Home is where the brain wires: Technology, fixity and adaptation

This article reworks the concept of ‘home’ in the light of everyday technology and media use, recombining central ideas from phenomenology, media ecology and neuroscience. First, fundamental concepts in the works of Martin Heidegger and Marshall McLuhan are reinterpreted. Second, these ideas are updated by coupling them to recent research in neuroscience. Third, in a synthesizing movement, the notion of ‘home’ is reformulated starting from these reinterpretations. From this new perspective, it appears no longer to be a concept merely bound to place or space. It is a fundamental way of interacting through and with (technological) environments that resonates throughout the breadth of existence: a dynamic or dialectic between stasis and change, fixity and adaptation.