Tag Archives: Landsberg

Critical Response

We Don’t Just Watch Disney—We Become it

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In Bridghet’s blog post Guys, He’s Literally Me, the author writes about how prosthetic memories, proposed by Alison Landsberg, can be imagined through films to shape identities that lived memories do. The article further argues how this mechanism may also enforce confirmation bias when being uncritical about who they identify with. Referencing to American Psycho and the modern “Sigma Male” trend, the author shows that viewers do not always empathize with the intended subject of the film, instead adopting the film as a means of validating misogyny, narcissistic masculinity, and entitlement. Thus, films double in their effects: they have the capacity to build empathy and understanding, but they can also maintain oppressive social narratives and reproduce damaging identities when audiences misread them or internalize them selectively .This dynamic is not unique to American Psycho or Sigma Male culture.

“We’re promoting merchandise to adults as well as little girls,” said the company’s director of licensing in 1987, referring to products that had been created for the 50th anniversary of Snow White (Tait). I couldn’t help but wonder, do we grow out of Disney—or does Disney simply grow into us? 91% self-identified “Disney adults” expected to remain Disney adults for life, showing how prosthetic memory and identity production by media is structural, not individual. It is not simply just building a nostalgic childhood, as one may naturally think. It is an actual lived, long-lasting identity.

Disney films have been producing similar “prosthetic identities” for decades—often in ways that also affirm harmful cultural scripts. Disney’s narratives generate extraordinarily powerful memories in childhood audiences: for many people, these films become their earliest emotional templates for love, heroism, gender, and belonging. If Landesberg argues that films allow us to “construct narratives for ourselves,”(186) Disney arguably teaches us who we are supposed to want to become.

Take the “princess” narrative: Disney’s heroines repeatedly enact the prosthetic memory of transformation-an ordinary girl becomes the chosen one, love is fate, goodness is destiny. Children adopt those feelings, internalize the desire, and carry that prosthetic memory into adulthood. But, like the men who selectively identify with Bateman, audiences often internalize the surface fantasy and neglect the critique. For example, the early Disney canon accidentally supports the fantasy of male entitlement and female reward: the prince’s perseverance is framed as love, not stubbornness, and the princess’s silence or sacrifice becomes virtue, not constraint. The audiences “remember” these roles even without living them. The result can be the same confirmation bias, except directed toward romance, gender norms, happiness, and competition.

Disney has also perfected the art of extending these memories beyond the screen and into everyday consumption. Through theme parks, merchandise, streaming platforms, and curated nostalgia, Disney provides an entire ecosystem where these identities are reinforced repeatedly. Visiting Disneyland becomes a ritual–wearing themed dresses, buying branded products becomes an act of belonging, and nostalgia becomes a commodity that is constantly renewed. In the same manner that Sigma Males “perform” masculinity through imitation, Disney fans perform their identity through participation in a shared fantasy world that blurs the line between media and lived memory. This shows that prosthetic identity is not just emotional or psychological. It is economic, cultural, and social, quietly infiltrating every aspect of our community.

Interestingly enough, Disney has recently attempted to revise this prosthetic memory. Films like Frozen and Moana actively resist the earlier narratives of entitlement or rescue (Mendelson). In other words, Disney knows that people don’t just watch princess movies—they model themselves after them. Disney has had to become aware of film’s power not just to teach empathy, but to reinforce bias.

Taking the author’s argument further, the problem isn’t just that audiences identify with Bateman incorrectly–it’s that culture conditions us to look for ourselves in the narratives to confirm the scripts we already carry, whether that’s the Sigma Male fantasy, the Nice Guy narrative, or the Disney princess myth. Prosthetic memories can produce empathy, but they also produce archetypes that get recycled across media and across identity.

What Bridghet’s post reveals—and what Disney makes even clearer—is that prosthetic memory is not neutral. It can produce empathy, or entitlement. It can create community, or isolation. Perhaps the task for filmmakers and audiences isn’t to stop identifying with characters, but to become more aware of what we are being trained to desire in the first place. So I agree with the author’s conclusion that film produces identity as much as emotion. Still, I would add that even the most seemingly innocuous films, especially Disney films, have always been doing the same kind of cultural work that American Psycho does: shaping what we think we are, who we think is heroic, and what futures we believe we deserve.

Works Cited

Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner.

Mendelson, Scott. “Why ‘little Mermaid’ May Mark the End of Disney’s Remake Factory Hits: Analysis.” TheWrap, 1 June 2023, www.thewrap.com/disney-remake-little-mermaid-moana-frozen/.

Tait, Amelia. “The ‘Disney Adult’ Industrial Complex.” New Statesman, New Statesman, 26 Feb. 2024, www.newstatesman.com/culture/2024/02/disney-adult-superfan-industrial-complex#:~:text=Far%20more%20common%20answers%20include,%E2%80%9Cmakes%20me%20feel%20happy%E2%80%9D.

Cover art: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/118430665278991259/

Written by Gina Chang

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.

Other

What Alison Landsberg and Van Den Eede Teach Us About Technology

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Nowadays, we are seeing emerging technologies like the Apple Vision Pro, Fitbits, and Oura Rings, which are making our senses increasingly extended and reshaped by digital media. This begs the question as to whether or not our senses are being strengthened or even manipulated due to technology. Alison Landsberg, in “Prosthetic Memory” (1995) and Yoni Van Den Eede in “Extending Extension” (2014), question how we understand the relationship between humans and media. Landsberg sees media as a “prosthetic”, technology that inserts itself into ourselves, affecting our mind and body (Landsberg 175). On the other hand, Van Den Eede sees media as an extension that expands and redefines what it means for us to be “human” (Van Den Eede, 151). Though their ideas are slightly different, each reveals how media and technology may not be neutral tools, presenting media as the active players in shaping us as modern humans. In an increasingly mediated world, their discussions depict how representation and interface influence our identity, control, and perception in an increasingly mediated world.

Landsberg: Prosthetic Memory

In “Prosthetic Memory,” Allison Landsberg begins by presenting the idea that cinema and mass media can implant memories in audience members and viewers, reshaping their identity, even though these recollections never truly occurred to them in real life. Landsberg defines these as “memories which do not come from a person’s lived experience in any strict sense”, but are still real nonetheless (175). The media we consume, including film, television, and social media content, can make us feel as if we are living in someone else’s experiences rather than just following their narrative. As Landsberg explains, cinema is “aware of its ability to generate experiences and to install memories of them ― memories which become experiences that film consumers both possess and feel possessed by” (176). Landsberg explained this idea using the film The Thieving Hand (1908), a story that follows a one-armed man who is given an artificial limb that causes him to steal from people against his will (175). Just like how technology can create and amplify our experiences, oftentimes, it is extended too far, where there is a loss of control. In this case, media can write images, feelings, and experiences into our minds that were never ours. Now, our screens can edit our sense of who we are, rewritten by the cultural technologies we consume, whether we like it or not. Especially where the algorithm feeds AI content, Landsberg’s argument that media “implants” memories is a cautionary tale that every image or video we encounter, real or fake, has the possibility to rewire who we think we are. 

Eede: Critical Awareness towards “Extension”

In Extending “Extension”, Eede mainly discusses the relationship between technology and the human being by applying the idea proposed by Marshall McLuhan – technology is the extension of the human being – and uses this as a way to call on the public to perceive technology in a more critical way. 

Eede points out that modern researchers often look at technology under an “external” context: “technologies and humans are seen here as independent entities, and the relation between them—the extension—as an external supplement to both.”(Eede, 156) This approach only leads to two extreme directions in which one side relies on technology blindly while the other side completely rejects it. 

To look at technology in a more practical sense one needs to accept that technology is not only “simple intermediaries” or a tool for humans to use but also acts as a source of influence that co-shapes human beings. To internally approach technology, one has to accept that we have already intertwined with technology, though one should remember to trust their own thinking rather than technology, despite its convenience in many aspects. At the same time, according to Eede, technology is also self-tracking and constantly shifting its position in the human-technological relationship and the boundaries between it and humans. This goes back to Eede’s promotion in critical thinking in a time when everyone needs to have awareness when it comes to treating technology.

Common ground and relations

Eede and Landsburg both made similar statements along with their main ideas when it comes to human-media relations. Eede emphasized on the fact that technology and media can influence and co-shape human beings, and that technology today should be seen as an internal element for humans since they can reflect and intervene with what people think they originally thought. The idea similar, or even can be considered an continual to “extending the mind through technology” can be found in Landsburg’s works, in which he describes how human memories can be influenced by what they watch on different media outlets and so “tricking” the mind to accept them as part of reality – consciously or subconsciously. In both works, the authors try to raise the awareness amongst the public to see media and technology in a more critical way. 

Main differences

While both thinkers see media as a force that is entangled with human experiences, they approach these ideas from different perspectives. Landsberg’s concept of prosthetic memory depicts media entering our bodies and creating emotional memories that are not ours. On the other hand, Eede focuses on media as an entity that is “an extension of ourselves” (151), rather than media being inserted into us. His perspective is loyal to McLuhan’s thinking about media as “technology is an extension of the human being, of human organs, body parts, senses, capabilities, and so on. ” (153). For Eede, media stretches and reshapes our sensory boundaries; it changes the way we move, see, and act in the world.

Landsberg emphasizes how media implants memories and emotions, while Eede is concerned in how media transforms our abilities in perception and our abilities as humans. Lansberg approaches media with more regard for its ability to emotionally penetrate ourselves with new memories, producing empathy and identity through what she calls the “unsettled boundaries between real and simulated ones” (174). In contrast, Eede’s priority in his thinking is not about emotional manipulation but about our loss of understanding of how media shape us while we use them, which is becoming increasingly unclear. Eede mentions technology itself creates a “fog to distort our sight; a blindness we are victim to or, even more precisely, an inability to assess the “why” and the ‘how’ of technologies in an immediate and direct way, at a glance so to speak.” (168). 

Contextualizing in Media Theory

Landsberg and Eede remind us that media are not just things that we consume, because it is a heavy influence on how we think, feel, and behave. We’ve often returned to McLuhan’s idea that “the medium is the message.” Van Den Eede explicitly extends this saying, while Landsberg adds by presenting the implantation of memories and emotion. This shows that modern media can impact us from many directions, both outward and inward.

Even further, Ingold’s mention of correspondence in Making or Gibson’s “education of attention” also applies here. According to Ingold, our perception arises through actively interacting with materials. Then, for Gibson, we observe affordances that invite us to act. Landsberg’s ideas similarly lean toward feeling through film’s affordances, while Van Den Eede’s extensions demand continual adaptation to technology.

Conclusion

Both of the readings emphasized on the importance of critical thinking with media and technology, and in a society filled with advertisements, new technology and implementations of various ideas from billions of people, critical awareness and consideration to accepting these information are indeed of vital importance. Meanwhile, not easily accepting the provided ideas also extends to the researching grounds – taking in the ideas and reminders from Eede and Landsburg, implementing them as an “extension” to our own thoughts and memories entirely without critical consideration is probably not what the authors would like to see, either. Indeed, our knowledge should come from our own interactions with materials, and this should be kept in mind in both interactions with the passages by Eede and Landsburg as well as with media and technology in our daily lives. 

References

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. 175–186.

Van Den Eede, Yoni. “Extending ‘Extension’: A Reappraisal of the Technology-as-Extension Idea through the Case of Self-Tracking Technologies.” Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman, edited by Pieter Vermaas et al., Lexington Books, 2014, pp. 151–164.

Image: Pierznik, Christopher. “Our Brains Can’t Handle Technology.” Medium, 5 June 2019, https://medium.com/the-passion-of-christopher-pierznik-books-rhymes/our-brains-cant-handle-technology-8dfabe90505d

Contributers:

Siming Liao, Aubrey Ventura

Other

Hey! I Saw Them Live*

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Introduction

Alison Landsberg’s discussion of prosthetic memory and Yoni Van Den Eede’s concept of mediational extensions form a comprehensive analysis of how we interact with media in the modern day, and how this media ultimately impacts us and our sense of identities. This dynamic relationship, and the complexities it introduces into our lives, is applicable in our modern entertainment scene, particularly through studying how concerts and live performances have been transformed with the introduction of smartphones and personal digital recording devices. Laura Glitsos delineates the role of documentation in live music, and how this aspect of concerts has mutated as technology develops. These sources work together to provide an explanation for how these concepts work with one another and how they can be applied to situations in our modern world.

Media Extensions and Prosthetic Memories

Landsberg’s writing centres on memory and its place in our lives. Memories “validate our experiences” as by simply having a memory, one logically has the experience that it represents (176). However, Landsberg contradicts this notion of memory through her article’s primary focus: prosthetic memory. Prosthetic memories “do not come from a person’s lived experience in any strict sense”, and are instead the product of reliance on third-party influence to create the illusion of experience and memory (Landsberg 175). These third-parties are often technologies or media used as extensions of a person’s selfhood. Van Den Eede’s writings support Landsberg’s definition of prosthetic memory, explicitly describing technology as “an extension of the human being, of human organs, body parts, senses, capabilities, and so on”(153). As an extension of humanity, technology immediately becomes a form of prosthesis and, by effect, an integral asset in creating prosthetic memories. These “technologies [that] structure and circumscribe experience” texturize and dramaticize the contents of prosthetic memories, and are, at their core, vessels for communication (Landsberg 176).

In his discussion of media as an extension of humans, Van Den Eede continuously cites Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan emphasizes the roles of “rhetoric, grammar, and logic”, arguing that media “are linguistic entities that “translate one thing, that is, a human function, into another, that is, an artifact”(Van Den Eede 159). This theory corroborates both the process of mediation described in Tim Ingold’s, Making, and Gregory Bateson’s definition of language as a structure dependent on its context. As dictated by McLuhan, media communicates rhetoric using grammar that is understood through logic, mirroring the semiotic processes Tim Ingold uses to describe the process of making. Like Ingold, McLuhan views media as a sort of transducer, representing ideas in material form, enabling communication in our societies, and effectively acting as “the glue that binds our human reality together”(Ingold 102, Van Den Eede 159). Memories are the base of our realities, making this communication indescribably important in our lives.

Building off this semiotic model, McLuhan further describes media as “translations of us, the users, from one form into another form: metaphors”(Van Den Eede 159). He implores us to reconsider what language is, evoking Bateson’s definition of language as a “digital system” wherein “signs have no correspondence of magnitude” and thus the differences between these signs can only hold meaning “determined by reference to a larger system of rules within which that difference functions”(Wolfe 235). Per Bateson, language only holds meaning because of its structure, just as McLuhan’s definition of media holds that the true impact or meaning of media can only be understood within the larger context in which it is situated. Similarly, without context, our memories–natural and prosthetic–would be unintelligible and meaningless.

Effectively, prosthetic memories cannot exist without considering technology and media as an extension of ourselves, just as language is arguably an extension of ourselves. Landsberg and Van Den Eede’s works form a reciprocal relationship in the theories they espouse: as an extension of humanity, media becomes a vessel for prosthetic memory, while the creation of prosthetic memories give these media extensions a purpose.

Our Memories and Time

An interesting instance of Landsberg and Van Den Eede’s theories in practice is the increasing prevalence of digital recording technology in concert and live music spaces. Recording has long been an integral aspect of live music performances, to the extent that “the live performance is produced through the processes of recording” defining it as a cultural artefact “entwined with the aspects of that production”(Glitsos 35). However, the advent of the smartphone revolutionizes this aspect of concerts as users “not only view moving images but also [create] them”(Glitsos 36). This provides the viewer total agency over the narration of their experience, and thus the memories they create.

Landsberg categorizes memories as “a domain of the present” whose primary purpose is to construct strategies in the now through which someone can live in the future (176). In practice, concert-goers record videos and photographs as a precursor to potential memory lapse, effectively visuallizing a future wherein they forget the experience of the concert. However, in that process, we corrupt the experience of the concert with the documentation of the videos. The memories of the experience take precedence over the experience itself.

Related to this phenomenon, Fredric Jameson declared that we see “the waning of our historicity, of our lived possibility of experiencing history in some active way”(Landsberg 177). Essentially, in the age of post-modernity–increasingly so as the digital age progresses–true experience is dead. Instead, prosthetic memory has so thoroughly complicated the relationship between memory and experience that media is used to record our experiences to an extent that effectively transforms potential ‘real’ memories into prosthetic ones. Instead of watching the artists live and living truly in the present, we concern ourselves with the future, opting to watch the show through the screen of whatever recording device we brought.

A Dependance on Documentation

A byproduct of this relationship between extensions and prosthetic memories is the “unsettled boundaries between real and simulated [memories]” and the subsequent disruption “of the human body” and “its subjective autonomy”(Landsberg 175). Van Den Eede notes these disruptions, expanding on how “the technological extension of a human function produces a heightening of intensity within that function, body part or sense”(158). By exacerbating the strength of a human function, these technologies highlight the fallacies of the organic human form, including our ability to retain memories. Technology expedites the act of recording–a process that has traditionally been performed by a person and their memory–making it a readily available form of memory prosthesis. This immediacy of personal technologies facilitates a reliance on them, one that would ultimately be both a cause and effect of a general decline to our organic memories. For example, “the camera phone augments the drive to collect and save live music experiences” with the recordings’ ultimate purpose is to act as a preservation of the experience that can be repeated (Glitsos 37). We have access to our phones, so we use them in place of our eyes, experiencing a concert through a screen instead of in real-time.

Essentially: if there is an opportunity to record memories elsewhere, why would we rely on our fallible minds?  

Prosthetic Emotions 

Despite the questionable ways in which they are ultimately experienced, live music and concerts remain popular, speaking to a “popular longing to experience history in a personal and even bodily way”(Landsberg 178). Evidently, people still have a desire to create these memories of experiences even if their authenticity is debateable. This desire to “create experiences and to implant memories” of “[experiences] of which we have never lived” is motivated by how these memories become experiences that “consumers both possess and feel possessed by”(Landsberg 176). Prosthetic memories have a comparable impact on our selfhoods and identities to ‘real’ memories. Regardless of how they were ultimately created and recorded, the experiences feel real, and impact us accordingly. Though Landsberg’s example of films differentiates more distinctly between the prosthetic and the truly experienced, her concept is applicable to live performances as well. Concert-goers watch through their phones, corrupting the true experience, but the ultimate emotional impact of the experience “might be as significant in constructing, or deconstructing, the spectator’s identity as any experience that s/he actually lived through”(Landsberg 180).

The proportional impact that prosthetic memories have on our selves when compared to traditional memories suggests an eventual era when “we might no longer be able to distinguish prosthetic or ‘unnatural’ memories from ‘real’ ones”(Landsberg 180). Evidently, Landsberg views us and our media extensions as two distinctly separate entities. By contrast, Van Den Eede specifies that technology and media compensate for our own deficiencies “by taking action, more specifically by deploying tools and prostheses”(154). This definition is complicit in establishing a reliance on media that facilitates a codependent relationship between humans and their mediational extensions, yet the intended purpose of these extensions is to achieve things that we cannot perform organically. Through this relationship, the era of differentiation between prosthetic and ‘real’ memories has arguably already come to an end.

The allure of media extensions and their impact on the creation of memories is explicitly displayed in their superfluous use in live performance settings. Through our smartphones–the extensions and facilitators of prosthetic memories in this context–concert-goers become “both hero and narrator of their own epic”(Glitsos 40). The aforementioned agency provided by smartphones offers their users a form through which they can insert themselves into the recorded moment. This particular concept is ironic considering someone must be present to an experience to properly record it. However, these recordings give the user a point through which they can insert themselves once more in the moment once it has passed, further reinforcing Landsberg’s emphasis of memory as a function of the present.

Conclusion

Landsberg and Van Den Eede indirectly highlight a reciprocal relationship between the media extensions we use, and the prosthetic memories their use creates. These sources reformulate concepts we have discussed in class, further exemplifying language as defined by Bateson, and offering another layer of complexity to the theories proposed by Ingold through their dual citation of McLuhan. The complicated relationship between humans and their media extensions represent a transition into a new media era, and the prosthetic memories created through this relationship are symbols of the potential obsolescence of ‘real’ memory. These relationships and their consequences can be observed through our habitual use of smartphones in concerts and how they reflect many of the concepts that both Landsberg and Van Den Eede describe.

Works Cited

Glitsos, Laura. “The Camera Phoen in the Concert Space: Live Music and Moving Images on the Screen.” Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, vol. 12, no. 1, 2018, pp. 33-52. https://doi.org/10.3828/msmi.2018.2. 

Ingold, Tim. Making. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2013.

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.

Van Den Eede, Yoni. “Extending “Extension”: A Reappraisal of the Technology-as-Extension idea through the Case of Self-Tracking Technologies.” Design Mediation & The Posthuman, Lexington Books, 2014, pp. 151-172.

Wolfe, Cary. “Language.” Critical Terms for Media Studies, edited by W.J.T Mitchell and Mark B.N. Hansen, The University of Chicago Press, 2010, pp. 233-248.

Image by Molly Kingsley

Written by Molly Kingsley