can only be upheld in an instrumental model of communication. In ritual
views, however, there is no separation; the medium isthe context.
But the mediation view is very entrenched. It is even built in to
nomenclatures of communication like ‘computer-mediated-communication’.
The problem with the mediation view is that it replicates, in the field
of communication studies, what is endemic to common-sense views of
technology-in-general – an instrumental perspective. It does not see com-
munication technology as substantively capable of its own context and
the dependence that individuals might have on this context.
The difference between instrumental and substantive views of
technology is well explored by Feenberg (1991). In Feenberg’s account,
the instrumental perspective ‘treats technology as subservient to values
established in other social spheres (e.g. politics and culture)’, while sub-
stantive theory ‘attributes an autonomous cultural force to technology
that overrides all traditional or competing values’ (5). Substantive theory
sees technology as embedded in circuits of interaction, and ‘argues that
technology constitutes a new type of cultural system that restructures the
entire world as an object of control’ (5). The more technology comes to
mediate the kinds of engagement and interaction individuals have with
the world, the more it takes on the character of an environment rather
than a tool. Moreover, technology has the power to encourage individu-
als to view environments in particular ways that are shaped by the means
they have of relating to them.
Raymond Williams’ distinction between technical invention and
technology-as-socially-configured is valuable here (Williams, 1974). He
suggests that in fact even in the first media age ‘technology’ cannot be
empiricized (i.e. technology-as-object) but, in a more Heideggerian way,
is always-already located as a medium (e.g. broadcasting).
This blind spot of second media age thinkers for not seeing tech-
nology in this wider sense allows them, in my view, to conflate their own
critique of first media age theory with their projection of first media age
‘technologies’ as fundamentally tool-like. For this reason, so much is
invested in the term ’cyberspace’, whereas, if Williams’ distinction is
adopted (with the addition of a list of qualifiers about the nature of inter-
action in broadcast technology), first media age technology might also be
considered a kind of cyberspace, serving to level further the distinction
between first and second media age.Medium theory and individuality
Like transmission accounts, medium theory typically looks at how the
position of the communicants and the information communicated is deter-
mined by different media. But it also suggests something quite radical and
different from transmission accounts – the possibility that individuality140 COMMUNICATION THEORYHolmes-05.qxd 2/15/2005 1:00 PM Page 140