Critical Media Studies

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Karl Ove Knausgaard’s article, “The Reenchanted World: On Finding Mystery in the Digital Age.”  They examine Knausgaard’s proposed solution to the problem of the separation of knowledge from experience in an increasingly technological world.

In this episode Barry and Mike continue their discussion of the place of AI in art. They experiment with Suno and discuss the results. You can listen to those results at the links below.  Barry's Tomatoes Barry's Tomatoes as Rock and Roll

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Rob Horning’s Substack essay, “No One’s Version” and whether the world needs an AI generated song about Barry growing tomatoes in the style of “Sympathy for the Devil” with the horns from Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” and a guitar line to be determined (we think it does).

In this episode Barry and Mike continue their discussion of Jenny Odell’s book, “How To Do Nothing,” focusing on the importance of attention in producing critical thought. They then connect these ideas to previous discussions on the Taste Economy. 

This is the first of two episodes on Jenny Odell’s book (and talk) “How to Do Nothing:  Resisting the Attention Economy.”  Barry and Mike discuss the broad outlines of Odell’s project and attempt to connect it to Daisy Alioto’s understanding of the Taste Economy. In/Visible Talks 2018: Jenny Odell - How To Do Nothing

In this episode Barry and Mike continue their discussion on the “Taste Economy” and the evolution of the internet from 2.0 to 3.0.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUnYbLoyplo https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/11/style/dirt-newsletter-daisy-alioto.html

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Kyle Chayka’s essays and offer a primer on the new  online “Taste Economy.” How to Cultivate Taste in the Age of Algorithms The New Generation of Online Culture Curators

In this episode Barry and Mike talk about Heidegger and what comes after philosophy and how that helps us to think about the role of the contemporary university.

In this episode Barry and Mike take a different approach to Heidegger's The Question Concerning Technology. Rather than a traditional "what does all this mean" approach grounded in historical context, they look at the essay with a specific eye towards understanding what Heidegger can teach us about our current digital media culture and the essay's relevance for our interactions in the age of the i...

This episode focuses on Harold Innis’ 1947 presidential address to the Royal Society of Canada, “Minerva’s Owl” and his appendix to the address. Barry and Mike discuss how Innis charts the relationships among power, knowledge, and technologies and their relations to the durability of imperial systems.

In this episode Barry and Mike revisit Gilles Deleuze’s essay “Postscript on the Society of Control.”  They attempt to reframe the central arguments of the essay in terms of our current digital culture.    

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Alan Turing’s 1950 essay, “Computer Machinery and Intelligence” and discuss whether or not Turing’s concept of machine intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss “The Indoor Plumbing Test” by cultural critic Freddie deBoer and ponder the question:  Is AI only hype?

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Derek Thompson’s Atlantic essay, “The Anti-Social Century.”  They discuss how the evolution of media technologies over the last 50 years, culminating in the development of AI  have produced our current state of technologically enhanced solitude. The Anti-Social Century I'm In Love With Chat GPT

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Wai Chee Dimock’s PMLA editor’s column, AI in the Humanities.  After a brief summary of her argument they focus on the practicality of a humanistic approach to designing AI and its possible impacts.

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Matteo Wong’s Dec. 9th article in The Atlantic, “ The GPT Era Is Already Ending .”  They trace the algorithmic shift from Chat GPT to 01 and discuss whether this transition gets any closer to genuine intelligence.    We encourage you to listen to the previous episode on Benjamin Labatut’s “The Gods of Reason” as a primer for this one.

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Benjamin Labatut’s essay, “The Gods of Logic: Before and After Artificial Intelligence. In tracing his historical approach to the development of AI, Barry and Mike highlight the unpredictability of language as opposed to the certainty of mathematics. Link to article.

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Jodi Dean’s book, “Blog Theory.” They focus on her notion of “communicative capitalism,” treating the book as a time capsule of sorts.  They take her arguments from 2010 and suggest their relevance to our current situation in 2024. 

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss chapter one of Bolter and Grusin’s book and attempt to define their foundational term, remediation.

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin’s introduction to their 1999 Media Studies book, Remediation.   In particular, they discuss the four key concepts that Bolter and Grusin introduce: mediation, remediation, immediacy, and hypermediacy. 

In the follow up to their previous episode, Barry and Mike discuss how Kember and Zylinska use Steigler’s notion of an “originary technicity” to articulate a third position between the philosophy Raymond Williams and Marshall McLuhan. 

This is the first of two episodes on Kember and Zylinska’s essay “Mediation and the Vitality of Media” from their book, Life after New Media:  Mediation as a Vital Process (2012).  Barry and Mike discuss the problems with and reasons for the binary divisions in media theory, particularly the way in which the field understands the relations between “old” and “new” media.  Kember and...

Barry and Mike discuss Bruno Latour’s essay, “On Actor-Network Theory: A few clarifications.” They work through his key terms in an attempt to better understand the new meanings he ascribes to actors and networks and what this theory allows us to do with media theory. 

In this episode Barry and Mike continue their discussion of William Burroughs’ cut-up method.  They introduce Alex Kitnick’s arguments about the Media is the Massage from his book Distant Early Warning: Marshall McLuhan and the Transformation of the Avant-Garde in order to illuminate Burroughs’ practice. 

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss William Burroughs’ 1963 manifesto “The Cut-Up Method.”  We worry over some contradictions and tensions in his “new” method of writing.