Mediation and the Communication Matrix

The media alters one’s experience of the world and, in turn, alters one’s relationship to others. This is true of both the book and the screen, but with profoundly different consequences. The omnipresent screen of the early twenty-first century serves as a portal that reconfigures private and public experience in ways that are fundamentally different from print culture. Not only does the screen reveal the complexities of people and places beyond our reach, it alters our phenomenological awareness of space, sound, and motion. The individual experiences the altered duration of the screen, and the larger community displays the consequences of that altered duration. This book discusses how the screen in its myriad forms has contributed to an emerging view of the self in American culture that is unique to our time.