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Human as media: The emancipation of authorship
"Terrific book! Miroshnichenko is a media ecologist in the truest sense, analyzing the effect of technology on what it means to be human. This is an important book in a world where our apps are learning about us every time we touch a screen, and it is essential reading for anyone who has come to suspect that our civilization may have the medium and message reversed."
– Douglas Rushkoff,
the author of "Present Shock", "Program or Be Programmed", "Media Virus", and others
“Andrey Miroshnichenko, a media futurist and journalist, trained as a philologist, has written a very important book. I would go even further and say that a new star is born that students of media ecology, communications and digital media need to pay special attention to by first reading his book and then integrating his insights into their own understanding of the Internet, the World Wide Web and social media... The book is a blockbuster full of insights into the nature of communication, socialization, authorship, culture, politics and their connection to the Web... Miroshnichenko has extended McLuhan’s ideas to create totally new insights of his own."
– Robert K. Logan,
the author of "The Future of the An Old Figure in a New Ground" (coauthored with Marshall McLuhan), "The Sixth Language", "McLuhan Setting the Record Straight", and others.
DESCRIPTION
Over 6,000 years of literary civilization, there have been about 300 million authors – people capable of communicating their opinion beyond their closest circle. By 2013, thanks to the Internet, historically instantly, the number of authors has reached two billion people.
"Human as Media. The Emancipation of Authorship" examines the impact of emancipated authorship on the media, culture, and politics in closed and open societies. Miroshnichenko demonstrates that, becoming themselves media, people unavoidably engage in the evolution of media activism. For the sake of response and better socialization, the former audience gets increasingly affected by the opportunity of authorship and inevitably evolves from everyday idle talks, through lolcats, to civic discussions, and finally, to political activities.
The conflict between emancipated authorship and the old broadcast media model will stir up antagonisms between developed and developing countries, and will also intensify social and cultural conflicts within developing countries.
Andrey Miroshnichenko is a media futurist and journalist. He holds a degree in journalism and linguistics, with the dissertation focused on the semantic structures of propaganda (1996). After twenty years in print media, Miroshnichenko wrote the book "When Newspapers Die" (2010), which became a bestseller in the Russian media circles, and left the press for studying old and new media. Miroshnichenko is known for his concepts of the Viral Editor and the death of newspapers. He is a Fulbright-Kennan scholar (2012-2013) and the author of a number of books on linguistics, journalism and communications. In 2020, he published a new book – "Postjournalism and the death of newspapers. The media after manufacturing anger and polarization" (available on Amazon). The author’s human-as-media.com. @Andrey4Mir
– Douglas Rushkoff,
the author of "Present Shock", "Program or Be Programmed", "Media Virus", and others
“Andrey Miroshnichenko, a media futurist and journalist, trained as a philologist, has written a very important book. I would go even further and say that a new star is born that students of media ecology, communications and digital media need to pay special attention to by first reading his book and then integrating his insights into their own understanding of the Internet, the World Wide Web and social media... The book is a blockbuster full of insights into the nature of communication, socialization, authorship, culture, politics and their connection to the Web... Miroshnichenko has extended McLuhan’s ideas to create totally new insights of his own."
– Robert K. Logan,
the author of "The Future of the An Old Figure in a New Ground" (coauthored with Marshall McLuhan), "The Sixth Language", "McLuhan Setting the Record Straight", and others.
DESCRIPTION
Over 6,000 years of literary civilization, there have been about 300 million authors – people capable of communicating their opinion beyond their closest circle. By 2013, thanks to the Internet, historically instantly, the number of authors has reached two billion people.
"Human as Media. The Emancipation of Authorship" examines the impact of emancipated authorship on the media, culture, and politics in closed and open societies. Miroshnichenko demonstrates that, becoming themselves media, people unavoidably engage in the evolution of media activism. For the sake of response and better socialization, the former audience gets increasingly affected by the opportunity of authorship and inevitably evolves from everyday idle talks, through lolcats, to civic discussions, and finally, to political activities.
The conflict between emancipated authorship and the old broadcast media model will stir up antagonisms between developed and developing countries, and will also intensify social and cultural conflicts within developing countries.
Andrey Miroshnichenko is a media futurist and journalist. He holds a degree in journalism and linguistics, with the dissertation focused on the semantic structures of propaganda (1996). After twenty years in print media, Miroshnichenko wrote the book "When Newspapers Die" (2010), which became a bestseller in the Russian media circles, and left the press for studying old and new media. Miroshnichenko is known for his concepts of the Viral Editor and the death of newspapers. He is a Fulbright-Kennan scholar (2012-2013) and the author of a number of books on linguistics, journalism and communications. In 2020, he published a new book – "Postjournalism and the death of newspapers. The media after manufacturing anger and polarization" (available on Amazon). The author’s human-as-media.com. @Andrey4Mir
159 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 30, 2013
About the author
Andrey Miroshnichenko
1 book11 followersAndrey Miroshnichenko also publishes as Andrey Mir.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 1, 2021
Throughout all of human history, right until the 1990s and the birth of the internet, the number of authors on earth totalled about 300M. Since then it has exploded, with every human being on earth potentially becoming an author. The shift from receiving media to actively participating and even embedding ourselves into it is a monumental change on par with the invention of the written alphabets and the printing press. Social order is historically built on the control of information. As priesthoods, aristocracies and states lost this control they lost their power as well. Incredible upheavals are bound to follow today as old elites perceptibly lose their grip on information in the face of the emancipated authorship of the public. One doesn't need to read the news anymore, in the sense of top-down packaged information to get a picture of the world today. Through the internet, media has become ubiquitous and embedded in life.
First writing was emancipated by script, then reading by the press, and now authorship through the tools of online publishing. Even the publishing of this short book review is an act unprecedented in history, embedded in a broader flow of hundresd of billions of small published works that together have deep cumulative political consequences. Humanity is now something like a billion monkeys on a billion typewriters and the old elites in charge of knowledge creation and dissemination have been utterly deprived of their monopoly. For better or worse this change is not reversible. People are taking part in one gigantic hive mind that Miroshnichenko terms the "Viral Editor," contributing to an active process of knowledge creation with its own prerogatives and standards totally different from what came before. Within this hive, we send signals to build or lose credibility and build tribal connections with others. While a lot of what is produced may be nonsense, it is the process and living inside it that ultimately matters.
The prevailing forms of mass communications in the past were top-down and hierarchical in nature, and tended to implant a realtively predictable shared reality in the public minds. Television was a quintessentially homogenizing medium that shaped the social imaginary in a predictable fashion and which people passively received. It filled people's free time with social instruction and did not open a space for them to react in return to it. Newspapers were only slightly better, deigning to include a letter to the editor once in awhile. The internet on the other hand is not an active medium and makes very different use of the hours of free time generated by modern society. It solicits inputs constantly, and feeds the human desire for response and recognition. It is a giant beast that we are all feeding, and we change it as it changes us.
With the rate of technological change accelerating faster and faster, anyone alive today has already lived through multiple "eras" and is likely to live through many more. Young people in the future might live through a new era every few years, with entirely different software and hardware pressed into their hands and minds. Our cultural institutions are simply unable to do their old job of assimilating this breakneck speed of change. When things were slower, institutions, practices and norms could feel hallowed, or even familiar. Those days are gone. The only solution as I see it is embracing the strangeness and not mourning, at least too much, over the mounting pile of debris that Walter Benjamin in his time could already see accumulating.
I plan to write more about this book and Andrey Mir's other work in another essay. Needless to say he is an indispensible media theorist.
First writing was emancipated by script, then reading by the press, and now authorship through the tools of online publishing. Even the publishing of this short book review is an act unprecedented in history, embedded in a broader flow of hundresd of billions of small published works that together have deep cumulative political consequences. Humanity is now something like a billion monkeys on a billion typewriters and the old elites in charge of knowledge creation and dissemination have been utterly deprived of their monopoly. For better or worse this change is not reversible. People are taking part in one gigantic hive mind that Miroshnichenko terms the "Viral Editor," contributing to an active process of knowledge creation with its own prerogatives and standards totally different from what came before. Within this hive, we send signals to build or lose credibility and build tribal connections with others. While a lot of what is produced may be nonsense, it is the process and living inside it that ultimately matters.
The prevailing forms of mass communications in the past were top-down and hierarchical in nature, and tended to implant a realtively predictable shared reality in the public minds. Television was a quintessentially homogenizing medium that shaped the social imaginary in a predictable fashion and which people passively received. It filled people's free time with social instruction and did not open a space for them to react in return to it. Newspapers were only slightly better, deigning to include a letter to the editor once in awhile. The internet on the other hand is not an active medium and makes very different use of the hours of free time generated by modern society. It solicits inputs constantly, and feeds the human desire for response and recognition. It is a giant beast that we are all feeding, and we change it as it changes us.
With the rate of technological change accelerating faster and faster, anyone alive today has already lived through multiple "eras" and is likely to live through many more. Young people in the future might live through a new era every few years, with entirely different software and hardware pressed into their hands and minds. Our cultural institutions are simply unable to do their old job of assimilating this breakneck speed of change. When things were slower, institutions, practices and norms could feel hallowed, or even familiar. Those days are gone. The only solution as I see it is embracing the strangeness and not mourning, at least too much, over the mounting pile of debris that Walter Benjamin in his time could already see accumulating.
I plan to write more about this book and Andrey Mir's other work in another essay. Needless to say he is an indispensible media theorist.
August 24, 2021
good ideas on social. I've heard many of these before, probably because they've permeated the noosphere I swim in.
May 27, 2015
I thought this was an excellent and engaging read. I'm not particularly familiar with the pursuit of "futurism," but I thought this made a solid case regarding how things work now in the social-media era, and builds from that case to reasonable and convincing conclusions about how they'll work in the future.
There were also a few really good 'wow' moments, such as his prediction that this process could have geopolitical implications, and even usurp the nation-state as the future organizing principle of world politics. A bold claim, but again he makes a strong case for it.
There were also a few really good 'wow' moments, such as his prediction that this process could have geopolitical implications, and even usurp the nation-state as the future organizing principle of world politics. A bold claim, but again he makes a strong case for it.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews