| Abstract [eng] |
With the rapid growth and development of technology in recent decades, and with modern societies becoming increasingly dependent on technology, the question of the relationship between media and society is a pressing one. As solutions to this problem, two theoretical approaches have emerged today to describe the dominant force behind the transformation of society: technological determinism and (socio)cultural determinism. This paper explores the position of the technological determinist Friedrich Kittler, who proposes the theory of media materialism as an alternative to humanistic thinking. He argues that the media, through their technological specificity, shape the content of messages and thus the perception of the world. It is the theory of media materialism that is the subject of this paper, and which is the basis for the problem: how do the material and technological properties of media affect social change? Kittler's theory of media genesis is analysed to explore this question, and his approach is compared with other representatives of technological determinism. The thesis argues that Kittler's media genesis, based on the theory of media materialism, shows that media determine the content of a message by manipulating temporal and spatial factors. This is argued through three supporting arguments for the general thesis: 1) Media's technological properties, infrastructure, and autonomy make it material and determine the information it conveys; 2) Media manipulate time, enabling its reproduction, sequence modification, simultaneity, and compression; and 3) Media manipulate space, enabling spatial fragmentation, global connectivity, and spatial dissolution. |
