3. Understanding the Medium Through the Technological Relation

The effects of the technological medium are explored through two lenses: a micro lens and a macro lens. The first helps to better understand technological mediation—how our specific relations with technologies transform not only the media messages, but our own selves. The second aspect helps to better understand the technological medium as an environment of complex relations. In order to understand these micro and macro effects of the technological relations, concepts from two fields of study—postphenomenology and media ecology—are used. Concepts from each field are brought together to help create a way to understand a posthuman subject, which is developed in the following chapter. While not meant to be an extensive review of either postphenomenology or media ecology, the concepts from the two fields begin a holistic investigation of the technological medium, which is not sufficiently developed in most discussions concerning media literacy.