Philosophy of the Medium

Taking the principle of the ‘disappearance of the medium’ into new territory, this book questions the pervasive influence of the principle that the ‘medium is the message’ – that the best we can hope for is a knowledge of the world that is media specific, and that it is this specificity, rather than media content, that should be made an object of study. Bold and investigative, this book argues that we have for too long focused on the technical specificities of media, when we should have been focusing on what it is that mediums do, that is, on their ‘content’ rather than their formal and technical qualities. John Lechte actively delves into the thinking of multiple philosophers in his path to this revelation, with a re-reading of McLuhan, a study of the conflicting views of technics as a medium in Bernard Stiegler’s work as well as an investigation into the extent to which Michel Serres’ work on communication sheds light on the nature of medium. Engaging also with the recently arrived concept of Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), and the notion of probabilistic objects in quantum physics and climate change, he explores the way in which measurement is perceived to ‘create’ reality. Concluding with a fascinating study of the implications of consciousness as a medium, this book ultimately reconsiders and offers a deeper understanding, in a startlingly original way, of what we mean by the term ‘media’: it is that which comes ‘between’ and which facilitates the transmission of content, essentially a creator of possibilities, yet never present as such in the light of its success as a vehicle for meaning.