Mario Carlón 274 This idea of mediatization as a process continues and will be more explicit over the years in his work. To verify this statement, let us see what he expresses in one of the last texts he published, Teoría da midiatiz ção: uma perspectiva semioantropologica e algumas de suas consequências (Verón, 2014), in which he summarizes propositions he had expressed in his last book (Verón, 2013). In the item “Elements of mediatization as a non-linear process,” he highlights: 1) the “radial effects” that occur every time a new technical communication device is generated, which end up affecting all the operations of social life (Verón’s example in the book is the photographic device); 2) that this radial and transversal character is systemic and feed into the discrepancies inherent in the circulation of meaning (a phenomenon that he calls the non-linear character of commu- nication), and that, 3) as a consequence of 1) and 2), there is an “acceleration of historical time” (one of the examples that Verón gives here is the printing press, which, in the following two cen- turies, changed Europe in its economic, social, political, and cul- tural dimension). Now, it is inevitable to remember at this point in our presentation that the idea of mediatization as a process appears explicitly, with the name meta-process in the work of Friedrich Krotz (2017; 2022), for whom it is comparable to individual- ism, urbanism, and globalization; and who also formulates a very interesting distinction between process and meta-process. According to Krotz, although we believe that we live in a given culture and society, “stable” states only exist during “moments” in the flow of history. That is why we can only understand our changing world and its future form if “we understand it as a product of long-term developments (Krotz, 2017). Nonetheless, we need proper concepts to do that operation, says Krotz. The concept of the process could help because it describes develop- ments. But the German author is not convinced that it is usually defined “as a temporal, linear sequence of different states, which are assumed to belong together; a process thus takes place in a well-defined dimension, has a clearly defined starting point and a direction.” This definition does not conform him to it because it is unsuitable for meta-processes such as illustration, indus- trialization, globalization, or individualization, evolutions that
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