Medium, the human condition and beyond

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, mediatization was understood as a condition through which a person lost his or her agency. A person mediatized was a person deprived of his sovereign power to act. This understanding is perhaps more pertinent today than ever in describing the way humans are, in a manner, mediatized by their own technological constructs. In a McLuhanesque sense, if we place too much influence on the understanding of the message, we do not understand the medium. In doing that, we become blind to the environments in and through which we must act, for better or worse. The article is a discussion on the conditions of techno-scientific development and their effects on the human condition.