Thomas de Zengotita - Mediated: The Effects of Media on Consciousness

Are you a “mediated” person? You most likely are, but just don’t know it. The fact is, ever since the invention of writing, the clever ways in which we record and convey our thoughts have done more than just increase our ability to communicate. They have fundamentally altered the way we experience the world, ourselves, and each other. In this presentation, Harper’s contributing editor Thomas de Zengotita delivers a provocative look at media, its meaning, and its effects. Based on his latest book, Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It, he picks up where the legendary media theorist Marshall McLuhan left off (remember “the medium is the message”?). Mr. de Zengotita provides us with the information necessary to evaluate which forms of media are potentially useful and positive and which may be eroding our humanity before our very eyes. In de Zengotita’s mediated world, the problems of today’s youth, for example, may not be due to violent video games at all, but to the very nature of video games themselves. Take it one step further and you might never look at television the same way again.

BIO

Thomas de Zengotita is a contributing editor at Harper's magazine. His work has been acclaimed for turning irony—the postmodern posture of apathy and disengagement—into a powerful call for us to engage more deeply with the human dilemmas of our globalizing yet fragmented world. He teaches at The Dalton School and at the Draper Graduate Program at New York University. He holds a B.A., M.A, and Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University.

His essays include “The Romance of Empire” in Harper's, July 2003; “Common Ground” in Harper's, December 2002; a profile of Hell's Angel Sonny Barger in Shout, April 2002; “The Numbing of the American Mind” in Harper's, April 2002; “World World; or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blob” in Harper's, July 2000; “Geometry” in John Brockman (ed.), The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2,000 Years, (Simon and Schuster, 2000); “The Gunfire Dialogues” in Harper's, July 1999; “Irony, Celebrity and You” in The Nation, December 2, 1996; and “On Wittgenstein's 'Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough'” in Cultural Anthropology (April 1993).

Zengotita's most recent book is Mediated: The Hidden Effects of Media on People, Places, and Things (Bloomsbury, 2005). His fiction includes “Hannah's Birthday,” which is forthcoming in Fiction, and “The Other Side,” which appeared in Logos, Summer 2003.