Monday, September 1, 2008

"Margreiter: Humboldt Media Philosophy - The Aftermath"

In his book on media theory, Rainer Leschke is criticising the general approach of those who try to sketch a universal media ontology. To him, there is a lot of "elegant nonsense" floating around within media studies. I partially agree with him, most of the theories we discussed are indeed very "elegant" in their rhethorics ...

As for the "nonsense" part of his statement: some theories are highly speculative, that's true, and others might even be a little too close to conspiracy theory. But still, understanding them and thus understanding one way of interpreting the world these days, might help to understand some very down-to-earth concerns and problems of our present age. I think, he misses to see the respective theories in their contexts at times.

Besides, reasonable judgement and healthy criticism can be trained by engaging with them. No "nonsense" at all!

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