Media ecologists and philosophers of technology are now asking many of the same scholarly questions. Both disciplines examine the human experience through the lens of technology. The Media Ecology perspective is attentive to communicative media experiences that impact humans. Philosophy of Technology (PhilTech) is also concerned with human-technology connection and the nature of social effects. The ideas and methods both disciplines use overlap and provide reified proof that technologies make a difference in practical everyday contexts. Both sets of scholars aim to prove that technology does not lack effect. It is time to formally consider how these two disciplines converge. This reflection aims to formalize and encourage the link between Media Ecology and PhilTech. The Internet of Things (IoT) will serve as an illustrative example for this analysis. The first section introduces PhilTech and the contribution Media Ecology has made in that discipline. The second section defines and explains the IoT. The final section illustrates ways in which Media Ecology can be used as a subgenre of PhilTech.

Perception and reciprocity are key understandings in the lived experience of driving while using a cellular phone. When I talk on a cell phone while driving, I interpret the world through a variety of technologically mediated perceptions. I interpret the bumps in the road and the bug on the windshield. I perceive the information on the dashboard and the conversation with the Other on the other end of the technological “line” of the phone. This reflection uses hermeneutical phenomenology to address the things themselves in life with which we relate and interact with in our everydayness, as we talk on a cell phone while driving.

This reflection focuses on lived experience with the Technological Other (QuasiOther) while pursuing creative video and film activities. In the last decade work in the video and film industries has been transformed through digital manipulation and enhancement brought about by increasingly sophisticated computer technologies. The rules of the craft have not changed but the relationship the artist/editor experiences with these new digital tools has brought about increasingly interesting existential experiences in the creative process. How might this new way of being with technology change the craft and the crafter? Through a phenomenological understanding of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Don Ihde, and their contributions to the human-technology conversation, this essay moves to reveal the lived experiences of artists/editors who use computers to create by means of film and digital video formats. Exploring notions of lived space, lived body, lived time, and lived relation through the computer interface allows for digging deeper into inhabiting technology and experiencing the Technological Other.

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