Abstract
Marshall McLuhan (2011: 154) once argued that the electronic age ‘is not mechanical but organic’. It is perhaps only in the digital age, however, that we are finally coming to realize the truth of this statement. No longer are we able to speak of a clear distinction between natural and technical objects: in fact, it has become increasingly obvious that our understanding of the former presupposes the latter. Media are not exterior to our life; rather, they constitute its very essence. It is this premise – that ‘media have become infinitely intertwined with every single way of being, seeing, moving and acting – without replacing the world of lived experience’ (p3) – upon which Mark Deuze builds his conception of a ‘media life’, the focus of this present text. He contends that we should not speak of ourselves as living with media, but rather, must come to understand that we live in media.
Deuze does not see this as implying the destruction of truth, or the inaccessibility of the real, but instead, takes the process of mediation as being a primary constituent element in their production. Echoing Friedrich Kittler’s (1997: 133) contention that humanity ‘is determined by technical standards’, Deuze seeks to identify the ‘objects, organisms, technologies and the hardware and software of media’ (pp37–38) that underpin human ‘culture, community’ and identity’, and in doing so, to develop an ontology that allows us to orient ourselves within the dizzying complexity of a media life. This is an important and relevant argument, one that Deuze (2011: 139) has previously described as both reflecting and signaling an ‘ontological turn’ for media studies. Mediation can no longer simply be understood in epistemological terms, he argues, because it preconditions the very possibility of knowledge: we cannot attain, nor communicate, knowledge of media without already utilizing media. It is this inescapable feedback loop that constitutes the ontological conditions of media life.
If we do not take care to examine this relation between ourselves and media, he argues, we risk ‘losing ourselves in our technology’ (p68), because the increasing ubiquity of media is concomitant with an increasing invisibility of these same forms. Media technologies have a tendency to disappear from view – the desire to make their interfaces as seamless and transparent as possible results in a readiness-to-hand that masks their determinate role in our lives. Rather than allowing ourselves to become subsumed within an ecology of media seemingly determined to eradicate the human as a discrete element, Deuze encourages us to acknowledge the role of media in our lives, and to use the possibilities of these forms to craft new ways of living, and, hopefully, to make the human visible again. The solution, in other words, is not to reject technology, nor to passively accept its determination, but to carve out a niche within the ‘intrinsically interwoven character of human-machine relationships’ (p91).
It is interesting to note that, in a sense, Deuze’s writing seems to imitate, whether consciously or not, the vertiginous flux of the mediated society that he describes. The book is a dense, almost hyperactive collection of interconnected theoretical observations, case studies, textual/filmic analyses and anecdotes, and, as such, is a remarkably comprehensive overview of a field of research that is still in its relative infancy. His writing is dense, but also refreshing clear and lucid: the author presumes relatively little pre-existing knowledge on the part of the reader, and even fairly complex ideas are explained concisely with little recourse to jargon, making it a potentially valuable resource for students interested in new spheres of media research and practice. At the same time, however, I cannot help but wonder whether Deuze’s argument may have been further sharpened through either the development of a narrower, more refined theoretical/methodological approach, or through the use of fewer, more detailed empirical case studies. As it stands, figures who would seem to be essential to such an argument, and would perhaps benefit from more sustained discussion – Kittler, to pick just one – have a tendency to be lost within the sheer density of theoretical and cultural examples mobilized by the author.
In the end, what this means is that Media Life offers a myriad of possibilities – potential paths for new research in the ontology of media – rather than advancing one particular approach. The value of this should not be understated, particularly when again observing that the text reflects a still emerging approach to media theory. At the same time, however, a greater level of methodological specificity, as we see for example in Jussi Parikka’s What is Media Archaeology? (2012), by the same publisher, would perhaps have made it a more useful resource for those interested in pursuing further research in such areas. Whilst Deuze’s contention itself is abundantly clear, and is advanced effectively throughout, what it lacks is a clear theoretical structure through which it can be applied. This should not necessarily be seen as a fault, but it is a limitation. Having said that, however, the book is quite impressive in both its scope and ambition, and I would easily recommend it as an introductory text for those, particularly students, seeking to escape the linear production/reception dichotomy of much media studies material.