Critical Media Studies

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss the “Sonny Bunch Hosts the Bulwark Goes to Hollywood” episode “The Future of Media is Passive” and the notion of “linear streaming.”  The ponder what it says about our distracted worlds.

In this episode Barry and Mike talk about Andrew Milne’s essay, “Tourists in our own Reality: Susan Sontag’s Photography at 50” in an attempt to update her arguments for the digital age.  They puzzle over what it means to have an authentic relationship to photographs, or to be authentic ourselves. 

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss chapter 2 of of Jonathan Crary’s “Scorched Earth.”   They focus on social media as a pharmacological problem within the Internet Complex. 

Barry and Mike discuss Jonathan Crary’s critique of the “internet complex” and what it means.

Barry and Mike discuss Siegfried Kracauer's 1926 essay "Cult of Distraction: On Berlin's Picture Palaces." Written nearly 100 years ago, the essay is strangely relevant to our current political landscape. We pay special attention to Kracauer's unique notion of distraction, which contra Stiegler, Kracauer views as a stimulus to thought.

Barry and Mike discuss Yanis Varoufakis' book, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, and the challenge it presents to Marxist theories about global capital.

In this episode Barry and Mike relate Evgeny Morozov’s 2013 New Yorker essay, “Only Disconnect” to their previous discussion of A. Romero’s meditation on boredom and distraction and the internet.   

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss “The Most Important Skill in the 21st Century,” Alberto Romero’s polemical defense of boredom in the media entertainment age. They discuss whether it’s possible to be bored today in the way that Romero seems to require.

In this episode Barry and Mike return to the earlier discussion of  Sherry Turkle’s “Alone Together” and question her conclusion regarding the human/robotic distinction in light of PKD’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Sherry Turkle’s “Alone Together” and her thesis, that though technology opens new possibilities for communication it simultaneously alienates us from each other, leaving us wanting for emotional connections.  We wonder whether Turkle is right and whether authentic relationships are possible.