• #82: Benjamin Labatut - The Gods of Logic: Before and After Artificial Intelligence
    Dec 13 2024

    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.

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    59 mins
  • #81: Jodi Dean - Blog Theory
    Nov 29 2024

    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.

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    56 mins
  • #80: Bolter and Grusin, pt. 2
    Nov 15 2024

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

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    53 mins
  • #79: Bolter and Grusin - Remediation pt. 1
    Nov 1 2024

    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.

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    52 mins
  • #78: Kember and Zylinska pt.2
    Oct 18 2024

    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.

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    1 hr and 3 mins
  • #77: Kember and Zylinska - Mediation and the Vitality of Media pt. 1
    Oct 4 2024

    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 Zylinska note that the contradictions in the field stem from unresolved tensions in the McLuhan/Williams debate. We discuss their attempts to overcome the binary.

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    56 mins
  • #76: Bruno Latour - "On Actor-Network Theory: A few clarifications"
    Sep 20 2024

    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.

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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • #75: Distant Early Warning: a reflection on media environments and art after McLuhan
    Sep 6 2024

    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.

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    56 mins