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Podcast Episode: Is AI Killing Creativity? Or Making It Better?

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In this podcast, Siming, Eira, and Aubrey explore whether Gen AI should be considered a creative medium and whether it suppresses or improves creativity. Through different examples in video editing, 3D modeling, and design, we explore what AI mediates and reflect on how these technologies reshape both creativity and authorship in contemporary media.

Citations 

Adobe. (n.d.). Automatic UV Unwrapping | Substance 3D Painter. https://helpx.adobe.com/substance-3d-painter/features/automatic-uv-unwrapping.html

Bollmer, G. (2019). Materialist media theory: An introduction.

Maisie, K. (2025). Why AI Action Figures Are Taking Over Your Feed. Preview.

https://www.preview.ph/culture/ai-action-figures-dolls-a5158-20250416-dyn

Ingold, T. (2013). Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge.

Salters, C. (2024). The New Premiere Pro AI Tools I’ll Definitely Be Using. Frame.io Insider.

https://blog.frame.io/2024/04/22/new-premiere-pro-generative-ai-tools-video-editing/

Schwartz, E. (2023). Adobe Brings Firefly Generative AI Tools to Photoshop. Voicebot.ai

https://voicebot.ai/2023/05/23/adobe-brings-firefly-generative-ai-tools-to-photoshop/

Faribault Mill. (n.d.). The Spinning Jenny: A Woolen Revolution. https://www.faribaultmill.com/pages/spinning-jenny

Van Den Eede, Yi. (2014). “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.

UX Pilot. (n.d.). UX Pilot: AI UI Generator & AI Wireframe Generator. https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/1257688030051249633/ux-pilot-ai-ui-generator-ai-wireframe-generator

Loveable. (n.d.). Learn about Lovable and how to get started. https://docs.lovable.dev/introduction/welcome

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Analyzing Extension through the Modern Lens of AI

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The two texts that I will be critically comparing are The Iphone Erfahrung by Emily McArthur, and Extending “Extension” by Yoni Van Den Eede, both found in the book Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman. They both talk about extension and evolutions in technology and how they relate to the human experience, and because of this they certainly relate.

The Iphone Erfahrung Summary

McArthur’s article focuses on Siri, which when it was written in 2014 was a fairly new piece and advancement of technology. Siri is talked about as being an extension of the human (McArthur), as any thought that enters someone’s mind can be nearly instantly asked to Siri. While Siri is primarily used as a faster Google, or an answering machine, the way in which individuals speak to their phone and receive a response from a voice is anything but normal, at least not 10 years ago. The article talks alot about Walter Benjamin’s concept of ‘aura’, and how Siri represents aura due to its magical nature and its place in the social hierarchy (McArthur); as in, it can be considered an authority for truth (like a faster Google). Despite Siri’s magical appearance though, all it really does in terms of looking back at the user is make a guess based on what its learned, rather than come up with something on its own (McArthur). The article also talks about how that applies to other algorithms and modern systems, like online shopping or digital newspapers recommending you articles based off your recent reads. All in all, McArthur’s article focuses on the aura of Siri, the way in which sound can penetrate the unconscious, and the limits of its capabilities.

Extending Extension Summary

Van Den Eede’s article briefly recaps the idea of extension through history and talking about McLuhan’s perspective on it, before narrowing its focus and discussing self-tracking software and applications, like FitBits and other technologies that we essentially input our data into, arguing with McLuhan’s help that they are unique extensions of the body(Van Den Eede). From surveillance issues, to the notion that self-tracking apps are solving a “problem”, this article and how it discusses technology certainly relates to McArthur’s article, as they both provide interesting perspectives on how humans interact with technology.

How the Texts can be Used Together

When reading through both of the articles, one topic in particular immediately came to mind, as this one tends to – artificial intelligence. When considering software like Siri and algorithms that predict behaviour and using technology as an extension of self, there are fewer subjects more applicable than AI. The texts relate in numerous ways, but because they were written over a decade ago, naturally the technological references they utilize and predict are outdated. Using the lens of AI when comparing them helps enhance their similarities and makes it more clear just how much not only AI affects us, but also how it will continue to in the future.

McArthur’s article talks about how Siri doesn’t necessarily know exactly what you say, but it uses its language processes to essentially make a guess to what you are saying. This applies moreso when verbally speaking, but this can also apply to text, since alot of meaning that can be inferred between two humans speaking can be lost when it is typed out. In today’s world, AI very much does the same thing, particularly in image and video generation. All it does is read what the user types in, and makes the best guess it can for what they imagine the user wants. This can also apply to students who use AI to sort and organize their notes for them, as even if the student emphasizes a certain way they’d like their information to be presented, only they truly know what that looks like, not the AI. 

All of this culminates in a couple of outcomes: ease of use, and extending one’s self. Both articles talk about how technology makes things easier, whether it be using Siri as an instant-answer machine, or using a self-tracking app to count one’s calories instead of using a book and doing calculations on their own. People use these apps because it is easier than doing the activity themselves, and that is how these companies make all the money that they do, because they promise an easier lifestyle. At the same time, this technology is an extension of the self. Using AI to sort through your notes, or generate an opening paragraph that ‘sounds like your writing’, is in essence an extension of one’s self. However, this dois not to say that what the AI generates is ‘yours’, or even creative. There is a lot of contention when it comes to passing off AI-generated art or video or content in general as one’s own, and that is not what is being advocated for. Despite the lack of authorship though, if someone puts in their notes or writing into an LLM and asks it to generate something, the product that emerges is an extension of them also because they asked the AI to generate it to begin with. It is an extension that highlights the user’s creativity (or lack thereof).

McLuhan also discusses an idea in Van Den Eede’s article about the medical concept of an irritant and counter-irritant, saying that many extensions in the world are created in response to a problem in order to solve the problem (Van Den Eede). However, there is always a cost, and any time a counter-irritant is used to enhance something or a body part, it also weakens something else, almost like a sort of exchange. This thinking can be applied to McArthur’s article, since using AI to do your thinking for you is a perfect example of this. While the problem may be that someone doesn’t know how best to plan someone’s 30th birthday, by asking the AI to help solve the problem (the irritant) through using an AI-generated plan after being fed all of the birthday person’s interests (the counter-irritant), the trade-off is part of their brain will inevitably suffer as they rely more and more on AI and outside help for idea generation and problem solving instead of using their own brain muscles to do it. Another interesting comparison is that McLuhan argues that people are aware of technology as an ‘other’ and it is obvious (Van Den Eede), but as more and more people get fooled by AI scams and as McArhur’s article discussed that sound penetrates the mind with relation to Siri, the lines get blurrier and blurrier.

Takeaways and Conclusion

In conclusion, McArthur’s text and Van Den Eede’s text both discuss extension in relation to technology, and by using the more modern perspective of AI and its impact on people, the two articles can be used as a helpful guide to highlight how Ai (and technology in general) greatly impact us all, and also discuss some interesting ways to talk about it, like the irritant and counter-irritant theory brought up by McLuhan in Van Den Eede’s article. This all is important to know for people my age as being able to discuss these processes and theories is more important than ever. As more and more people grow accustomed to AI being embedded in daily activities, whether it be apps or transactions or whatever else, the times from just a few years ago where that was not the case will slowly be lost. Being able to articulate these processes isn’t to wish for a return for the way things were, as that is nigh impossible at this point, but it is still critical to know so that we can still stay ahead of the technology as best we can, and stay informed through it all.

Works Cited


McArthur, Emily. “The Iphone Erfahrung: Siri, the Auditory Unconscious, and Walter Benjamin’s “Aura”.” Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman. Ed. Dennis M. Weiss Ed. Amy D. Propen Ed. Colbey Emmerson Reid Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014. 113–128. Postphenomenology and the Philosophy of Technology. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 1 Dec. 2025. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781666993851.ch-006>.

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. Ed. Dennis M. Weiss Ed. Amy D. Propen Ed. Colbey Emmerson Reid Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014. 151–172. Postphenomenology and the Philosophy of Technology. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 1 Dec. 2025. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781666993851.ch-008>.

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.

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Extension and Implantation: Where Media Lives in Us

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Both Alison Landsberg and Yoni Van Eede write from a place of entanglement, where technology is not simply around us, but within us. Each challenges the old mind–matter divide that assumes human thought exists apart from its material and technological conditions. They both see media as more than intermediary; it is what shapes and sustains consciousness itself.

Landsberg’s Prosthetic Memory describes how media , especially cinema, implants emotion and shared experience into the self, while Van Eede’s Extending Extensions explores how technologies form part of the mind, shaping perception and behavior. Between them lies a shared argument that humans are already hybrid, even post-human. What differs is how they imagine our awareness of this condition: Landsberg writes of the emotional pull, while Van Eede turns to its reflective possibilities. If media can implant, extend, and even compose us, how aware are we of that exchange?

Feeling Through Media

Landsberg’s concept of prosthetic memory captures how mass media allows individuals to feel experiences they have not personally lived. Watching a historical film, for example, implants the emotional memory of an event the viewer never witnessed. Through this process, media acts like a prosthesis — attaching memory, empathy, and identification to those otherwise disconnected from an experience.

 “Because the movie experience decenters lived experience, it, too, might alter or construct identity. Emotional possession has implications for both the future and the past of the individual under its sway.” (Blumer as qtd. by Landsberg, 180)

Memory, for Landsberg, is not just psychological; it is technological. The screen becomes an external “organ” that creates the illusion of personal memory and belonging. By exploring that distance between subject and medium, she challenges mind–body dualism: memory is not solely internal, but mediated by other (external) sources.

Yet, both authors understand that the process is mostly unconscious. Media does something to us — it enters, implants, and transforms. Landsberg’s tone is both hopeful and cautious, arguing that while prosthetic memories can build empathy and awareness, they can also shape collective identity without our explicit recognition. Media’s influence, for her, is affective first and reflective only later, if at all.

Extending Consciousness

Van Eede begins where Landsberg ends,  with the realization that technology is not external but “technologies make up a part of consciousness” (154). Building on McLuhan’s idea of media as extensions of man, Van Eede redefines extension as a loop: technologies don’t just reach outward, they circle back, structuring how we perceive and behave.

Self-tracking, nudging, and algorithmic feedback are examples of this recursive relationship. The device doesn’t merely record behavior; it co-produces it. “Technologies are not neutral instruments,” Van Eede writes, “they help to reveal and conceal facts of human life” (156). Each medium highlights certain aspects of our existence while obscuring others.

Most importantly, he argues that “we perceive technologies as foreign material… and remain oblivious of the fact that they really hail ‘from us’” (157–158). Our tools feel external, but they are built from our own human desires — for efficiency, connection, knowledge. Van Eede reframes agency: technology acts with us, not on us. Awareness becomes an ethical act — recognizing our own reflection in the systems we use.

Implant and Extension

Both writers dismantle the notion of technological neutrality. Media are not inert intermediaries but active parts of the human condition. Yet their models of mediation differ.

Landsberg’s prosthesis functions through insertion: media implants experience and emotion, working from the outside in. Van Eede’s extension functions through reflection: media emerges from us and reshapes us in return. The first is affective, the second cognitive. One emphasizes empathy, the other awareness.

In this way, Landsberg’s subject is moved by media — affected, sometimes unknowingly. Van Eede’s subject participates in mediation — aware, though not entirely in control. Read together, they map a full circuit: media enters us, becomes part of us, and then returns to influence how we act and think.

This in-between space is where our current digital condition resides. We feel history through film and news cycles, while our devices quietly record and respond to those feelings. The prosthetic and the extended coexist. They are emotional absorption paired with technological reflexivity.

Learning 

For media theorists, comparing Landsberg and Van Eede reveals how mediation moves beyond representation to become constitutive of selfhood. Each challenges the fantasy of separation between human and machine.

McLuhan’s claim that media are extensions of man is deepened by both thinkers: Landsberg shows how extension enters the emotional register, while Van Eede shows how it rewires thought itself. Hayles’s posthumanism has a stake here, too, describing the human as a system already distributed across biological and technological forms. And Bollmer’s notion of technological agency is a vital part of the conclusions of both Landsberg and Van Eede; media are not neutral but co-actors in creating and influencing media.

If Landsberg gives us feeling without full consciousness, Van Eede gives us consciousness without much feeling. Together, they suggest that the ethical study of media must hold both: affect and reflection, empathy and awareness. Prosthetic memory helps us connect to others’ experiences, but Van Eede’s ideas of extensions remind us to question how that connection is structured and to what end.

In other words, Landsberg shows how technology allows us to feel through media; Van Eede shows how it allows us to think with it. One pulls us inward, the other outward, and both redefine what it means to be human in an age where memory and perception are increasingly outsourced to our devices.

The Technologies That Hail From Us

Both writers disagree with the notion that technology stands apart from us. Media no longer just represents or records our lives; they compose them. As Van Eede writes, these technologies “hail from us” — they originate from our own human impulses, even as they change what those impulses mean.

Landsberg captures the emotional weight of that realization; the capacity to feel the world through mediated experience. Van Eede captures its ethical weight; the demand to recognize that our technologies reveal and conceal who we are.

In the end, their work converges on a single idea — that mediation is not something that happens to us or through us, but as us. Our consciousness is already prosthetic, already extended. To live critically in this condition means acknowledging both how media makes us feel and how it quietly teaches us to think and behave. Only then can we begin to see the technologies that shape us as what they’ve been all along: reflections of ourselves, and always changing.

Works Cited

Bollmer, Grant David. Introduction to Media Studies: Concepts, Theories, and Methods. Routledge, 2019.

Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. University of Chicago Press, 1999.

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, Peter-Paul Verbeek, and Anthonie Meijers, Lexington Books, 2014, pp. 151–164.

Written by Allie Demetrick

Image sourced from A Clockwork Orange 1971

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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

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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