Domestic Tendencies

Sitting at home in the living room. Across from me on the other couch my roommates are watching goofy youtube videos. If this isn't an example of "the media being the message" I don't know what is. Youtube has changed the way we spend leisure time together. Showing one another the newest goofy videos we've seen. It's like posting it on Facebook but instead we can show each other instantly, in this carnal dimension. Like we've brought Facebook offline, into this plane of reality. It makes me wonder if this has happened with other forms of media. When a medium's affordances are brought back into our life separate from the medium. Like with the telephone. It could be that certain habits acquired from the use of telephones made their way into regular speech. We innovate and develop our technology. We attempt to incorporate, to "domesticate," new media in our daily lives. We accomplish this process of domestication. We've reconciled the disparity between before and after. But we can't stop there. We can't merely incorporate the new medium and it's affordances into our lives. Because of the adoption, incorporation, or domestication of the new medium we continue to replace our old habits acquired through the use of old media with new habits developed through the use of the new medium. Because of similar affordances in the new and old media we domesticate the new medium by making it (and the actions associated with it) the norm. I believe a good example of what I'm getting at is email. Because email has become the norm, that is to say it's become domesticated, we now compose letter's like we would compose emails. The content of the letter may be the same as it would pre-email, but the essence of the letter is forever lost. Instead of a letter we have a printed email. The essence is all email, the medium is still paper, it's still an email, it's not a letter. This train of thought begs the question. Now that Facebook has become the norm, are our offline relationships fated to function solely under the new habits formed by the domestication of the new medium?

Media Ecology

He walked in and asked what I was looking at. The eyes fixated on the computer screen barely managed to rotate his direction. Like the inside of my eyelids were made of sandpaper. It was late and the lights were dim. But that's not why I felt lethargic. Then; "Media Ecology" I murmured. The words were like sand. A gritty stream pouring out of my mouth without me really having to speak them. "That doesn't make sense. Ecology is about plants." Without a word of rebuttal Wikipedia's page on Media Ecology was pulled up and read aloud. It was talked about. Makes sense. We have felt the increasing presence of media for the last 10 years. Seeping ever deeper into each facet of our lives. Technology isn't particularly liked around here. It's used by all of us. A lot. Every Day. Then complaints are made to one another in passing about how the internet sucks out our souls from our bodies through our eyes. The loss of so much. Or so we say. And it's on Facebook. But you don't post about losing your souls to the internet. You post about losing your souls online, but you claim the loss takes place in life offline. Outside of the internet there is life. Inside the internet there is an abyss of information that mimics life. I say 'in' because to me the internet is like a deep cave. Your browser less like a window and more like a flashlight illuminating only a tiny portion of the vast cavern surrounding you. If you could see it all you would recognize how entrenched you are. How inescapable. How inevitable. Google is the entrance. After that it goes ever deeper. You can't see the sky! At the bottom isn't a Nyaan Cat meme. But a keystroke. Curser blinking steadily in the dark. Each keystroke etches a letter in a tombstone. At the bottom of this infinite cavern of information reads this on the tombstone: ep·i·taph noun \ˈe-pə-ˌtaf\ 1: an inscription on or at a tomb or a grave in memory of the one buried there. I am there. As are you. As we all will be. Where we will remain. The womb where a new world order is developing with each new soul laid there. With a link to "ad it to my places" on facebook.

Hello!Hello.Hello?