In order to study the world you have to stop it." Hiroshi Sugimoto (photographer) Media theory describes transmission and storage as two basic media functions that are fundamentally opposed and quite different in quality. There must, however, be a way to think about how they are linked. Can transmission and storage be functionally related? Are there concepts that bridge the difference? A first proposal to address the above questions was made by Harold Innis, who defined the media as overcoming space and time. Not surprisingly, overcoming space corresponds to the notion of transmission. Innis continues by asking about the contribution the media make in forming tradition. In other words, from a technological perspective Innis explores the storage function, which he defines as Transmission along the Time Axis, thus rendering transmission the predominant factor-both transmission and storage appear to be types of transmission. However, does this prove to be a satisfactory answer to our questions? The following is an attempt to tackle the problem from a different approach.

How is the personality of an artificial intelligence crafted, and what are the issues at stake? As one of the original architects of Microsoft's digital assistant Cortana's personality, Deborah Harrison knows the process inside out. In an interview with Guest‐Editor Liam Young, she examines the questions that creating this AI raised in terms of gender, culture and ethics, and considers the future of machine interactions. Wataru Sasaki, lead developer of the software behind the AI pop star Hatsune Miku, and android engineer Kohei Ogawa also join the discussion.

No abstract

This essay explores histories of common salt, sodium chloride, using concepts and methods from media theory. It contributes to research on media and environment and the general ‘material turn’ taken across the Humanities. I conceive of salt as what Peters calls an ‘elemental’ medium so as to show, first, the imbrication of naturally-occurring substances in the operations and supply chains of digital culture. Second, the many lives salt has lived materially, in techniques of survival and exchange, and metaphorically, in cultural expression, complicate conventional understandings of media. In showing how salt performs three functions, processing, storage, and transfer, which Kittler ascribed to technical and symbolic media, I argue for a more expansive use of ‘mediation’ as a bridge concept that speaks to matters of nature and culture, Arts and Science, and to account for deep histories of extraction and economy that shape digital culture and global supply chains.

No abstract