Editor's Introduction: Media is the Extension of Man, this is the concept proposed by McLuhan in Understanding the Medium: On the Extension of Man. He believes that any medium is nothing more than an extension or extension of human sensations and senses: words and print media are an extension of human visual ability, radio is an extension of human hearing ability, and television is a comprehensive extension of human visual, auditory and tactile abilities. Is it possible that in some contexts it is a deformed extension?
When it comes to the impact of the development of media technology, we tend to be more optimistic. Either marvel at the rapid development of digital media, or praise the convenience it brings, and look forward to the development of media technology to bring a better life to human beings.
However, in recent years, in addition to the mainstream voice, "the pain caused by technology to the body" has gradually attracted attention. Nowadays, with the widespread popularization of digital media such as mobile phones and computers, the physical pain experienced by human beings in the process of using the media has become a topic that modern people cannot ignore.
Sedentary programmers have cervical spondylosis, long-term brushing short videos makes people feel dizzy, in order to grab coupons in the live broadcast room of Internet celebrities, they have tenosynovitis, and even leave the mobile phone can not live... McLuhan once said that "the medium is the extension of the person", so in some situations, is it possible to be a deformed extension?
This issue will attempt to respond to the relationship between media use and bodily experience: What kind of painful experience does our body have when we use the medium? How does the medium shape our daily lives? In addition, what kind of reflection can this personal experience inspire on the question of the relationship between the body and technology?
<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" >, The Pain of the Medium: The Double "Torture" of Both Physical and Mental</h1>
In everyday life, we hear too many technological innovations that sell for comfort:
For example, almost all electronic screens at present have a built-in "eye protection mode" to alleviate the user's eye fatigue; in order to alleviate the pain of cervical spondylosis and tenosynovitis, all office supplies must be named "ergonomics" to flaunt the subtlety of their design...
Whenever we see these advertising campaigns, the mainstream narrative of technological development begins— and technological developments seem to be really moving infinitely toward the "human" trend, as Paul Levinson imagined.
However, this narrative tends to emphasize only the "effect" of technological development, downplaying the "cause" of its evolution. In other words, if there is no real painful experience of the human body in the process of using technology, how can there be a humanized perception of technological development?
Looking back at history, the painful experience of technology on the human body has never been a new topic.
As early as 1936, Chaplin profoundly satirized the destruction of workers' bodies and minds by the "Fordism" production model in his self-directed black-and-white film "Modern Times". The various "occupational diseases" we often say are a powerful footnote to this phenomenon, such as the "pneumoconiosis" of the teacher group, the "silicon lung" of the mine worker, the "radiation disease" that interventional physicians are susceptible to, and even some professional musicians have become "tenosynovitis musicians" because they have used musical instruments for a long time...
The side effects of vector technology on humans are similar. Looking back at history, this problem has arisen in the "computer age".
In 1981, the magazine Human Factors launched a special issue focused on the topic of "computers in the workplace." [1] At that time, "desktop computers" were gradually being used in various work scenarios in American society. As a result, within the various work sectors, the number of professional workers specializing in computer operations is also rapidly increasing.
In this issue, a study entitled "Health Complaints and Work Stress in Computer Use" was published. The study found through a questionnaire survey that specialized computer operators complained more about physical health problems than employees in other jobs in the same work environment. For example, they will feel more discomfort in their eyes, sore muscles, and more stress at work. [2]
Nowadays, the advent of mobile phones has made the above pain unabated, so that when we mention the term "low-headed people", we often think of the physical pain caused by mobile phones. Cervical spondylosis, muscle strain, dry eye syndrome, hair loss and other diseases seem to be the torture that modern people have to face. Many young people's "family groups" often receive tweets from elders about quitting "mobile phone disease".
In addition to these immediate and palpable pains, mobile phone use has also brought a more profound and hidden impact on our spiritual level. For example, we may find ourselves having trouble concentrating after using our phones for a long time.
In his book The Age of Distraction: Reading, Writing, and Politics in the High-Speed Network Economy, American communications scholar Robert Hassan argues that digital media forces people to remain "always online." This state will enable users to continue to pay attention to media information, so as to shuttle back and forth between real space and media space, presenting a state of "chronic distraction". [3]
In this state, people's daily lives will add more anxiety. It may come from the interference of mobile phone prompts on the rhythms of daily life, or it may be due to the high-speed flow of information on social media. What's even more worrying is that when we leave our phones, we will fall into extreme uneasiness - because we are used to being "always online", and "dropping the line" becomes an unacceptable thing.
<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" > second, the hand of the medium: deep intervention in human daily life</h1>
The influence of the media on our bodies is by no means limited to the level of individual perception, and the living space and rhythm of life on which our bodies live may also be shaped by the medium to a large extent.
Ask yourself the question: Do we really understand the urban spaces in which we live? To what extent does our understanding of it come from the medium?
If the variable of media is excluded from daily life, it may be shocking to find that people's daily consumption behavior is inseparable from the payment platform, the understanding of urban traffic conditions depends heavily on mobile phone maps, and the cognition of famous tourist attractions in the city is inseparable from the review App; even when we want to buy daily food and daily necessities, it is difficult to leave the takeaway and shopping platform on the mobile phone.
More importantly, the medium not only influences our perception of living space, as in the above example, but also shapes the living space itself.
For example, when we first visit a city, we often deliberately search for various "internet celebrity restaurants" on social media and filter according to their reputation. When we call them "internet celebrity restaurants", we actually pay more attention to its "red" and ignore its "internet and red" characteristics.
So much so that we often overlook: restaurants in urban spaces must first gain a good reputation on the Internet in order to provide full guarantees for offline revenue.
Many of the above facts in our daily lives seem to be taken for granted in our daily lives, but all "naturalization" is based on the ownership of media. If the medium is set aside, then the daily life of our modern people seems unimaginable.
Similarly, we can continue to ask ourselves, to what extent do the media affect the timing and rhythm of our lives?
For countless "workers", the disappearance of the time boundary between work and off work is perhaps the most real and overwhelming answer to this question. Because of the existence of mobile phones and social media, even when returning home, the "hit workers" will still live in fear under the domination of mobile phones.
Especially for journalists, financial professionals and other practitioners who need to pay attention to social and industry dynamics at any time, because their work is more and more dependent on the media, this state of "all-weather work" has even evolved into a work need.
For more ordinary people, the body's biological clock is often stirred up by the medium. In the face of the dazzling information, short videos, and live broadcasts in mobile phones, we often fall into an unconscious and endless use of mobile phones. As we often laugh at ourselves: no matter how sleepy you are, you always have to play with your phone for a while before going to bed to fall asleep.
As for the consequences, Professor Hu Yiqing once judged, "The continuation of this state does not even have much to do with the specific content of the browsing, but is just a mechanical behavior of consciousness trance, time passes unconsciously, and the individual bedtime is postponed day by day, so that it is towards the end of sleep in society as a whole." ”[4]
<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" > third, media thinking: dealing with the relationship between people and media</h1>
Whether it is the pain caused by the media to the human body or the shaping of daily life by the media, it seems to remind us that the place where human beings live is constructed by the medium, and living in it is doomed to escape the discipline of the media. But in fact, human beings can not only silently bear the torture and transformation of the body by the media and its changes, and the relationship between the media and people is not just a unilateral decision and domestication.
In the article "How Personal Computers Hurt the Human Body", author Raine Nooney takes "the painful experience brought by computers to the human body" as the core clue, and describes in detail how the painful experience of human use of computers has promoted the development and innovation of computers step by step.
For example, the author explains in the article that the improvement of multiple operating parts such as the computer's monitor, keyboard and mouse is largely to alleviate the user's pain. It can be seen that the "evolution" of computers is largely the result of the "protest" of the human body.
At the same time, the authors make it clear that his intention in adopting the above perspective is that "to consider the history of computers in terms of the painful experience of computer use is to put the importance of the body, users, and usage behavior above hardware, software, and inventors." ”[5]
In other words, writers of the history of the development of media technology often write it as a Whig history of technological innovation, ignoring the rich and vivid history of interaction between technology and people. The latter is undoubtedly very important for understanding the development of technology and reflecting on the relationship between the body and technology.
On the issue of the interaction of technology and the human body, the scholar Haravi paid attention to it in 1985 and proposed the famous "Cyborg Declaration", which defines Cyborg as a combination of inorganic machines and living organisms.
Similarly, many science fiction novels and movies are based on similar imaginations and depict vivid images of "cybertrons". For example, the flying and omnipotent "Terminator robot" in "Terminator", and the brain implanted in "Black Mirror" is a large number of sentient beings.
The image of the cyberman in these science fiction works often contains the ambivalence of the creators' mixed with sorrow and joy. Optimists fantasize that technologically empowered humans can become superhuman beings, while pessimists have a deep fear of technology dominating the human body.
But if we put aside the dramatic factors deliberately created by the creators in literary, film and television works, and look back at daily life, we will find that some people in today's era seem to have been veritable cybercrites. As mentioned earlier, urban space, food, clothing, shelter and transportation all rely on digital media to expand, so that when we leave the medium, life itself will be difficult to move.
The digital media that has developed so far has long ceased to be a lingering and extinct tool, but has become an indispensable organ in the human body and is closely related to our survival. As Professor Sun Wei said: "The subject of communication has changed from a natural person with a tool to a cyberbody whose technology is embedded in the body. ”
Therefore, media fusion cannot be understood only from the media itself, but has entered the stage of recreating the subject. [6] In this day and age, we perhaps should no longer ask "what does the medium do to our bodies", but rather how do the media merge with our bodies? What are the consequences of this convergence?
Thus, when we understand the medium with such a question in mind, we do not have to be afraid of being "imprisoned" in the cage of the medium.
The pain and torment that our bodies feel from the medium, and the disciplines we receive from the medium in our daily lives, are actually a feedback signal from the human body. It is these experiences that constantly remind us of the real situation of inhabiting the medium, and it is these experiences that have gradually become the empirical material for improving our living environment in the long history of the development of media technology.
Therefore, for those of us living in this era, it is important to promote technology for good, and it is also important to learn how to live with media technology and learn to properly handle media experience.
Author: Wang Xiaoran; Public Account: Quanmeipai (ID: quanmeipai)
Original link: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/JM4CoUTybf5UokM2R_m2BA
This article was originally published by @All Media On Everyone is a Product Manager. Reproduction without permission is prohibited
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