Mediatization, polarization, and intolerance (between environments, media, and circulation)

Jacques A. Wainberg 104 weigh those caused by political and religious utopias. This fact explains why the periodization of history can and should be done by marking time with inventions. Technological determinism has been unfairly vilified by those who despise machines. The reckless relationship of the human being with his creations is reported in the Jewish fable of the Golem, which later inspired Frankenstein’s narrative. From this phobia from the creator to his creation derives not only the Luddite attacks on the machines but also the vast dystopian lit- erature, which alerts the human being to the side effects and un- foreseen effects of inventions. It happens, however, that generations born in the 20th and 21st centuries have abundant evidence that innovation does indeed have an ecological impact. Society has changed with the emergence of writing, typography, newspapers, and books, te- legraphy and cable, telephone, radio, cinema, TV, and now the internet. We are what we lack, and that is what stimulates cre- ativity. We cannot foresee and anticipate the - sometimes un- expected - uses humans make of apparatuses, which overcome distance and time and offer new conditions for human entangle- ment. It happened like this in the past with papyrus and still is in the present with the Internet. The impact was subtle, though gigantic. It penetrates all the small spheres of our existence. We only become aware of its scope when new technology is lacking. Nothing better than a storm, a crash, and a blackout, for example, to understand the strategic relevance of electricity. The same can be said today about the web. It was not by chance that humans settled by the rivers. After the water- ways came the railways, the highways, the airways, and now the information highways. The moral of the story: where there is a way, there is life. 2. Now, some comments on the concept of mediatization Much has been said about this term. I intend only to con- sider that this concept elaborates on something that has been no-