by Mark Coeckelbergh.

New York: Routledge, 2017.

~ Technology as Message ~

McLuhan (1964) argued that technologies actively shape human consciousness and culture, and that the medium shapes the message, even “is” the message. (p. 24)

McLuhan, Marshall. 2001 (1964). Understanding Media. Abingdon, NY: Routledge.

~ Language as House of Being ~

We do not fully control language; it also has a life of its own and conditions us. It is what Heidegger calls “the house of being” in which human beings dwell (254). (p. 24)

Heidegger, Martin and William McNeil, eds. 1998 (1967). Pathmarks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Comment:

This is just like the Logos as the Lord. If Logos and words unite together, Logos then is the Lord of words. And we are all conditioned with words.

~ Technology Shapes our Minds ~

Like language, it is part of the transcendental conditions of speaking and thinking; it shapes our prior understanding of things. We cannot isolate technology from mind and culture, confine it to a separate sphere of the material or the natural; it spills over, and contaminates our thinking and our culture. (p. 25)

~ Language as games shapes meaning ~

Wittgenstein turns to the use of words and the way this use shapes mean￾ing. But this use is always related to a larger whole: to language and to the social-cultural context of the language user, which is always also a practical context—the context of the lifeworld. A crucial point made by Wittgenstein is that the use of words is firmly linked to everyday practice and experience, in particular to what he calls “language-games,” and a “form of life.” (p. 26)

Wittgenstein calls this a “form of life:” ‘to imag￾ine a language means to imagine a form of life’ (§19, 11e). Thus, meaning depends on language use, and this language use is an activity and a game, which is part of a larger cultural whole—a form of life. To illustrate that ‘the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life,’ Wittgenstein mentions a number of activities, such as giving orders, drawing, reporting, etc. (§24, 15e). (p. 26)

See Wittgenstein 1953, §7, 8e in Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2009 (1953). Philosophische Untersuchungen / Philosophical Investigations, Revised 4th edition. Translated by Elisabeth Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte. Malden, MA/Oxford/Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.