Media Life book review

Mark Deuze’ Media Life: We are Media Mark Deuze’s Media Life paints a bleak picture of our current media drenched existence, and puts modern society under a microscope to reveal how we now live, breathe, and are media in every aspect of our daily activities. Deuze brings to together the leading thinkers, and discourse in philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, architecture, design, media studies, digital art theory, human-computer interaction (HCI), and electronic engineering to debate the status of our immersion in media and technology. Deuze uses entertainment media (TV, DVD, films, music, video games, etc.), information media (news, educational books, Internet, etc.), social media (Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc.), communication and technological devices (mobile phones, computers, sensing devices, etc.) – interchangeably, all are ‘media’. He observes that we swim in media, to be without media is like taking a fish out of water: media is so integral to daily life that we cannot function without even the most basic of media. Starting in chapter 1, Media Life, is an analysis of city living, urban space, and how modern architecture has become a mediascape, increasingly developed to fully integrate network communications, social media, media entertainment, and technology into our personal, social and urban landscape. Deuze paraphrases Lev Manovich who states that in media life is a life …of constant communication and conversation…hackable and remixable…always dynamic, unpredictable and permanently under construction… (3 paraphrasing Manovich, 2009:319). Deuze declares that the world has become so complex, with its pervasive and massively mediated reality (5) that we need additional media to manage the complexity of our mediated lives. The immediacy of media disorients us from our physical world and spatial reality, disconnecting us from our bodies’ senses, which normally interprets and demystify our environment. He quotes Manuel Castells, who states that timeless time and temporal immediacy create … a flat horizon, with no beginning, no end, no sequence… (6, quoting Castells, 2010/1996: 491-9), which collapses and expands the past, present and future into an always real-time reality, indicating that the hyper-textual non-linear experience of surfing the web is now how we experience our lives. Deuze illustrates how we create, consume and share media, so enveloped in media on every level, at every moment, living it in the form media itself, such as: the Internet, mobile phones, computers, Sat Navs, TV’s, DVD’s, streaming media, Facebook, etc. Renowned Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan saw, in the 1960’s, that the impact of media was much deeper than originally anticipated. McLuhan saw that beyond the content …media amplify, accelerate, supercharge, enlarge, zoom in (or out), redact, and bring life into focus… (24). We now experience everything in real-time, but real-time has been separated from its ‘here and now’ situatedness of ‘this space’ and ‘this time’ says Deuze. In the media city, the experience is always …instantaneity, connectedness, (spaceless) space and (timeless) time…(8) as more people are living in cities than in rural environments with more each year (Tate Modern’s 2007 Global Cities exhibition revealed this). People today are more mobile, constantly unfixed in time or space, everywhere, everyday, and always themselves under construction. There is no longer a sense of concrete presence, people have become …oblivious to the world around them as they roam around the virtual… (14). Architects now work with interaction designers to design the most media integrated experience of the city, structures and urban life. The city has become an information machine, completely fused with the living machine of urban environment. As an extension of the city, the boundary between our bodies, media, and devices is ever blurring, we are willingly becoming cyborgs, our technologies are increasingly melting into our skin and organs. And that’s just chapter one! In chapter 2, Media Today as Social Control, Deuze evaluates social and community institutions, with media becoming a manifestation of Emile Durkheim’s ‘collective consciousness’, but acting also as a form of social control and discipline, so that …a sense of community in a post-industrial world is primarily established through our social imagination, fuelled by and expressed symbolically in media (36) Here Deuze suggests that social relations and relationships have been replaced with, mitigated by, and remixed with media … as infrastructure that run underneath, through and in the background of social structure… (40 paraphrasing Lievrouw and Livingstone, 2004) to be …put on the same level as emotion and the human body: running in the background, increasingly invisible and generally taken for granted. (41) He follows with Paul Virilio’s misgivings on our immersion in a reality totally governed by information and communication, with a complete instantaneity and immediacy that partly led to the New York 9/11 disaster because…Faced with the globalization of telecommunications and … unlimited information, people are disempowered from informing themselves and thus unable to question the status quo or take meaningful action against it.”(51, quoting Virilio, 2006[1998) Here the work of Brian Massumi, Mark Hansen and Sherry Turkle adds which that we are becoming avatars of our media counterparts, with our embodied humanness becoming less preferable to experience and interact with than the mediatised versions of ourselves. Deuze states that the naturalness of modern interfaces, and invisibility of media provide more seamless experiences of mediated life (63). Thus, we generally don’t want to know who’s behind the media curtain of Oz, or inside the computer, our devices etc. Yet Douglas Rushkoff declares that …in order to take charge of their technologies…people have a choice to either program or be programmed. (63, paraphrasing Rushkoff, 2010). Chapter 3 covers the proliferation of people recording their lives, both actively and through corporate influence. Deuze states that we have become increasingly narcissistic and individuated through social media and digital cameras, absorbed by recording themselves, so that we are not actually having meaningful relationships, but are stuck in our individual media bubbles. Wide-spread mobile media use has led individuals to prefer …to communicate (and commune) with others without having physical interaction…[thus] body-to-body communication becomes an increasingly evanescent prototype for the quality of human interaction. (74) Deuze demonstrates that we have become disconnected yet exposed through our excessive self-documentation, endangering ourselves and leading to unhappy consequences, so that …sometimes we need to be protected from ourselves… (89). He argues that life in media comes with a permanent pliability when recording, storing and sharing our lives, allowing for revisioning and remixing during the process of self-monitoring and self-branding in our self-to-others interaction (93). This disconnection …starts when people construct and…reconstruct their identities and…further complicated by the ability of others to participate in these collections…(93). Chapter 4, No Life Outside Media exposes the abundance of surveillance mechanisms now in our world, from the panopticon of CCTV, to the social surveillance of online networking sites. Deuze notes that …The omnipresent and pervasive nature of media raises the specter of a globally emerging surveillance society, in which … the ‘creation, collection and processing of personal data is nearly a ubiquitous phenomenon.’(102, quoting Felix Stalder, online) He observes that social control is exerted by the dead eyes of ever-present cameras, and even the possibility of being watched exerts control over our everyday actions, causing us to ‘act’ for the camera whenever or if we think we are being watched. We give our consent to be monitored every moment of our lives, whenever we step out into public spaces, Deuze warns (103). Thus, amount of data governments have access to, from DNA and identity documents, to many other documents, is staggering (118). Corporations’ marketing armies …aggregate past behaviors in order to predict future ones… (113) and by living our lives completely in media …we provide value-generating labor for the business and corporations that collect, record, mine or sell data about us… (113). Further, concern has shifted to the newly evolving ‘Internet of Things’, making this monitoring, collecting and surveillance culture even more efficient and effective, eventually taking a dominant role. Deuze then focuses on how individuals are increasingly participating in ‘surveilling’ their friends through social media. This practice is changing our relationships with each other and our communities, and is another form of social control: Through synoptic surveillance, communities of anonymous strangers not only can form long-lasting and well-functioning relationships, they also participate in the forming and policing of moral norms. (125) So …everyone is both subject and object of surveillance…the overwhelming majority choose to actively participate in surveillance…[and] Mass mutual monitoring... (128) Much of chapter 5 turns to the curious and prevalent recent metaphor of a society teaming with Zombies, reflected in numerous modern films, to suggest the grip media and technology have on us. Modern mediated social practices have become as addictive and contagious as a Zombie’s bite. Key indicators of this infestation, which Deuze claims exemplify this behaviour, are the recent spate of social uprisings around the world: … protests and riots …tend to be based on social movements without leaders, lacking clear hierarchical structures and generally having no clear goals… …they involve people from all walks of life…negating distinct classifications… …the social arrangement of these protests rely heavily on the use of media…they seems infectious and viral… (137) The solution probes is that only those who break free from the brain-eating shambolic ‘bodies’ of modern technologies will evolve and prevent them from taking over. Echoed by numerous thinkers cited, ‘zombification’ is indeed taking place as people become their media, becoming disempowered by it without leadership or goals. Nolan, suggests that …when we live in media, one way or another, we become less aware of our surroundings, less tuned in to our senses, and thus more like lifeless automatons. (138) This disconnects us from our fellow humans and in Zombie fashion our behaviours start to appear like a ‘hive mind’; Deuze suggests (145). This is reminiscent of the concepts from the film The Matrix (1999), whereby people’s minds are imprisoned within computerised network and they are unaware that their bodies’ are being harvested for heat and electrochemical energy, yet a few hackers have broken out, to free humanity. We are protective of our media reality however, so much so that around the world people feel they cannot live without the Internet or mobile phones, believing that media access is a human right (147), or like the air we breathe (151). More positive views of the influence of social media and online communities see them as …bridging existing social divides, or … bonding people with already-similar beliefs. (153) While the previous norm was of geographically-based relationships, now…the boundaries of what constitutes spatial tend to be relational, temporal, and symbolic, rather than existing on a grid of absolute space.(153) Thus, new forms of social relations and structures have developed, which are peer-based, built on networked media (157), with those involved in …a distinctly sceptical, globally interconnected yet deeply personal type of self-determined civic engagement. (158) Finally, Deuze posits a solution to empower media zombified individuals: to become hackers, to find …ways of making sense differently from what is expected or predicted. (165) And …through the making, appropriating… [develop a way] to care for and about others… (166) and save ourselves. Chapter six, Together Alone, named after Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together, Together Alone discusses how media life is one spent increasingly isolated from, yet always connected and together, with others in virtual social space. Examples include, such as silent discos and subtlemobs, where people go to specific locations and environments to interact separately but be together (173). Turkle states …we use media to defend against or even defeat loneliness …without constant connectivity people cannot be meaningfully alone with themselves any more. (174, paraphrasing Turkle, 2011:13, 3, and 288) Similarly, through modern media and contemporary life, people now often prefer mediated interaction to face-to-face, in order to avoid complicated interactions (171). Deuze says we are so self-obsessed with self-actualisation that we do not notice that it too is a form of social control – imprisoned as mere consumers and citizens, stripped of identities of our own (180). He claims the public sphere has become dominated by money and power, with social institutions losing their legitimacy and influence on upon us (180). The ‘self as project’ – exercised by the media – is causing people to focus on perfecting themselves, ever in the process of ‘betterment’, anesthetised of reality and the ills of the world, ceasing to care for others (180-181). Everyone is literally only out for themselves, even to their own detriment (182). In media life today, Deuze proposes that the virtual world is extending and inserting itself into the real world of everyday lived experiences, rather than merely existing on our computers, devices and TVs – evident through live, online, pervasive and location-based games, and mixed reality role-playing (183). Virtual reality becomes indistinguishable from reality – three dimensional, full, multisensory environments, sometimes with smell, taste and touch. (189) It raises questions about the nature of reality, our self-identity and experiences of others (190) – our media lives are no longer independent of our actual, physical lives (191). Deuze then demonstrates that we live with the expectation that we can edit, redact, over share, and constantly remix our identities and lives (192-3). However, a constructive perspective from Paul Taylor is that …media…add certain qualities to our individual and shared experience of life, and in the process dissolve any meaningful, distinction between reality (noumena) and representation (phenomena)… (184) Taylor adds that …hackers and hactivists…[are] embracing a more fluid and imaginative engagement with media, in that hackers take media apart, re-engineer and repurpose them. (184) Again, if we become hackers we may become free from media’s contraol over us. Chapter 7 explores modern sexuality and mediated sex. Here Deuze is concerned with how, in an increasingly globalised world and the nomadic nature of modern life and work, our sexual behaviour has changed radically, especially with the vast amount of Internet porn and options for media-based sex …teletactility: human touch mediated through a telepresence machine...[is] hiding anonymity and self-determination under the cloak of intimacy and connectivity…[with] the promise of having sex through and with machines – turning the body into not so much more than a ‘sex machine’…(207). He sees the nature of the ‘man and machine’ relationship shifting, as body–technology fusion has increasingly become reality (210), particularly with emerging technologies in medicine, fashion, entertainment and porn. There is an increasing reliance on online dating for sex, intimacy, partnering and marriage, with matching algorithms, not more effective in predicting love, but should seen as an indication …of people trying to take more control over their (love/dating) in lives in the digital age (213). This, he says, is due to the fact that people can communicate on a deeper level and make more profoundly intimate bonds… when messy bodies are absent…(213), since intimacy is created through our minds. The dichotomy of living in the digital age he says is, we have too much sex (online and off). Yet, in many cases we no longer crave sex, since we are so absorbed in media (215). Technology is evolving much faster and beyond human beings, so Deuze posits that eventually technology will surpass us and take over. He asks then … what kind of world will that be? (217) and … it is indeed up to us to recognize and retain a principle of messiness (and I would add magic) over the illusion of control that all too often is associated with technologies (217). He states that individuals and our education systems MUST keep up by developing and maintaining technological skills required to function, and maintain a high quality of life, controlling their media life (219). Henry Jenkins’ essential strategies for media survival are: To keep youth safe, authentic and ethically keep track of themselves online and in media; Literacy and engagement in media involves active creative production and critical consumption of media – maintaining a sophisticated media education; We all need to acquire “… ‘a set of cultural competencies and social skills … in the new media landscape’” according to Jenkins …that involve “social skills developed through collaboration and networking” (220-221, quoting Jenkins, 2006:4), using the distinct social and productive elements of media literacy through a co-creative, participatory lens. The final chapter has a deeper focus on the nature of reality in media, echoed in chapter 6. Deuze starts by suggesting how to create a balance between a sense of one’s ‘true self’ and the many versions of ourselves in media, as people are better at revealing their true selves in media than face-to-face (230-240). Learning to represent oneself, ‘rebrand’ one’s identity, and self-reinvention on ‘reality’ TV have become standard fare, thus becoming what others want us to be is the norm (242). Deuze fears we have reduced our world and our experience of it, within and through media (243) Through the narcissism of social media, a circular self is created: a media version, the new self, and over again in a loop, ultimately creating a hyperconformist orientation toward the world. This is also a form of social control – manifesting as the continual confirmation of identity through others in public media. This echoes Erving Goffman’s late 1950’s thesis in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), that we each play various roles in our everyday lives. Yet Deuze thinks this is partly because we are constantly trying to find out who we are, in media it is now harder to find an unmediated, authentic, ‘real’ version of self, as various media present different versions or forms of reality. Schnell believes we are hungry for and are on a ‘quest’ for reality, yet Deuze posits… it is only through media that we can come back to who we really are and what reality really is. (252) I interpret this as: we need media to help us understand the difference between reality and media. Next is a discussion of the film The Truman Show, where Deuze proposes that in media we are all inside of our own Truman Show. This predicament is now categorised as an illness by psychiatrists Joel and Ian Gold, with a few of their patients exhibiting symptoms, including a lack of ability to know where the boundaries of the physical world and virtual world are exist. Called Truman Show Delusion (TSD), people with this illness believe everything around them is fake or staged for them. Thus, the question posed is: are we all experiencing a synthetic existence or TSD, and if so, are we all subject to its manipulation? (258-9, citing Ray Funkhouser and Eugene Shaw1990). To conclude, there are recurring and overlapping themes in Media Life, each in a slightly different context, such as the deepening disconnect between people in terms of physical, face-to-face interactions. The solution posed in to become free from media enslavement and take control of media production ourselves. In summary, the key issues presented by Mark Deuze include: The city is transforming into one encompassing media console; We are more interested in recording every moment of our lives, than physically living them; We are surveilled by government, corporations and each other – to the extent that we can no longer interact or conduct relationships in an unmediated form; We can no longer live, work or manage our lives without daily media; We are so distracted by media that we do not, or cannot experience the natural world, use our senses or bodies to understand the physical world around us; We have all become Zombies, controlled by media, and by extension corporations, becoming merely media data, and consumers with a hive mind; We tend to prefer to be alone in public with our mediated connections, prefer mediated relationships to face-to-face relationships, and no longer enjoy or want the ‘messiness’ of sex, preferring non-stop mediated virtual sex to fleshy sex. Overall, Media Life has a dismal diagnosis, yet Deuze attempts to tie it all up with a strange sense of hopefulness. The intended lesson we are to come out intended to empower us is: if we move beyond consumerism, to create, produce and/or hack media, we may survive and evolve from media Zombification, before (or just in time for) media takes over. I doubt Deuze’s message will be heard by the masses, but have noticed new undercurrents taking place around me. These include: 1) an increasing call to return to the body, our senses, our environment and the natural world – embodiment, both within technology and outside of it; 2) corporations are at the forefront of challenging governments to better educate children, to use more advanced technology, and to teach programming skills at an earlier age; and 3) the increasing DIY/Maker movement around the world has individuals and groups educating themselves and each other, to create, produce, collaborate on, and hack technology. Thus, the push for people to get more involved in hacking to take control of media is already underway. Perhaps in another 5-10 years these dark foreboding pronouncements (recurring whenever new technologies emerge, causing cultural shifts), will be seen as paranoid calls to action for individuals to take back control over the changes and the media, or merely making fearful observations of the cultural shift underway. References Deuze, M. (2012) Media Life, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, New York, New York: originally Anchor Books, now Vintage Books part of Random House Publishing. Tate Modern (2007) Global Cities exhibition, Tate Modern Museum Curators: Ricky Burdett & Sheena Wagstaff. Available online at http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/global-cities (Accessed April 21, 2013) Wachowsky, A., and Wachowsky L. (1999) The Matrix, Studios: Village Roadshow Pictures, Silver Pictures, and Groucho II Film Partnership, USA/Australia: Warner Bros. Pictures.