«Angsten for medienes umenneskeliggjørende virkning»: Fremtidsmedier sett gjennom science fiction. - En respons til Jon Bing

Abstract

Abstract Fear of the Dehumanizing Effect of Media: Future Media Seen through Science Fiction. A Response to Jon Bing. In 1994 the Norwegian science fiction author and professor of law informatics Jon Bing wrote an essay about the media of the future. This article, written after a re-reading of Bing’s essay, reflects upon the changes that have taken place since the nineties up until today both in theoretical approaches to and popular discourse on digital media. Taking examples from recent science fiction and the current media discourse I show how the red thread Bing found in literature, «an anxiety about media’s dehumanizing effect,» is still central, and how it can be understood through an awareness of the digital dualism we can see today in the theories of the nineties.

Keywords

• Digital dualism
• Rich media
• Surveillance
• VR
• Science fiction
• Cyberpunk