246-248). Nevertheless, some participants also expressed positive feelings when connecting to the physical surroundings and connections away from screens, with some feelings formalized into gratifications for this experiment (Rosenberg and Blondheim, p.250-251). The researchers have specifically mentioned this part in the essay’s conclusion, claiming that "alternative venues of attention and activities were embraced, and they yielded gratifications that compensated, to a surprising extent, for missing the smartphone" (Rosenberg and Blondheim, p.252).

On the individual level of analysis, and in trying to penetrate media-users’ cognitive state (Levinson 1999; McLuhan 1967), the enhancement of one’s sensory scope by a personal, portable tool with prosthetic-like attributes, certainly “extends” the individual. Yet increasing one’s exposure to the outside world, with all its gratifications, may carry burdens and discontents that can be relieved by a respite — even for a relatively short time—from the constant extension of individuals, and a return to a less-technologically-expanded experiential-intake capacity.

—— Rosenberg & Blondheim (p.252)

"An Intermittent Clone" — A Reflection & Short Conclusion

Drawing from those general ideas and processes — and specifically from the points made by the researchers at their conspectus — the holistic yield provides another perspective on examining the figurative materiality of smartphone. Rather than viewing it simply as a prosthesis, it presents itself more as an intermittent clone that independently coexists with the "host" — the concept of self or ego — considering its socio-cultural capabilities and feasibility of detachment. As the experiment participants expressed that the loss of phones was getting replenished by their physical surroundings and attributes, it is important to reflect on the idea of simply defining smartphones — or even similar electronic devices — as a figurative prothesis. The concept of "prosthetic objects" was granted its characteristics by the uniqueness of its nature; that is, the objects — even if they can work materialistically as prosthetic extensions — only present themselves as irreplacable. Smartphones, on the other hand, come as an unique form of socio-cultural interactions, yet they’re still categorized as physical attributes under the grand scheme of socio-cultural interactions; a phone could work as an crucial tool, yet it doesn’t provide the uniqueness as a figurative prosthesis, which is reflected upon participants’ positive sentiments during the experiment. This feasibility of detachment, we can say, essentially disqualifies the point to view smartphones solely as a figurative prosthesis extended from the body and mind.

The chosen term "intermittent clone" comes in play if we’re reflecting on smartphone’s socio-cultural significance in an up-to-date manner. Smartphones do effectively provide a materialistic and physical entrance to a de-materialized space for humanistic developments, in which physical communications haven evolved into digital forms as compressions from three-dimesional (or even higher) experiences. Such tools serve as a pathway to create a clone (similar to a biological understanding) or clones that are subjugated under different digital socio-cultural constraints and exist independently, with the purpose of recreating real, physical connections. Note that the now-developed landscape of digital social media becomes an alternative to traditional social media, it is more important to re-adjust the scope of study of materiality into a more holistic view.

Copyright Disclaimer

The cover image is distributed under Public Domain and can be found here

Works Consulted

Bollmer, Grant. Materialist Media Theory: An Introduction. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2019.

Rosenberg, Hananel, and Menahem Blondheim. “What (Missing) the Smartphone Means: Implications of the Medium’s Portable, Personal, and Prosthetic Aspects in the Deprivation Experience of Teenagers.” The Information Society, vol. 41, no. 4, Apr. 2025, pp. 239–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2025.2490487.

Footnote(s)

  1. NIS stands for New Israel Shekel (ISO 4217 Code: ILS), which is the legal currency used by Israel. Dated to the evening of 2025 November 14, ILS 250 approximately equal to CAD 108.62. ↩

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

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.

Other

Recon-figured: exploring the real versus the authentic in posthumans

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Click on the link below to listen to my mini-podcast for the Critical Comparison of Texts assignment, entitled “Recon-figured” . Credit to Bridghet Wood and Hanna Rudelich for voicing Allison Landberg and Emily McArthur, respectively.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BVNQmvftuHK9J3oZCgdZNmBIHjt47lAR/view?

Works Cited

Landberg, Allison. “Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Bladerunner.” Cyberspace/ Cyberbodies/ Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment, SAGE Publications, London, 1995, pp. 175–187.

McArthur, Emily. “The iPhone Erfahrung.” Design, Mediations & the Posthuman, Lexington Books, Lanham , Maryland, 2014, pp. 113–125.

Image for poster from scientificamerican.com