Читать книгу Love and Communication - Paddy Scannell - Страница 10

I do not mean to give technology a bad name, by thinking of it as original sin. In the academic field of media studies though, it was a bad thing, and went by the name of “technological determinism” (or sin by another name). Back in the day, the dominant ideology in our field was determined by cultural studies. For academics in that area, it was human beings who made history, not machines. But that was then, a different moment of historical time. In the post-TV era of today, it increasingly seems apparent that machines (particularly Turing machines) do make history, and the academic field of communication and media studies has silently adjusted to this. It is no longer possible today to think of either or both simply in human terms. Media and communication scholars must think not only of human><human interaction (or talk), but of human><machine, and machine><machine interactions as well. I personally cannot help but think of media and communication in human terms, but I am a creature of the previous century. This book could only have been conceived now, and is about today’s world, not the century into which I was born, not God’s world.