Philosophy of New Media

Against the common philosophical stance on perception and consciousness as structures transcending history, media theory has shown that technology not only reshapes human life in general but it specially recasts perception and consciousness. It is not a matter of the content but of the structure of consciousness, such structure is reshaped by technologies. Leaning on a transcendental philosophical formulation, reality is relative to consciousness itself is relative to technology, relative to the big technological structures constituting our technological environment. So, the dominant technological forms determine the way we conceive reality, human life and mind. Purely oral communication and images as dominant technologies determined the human mind as magic mythical thinking. The alphabetical technology made the raise of modern science viable. Today we are faced with multimedia dominated by technological images of photography, cinema, TV, video, and digital image processing, what makes necessary to carefully address the modes of sensibility, of thinking and behaving fostered by new media.

Alberto J. L. Carrillo Canan