‘Electricity is running through my veins’ : die Symbiose zwischen Mensch und Technologie in Marshall McLuhan’s Medientheorie

Abstract

In contrast to a widespread technical-mathematical media model that reduces electronic media to transmission channels, thereby making information into a quantifiable commodity, Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan, as early as the 1960s and 1970s, revealed the complex nature of the media irrespective of the contents that it conveyed. According to McLuhan, the media is an extension of the human body that expands human agency, but nevertheless leads to the ‘amputation’ of extended body parts. In this way, the medium becomes a constituent part of the body, while thereby taking on human qualities. Following McLuhan’s media theory, this article reveals the symbiosis between technology and the human body and emphasises the significance of the artist for comprehending contemporary medial-technological reality and for overcoming the challenges that such a reality poses.