Life after New Media: Mediation as a Vital Process

Epigraph: Media, Mars, and Metamorphosis (An Excerpt)

The author Jeremy Hoyle is a former student, and at times zealous disciple, of Francis Fukuyama . His work echoes and extends the concerns Fukuyama expressed in Our Posthuman Future for the status of human nature in the era of biotechnology and for the rights of the individual in a threatened liberal democracy. Like Fukuyama, Hoyle considers himself a social philosopher, and he too is something of a populist. For his forthcoming book, Media, Mars, and Metamorphosis, he has sought out three of the most recent and controversial experiments in biotechnology in order to dramatize his concerns; each promises (or threatens) to change the meaning of human life. Hoyle’s chosen experiments incorporate bacteriology, immunology, and what—in the service of rhyme rather than reason—we might call mediology. The experiments occupy different spatial realms that Hoyle considers to be analogous: cosmic space, the interior space of the computer, and bodily space at the boundary between self and other. Each experiment—and this is what makes Hoyle’s book remarkable—has already been deemed successful, so the following inventions, discoveries, and innovations are therefore highlighted: (1) an experiment designed to test for the presence of microbial life on Mars; (2) an experiment designed to induce tolerance, and therefore eliminate the need for immunosuppressant drugs, in facial transplant surgery; (3) a user-based experiment designed to test the efficacy of, and future prospects for, intelligent media. Hoyle, like Fukuyama, is drawn to headline-grabbing events and opportunities. He wants to be a spokesman for ordinary people who are interested in the changing world around them and who have legitimate concerns about the extent to which those changes are good or bad. Although he recognizes the importance of progress in scientific and technological research, Hoyle is concerned that these experiments have gone too far and crossed the line protecting the sanctity of human identity; that, told from a personal perspective, they may not have been as successful as they initially appeared; and that the experiments have not necessarily produced anything new. The Martian microbe is essentially the same as its Earth-based counterpart; the human body always rejects invasion; and research into intelligent media Media, Mars, and Metamorphosis (An Excerpt)1 has learned the lesson from failed research into artificial intelligence and is now overtly human centered. In other words, these experiments were dangerous but ultimately selfdefeating . With the transgressive potential of science thus contained, the ubiquity of liberal humanism and democracy is assured, and Hoyle has the questionable privilege of rescuing Fukuyama’s retracted declaration of the end of history through his realization that nothing in fact changes. What is more, as he progresses through each account, Hoyle becomes increasingly skeptical about its authenticity. Where are the follow-up experiments and observations on the release of the green bacteria/microbe? Why the lack of public response? And why are there no images of the face transplant patient in the media? Finally, the whole idea of intelligent media is surely just an oxymoron. Hoyle’s narration reaches this moralist and expedient but not illogical conclusion when events in his own life—specifically, his health—take an unexpected turn. He is forced to add, in an endnote, that he has been afflicted by a terrible stomach bug, the relevant detail of which is that its issue—to the bemusement and concern of his doctors—is “If It Reads, It Bleeds” (2010). green. He is also convinced that in the course of writing this book, his face has changed almost beyond recognition. At first he tried to put it down to stress, weight gain, sudden aging (we all know that writing can take its toll). But he doesn’t look stressed, fatter, or older. He looks different. Worse still, and this has to be a delusion, a sign of sudden mental as well as physical deterioration, is that the usually inert objects that populate his home have started talking to him—the toilet, the mirror—and there seems to be no way of stopping them . . . 1. This epigraph to the book—which signposts a number of key issues that Life after New Media engages with—is a customized excerpt from Sarah Kember’s short story “Media, Mars, and Metamorphosis ” (originally published in Culture Machine 11 [2010]) and a still from Joanna Zylinska’s video project “If It Reads, It Bleeds” (2010). ...