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\u2013matter 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Landsberg\u2019s Prosthetic Memory<\/em> describes how media , especially cinema, implants emotion and shared experience into the self, while Van Eede\u2019s Extending Extensions<\/em> 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<\/em> us, how aware are we of that exchange?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Landsberg\u2019s concept of prosthetic memory<\/em> 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 \u2014 attaching memory, empathy, and identification to those otherwise disconnected from an experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBecause 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.\u201d (Blumer as qtd. by Landsberg, 180)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Memory, for Landsberg, is not just psychological; it is technological. The screen becomes an external \u201corgan\u201d that creates the illusion of personal memory and belonging. By exploring that distance between subject and medium, she challenges mind\u2013body dualism: memory is not solely internal, but mediated by other (external) sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet, both authors understand that the process is mostly unconscious. Media does<\/em> something to us \u2014 it enters, implants, and transforms. Landsberg\u2019s 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\u2019s influence, for her, is affective first and reflective only later, if at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Van Eede begins where Landsberg ends, with the realization that technology is not external but \u201ctechnologies make up a part of consciousness\u201d (154). Building on McLuhan\u2019s idea of media as extensions of man, Van Eede redefines extension as a loop: technologies don\u2019t just reach outward, they circle back, structuring how we perceive and behave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Self-tracking, nudging, and algorithmic feedback are examples of this recursive relationship. The device doesn\u2019t merely record behavior; it co-produces it. \u201cTechnologies are not neutral instruments,\u201d Van Eede writes, \u201cthey help to reveal and conceal facts of human life\u201d (156). Each medium highlights certain aspects of our existence while obscuring others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most importantly, he argues that \u201cwe perceive technologies as foreign material\u2026 and remain oblivious of the fact that they really hail \u2018from us\u2019\u201d (157\u2013158). Our tools feel external, but they are built from our own human desires \u2014 for efficiency, connection, knowledge. Van Eede reframes agency: technology acts with us, not on us. Awareness becomes an ethical act \u2014 recognizing our own reflection in the systems we use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Landsberg\u2019s prosthesis functions through insertion<\/em>: media implants experience and emotion, working from the outside in. Van Eede\u2019s extension functions through reflection<\/em>: media emerges from us and reshapes us in return. The first is affective, the second cognitive. One emphasizes empathy, the other awareness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this way, Landsberg\u2019s subject is moved by media \u2014 affected, sometimes unknowingly. Van Eede\u2019s subject participates in mediation \u2014 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n McLuhan\u2019s 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\u2019s posthumanism has a stake here, too, describing the human as a system already distributed across biological and technological forms. And Bollmer\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019 experiences, but Van Eede\u2019s ideas of extensions remind us to question how that connection is structured and to what end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, Landsberg shows how technology allows us to feel through<\/em> media; Van Eede shows how it allows us to think with<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both writers disagree with the notion that technology stands apart from us. Media no longer just represents or records our lives; they compose<\/em> them. As Van Eede writes, these technologies \u201chail from us\u201d \u2014 they originate from our own human impulses, even as they change what those impulses mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the end, their work converges on a single idea \u2014 that mediation is not something that happens to<\/em> us or through<\/em> us, but as<\/em> 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\u2019ve been all along: reflections of ourselves, and always changing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Bollmer, Grant David. Introduction to Media Studies: Concepts, Theories, and Methods<\/em>. Routledge, 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics<\/em>. University of Chicago Press, 1999.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Landsberg, Alison. \u201cProsthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner.\u201d Cyberspace\/Cyberbodies\/Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment<\/em>, edited by Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows, SAGE Publications, 1995, pp. 175\u2013186.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Van Den Eede, Yoni. \u201cExtending \u2018Extension\u2019: A Reappraisal of the Technology-as-Extension Idea through the Case of Self-Tracking Technologies.\u201d Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman<\/em>, edited by Pieter Vermaas, Peter-Paul Verbeek, and Anthonie Meijers, Lexington Books, 2014, pp. 151\u2013164.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Written by Allie Demetrick<\/p>\n\n\n\n Image sourced from A Clockwork Orange 1971<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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\u2013matter 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 … Continue reading Extension and Implantation: Where Media Lives in Us<\/span> Feeling Through Media<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Extending Consciousness<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Implant and Extension<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Learning <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
The Technologies That Hail From Us<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n