Life After New Media

<b>An argument for a shift in understanding new media--from a fascination with devices to an examination of the complex processes of mediation.</b><p>In<i> Life after New Media</i> Sarah Kember and Joanna Zylinska make a case for a significant shift in our understanding of new media. They argue that we should move beyond our fascination with objects--computers smart phones iPods Kindles--to an examination of the interlocking technical social and biological processes of mediation. Doing so they say reveals that life itself can be understood as mediated--subject to the same processes of reproduction transformation flattening and patenting undergone by other media forms. </p><p>By Kember and Zylinska's account the dispersal of media and technology into our biological and social lives intensifies our entanglement with nonhuman entities. Mediation--all-encompassing and indivisible--becomes for them a key trope for understanding our being in the technological world. Drawing on the work of Bergson and Derrida while displaying a rigorous playfulness toward philosophy Kember and Zylinska examine the multiple flows of mediation. Importantly they also consider the ethical necessity of making a cut to any media processes in order to contain them. Considering topics that range from media-enacted cosmic events to the intelligent home they propose a new way of doing media studies that is simultaneously critical and creative and that performs an encounter between theory and practice. </p>