The World as Medium: A Whiteheadian Media Philosophy

Abstract

Whitehead's simple idea—the world as medium— is the concern of this chapter. The idea of the world as medium gives a different, in many ways more effective way of grasping the situation that produces many dystopian media events and of the politics that this involves. Luckily, however, it is an idea that is not restricted to dystopian instances such as the worms withwhich I have begun. There are many more positive examples of the contemporary realignment of media with the world as medium. Contemporary media and world are often finding what seem to be strange continuities and overlaps. Direct, exploitable and constantly inventive continuities between media and world are now the rule, not the exception. Indeed, the overlap sometimes seems almost total. Yet I will suggest that what looks strange in such assemblages has always been the case. As Whitehead points out, the continuities are there because the entire world has always been a medium. At the same time, it is true that there are significant differences in the way that contemporary media capitalize on this. First, they possess more technical power to work within the entire world as medium. Second, they are premised on a kind of self-awareness of this media-world overlap. They increasingly diagram media/world relations in acceptance of world as medium and media as world.