Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Göran Bolin 68 and asks questions such as What does it look like? How does it work? How does it feel? It also works with a much longer histor- ical perspective. The following quote by John Dewey is indicative of the perspective: Society not only continues to exist by transmis- sion, by communication, but it may fairly be said to exist in transmission, in communication. (DEWEY, 1916, p. 5) As can be seen from the quote, society is regarded as one with its media of communication. And by ’the media’ is here meant all forms of communication technologies (telegraph, pho- tography, etc.). Modern proponents for this perspective include James Carey, Kjell Nowak, Ulf Hannerz, Friedrich Krotz, Andreas Hepp, and Nick Couldry. In this perspective, the media have always been inter- twined with human activity – state building, cultural formation, etc. In that sense, it makes sense to include early texts such as the 4.000-year-old Epic of Gilgamesh, from ca. 2.000 BC, the even older Altamira cave paintings, ca. 15.000 years old, and texts and technologies onwards through history. The media are not emphasised in terms of causality but as tools for binding people together, sharing, communifying, and their mark is the archive, the totality of human knowledge, institutionalised in, for example, the library. In short, it includes the sum of human expression, since human practice result in texts, things and practices, but under conditions, constraints and frameworks set by others: Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self- selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. (MARX 1852/1995) In this famous quote from Karl Marx, the conditions for human activity is described, as a series of actions taking place