REAL, DIGITAL AND (NEO)MATERIAL: Thinking Digital Dualism through Media Archaeology
It is becoming rather difficult to either completely accept the online/offline distinction, or to completely reject it. So is there any philosophical or practical use in even discussing digital dualism at all? I am not suggesting that we should lock the concept of digital dualism away in a box, together with its critique. However, the antidigital dualist argument as articulated on the Cyborgology blog is not yet able to account for why people experience a difference between the digital and the physical, and the variation in the ways in which they experience it. Part of the answer might be found in new materialist media theory and media archaeology – areas of research which specifically deal with the cultural and material history of technologies and media of communication, and focus on human and nonhuman connections and processes of interaction.
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