“Human as media. The emancipation of authorship”

“Terrific book! Miroshnichenko is a media ecologist in the truest sense, analyzing the effect of technology on what it means to be human. This is an important book in a world where our apps are learning  about us every time we touch a screen, and it is essential reading for anyone who has come to suspect that our civilization may have the medium and message reversed.”

Douglas Rushkoff
The author of Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now, Program or Be Programmed, Media Virus, and others.

“Andrey Miroshnichenko, a media futurist and journalist, trained as a philologist, has written a very important book. I would go even further and say that a new star is born that students of media ecology, communications and digital media need to pay special attention to by first reading his book and then integrating his insights into their own understanding of the Internet, the World Wide Web and social media.”

Robert K. Logan
Professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, the author of The Alphabet Effect, Understanding New Media, McLuhan Misunderstood: Setting the Record Straight, The Future of the Library: An Old Figure in a New Ground (coauthored with McLuhan) and others.

Description

Over 6,000 years of literary civilization, there have been perhaps 300 million authors: people capable of communicating their opinion beyond their own physical circles.

Now, thanks to the Internet, historically in the blink of an eye, the number of authors has reached two billion people. In Human as Media. The Emancipation of Authorship, media futurist Andrey Miroshnichenko examines the impact of emancipated authorship on the media, culture, and politics in closed and open societies. Miroshnichenko demonstrates that, becoming themselves the media, people unavoidably engage in the evolution of media activism. For the sake of response and better socialization, the former audience gets increasingly infected by authorship and inevitably moves from everyday idle talk, to funny cats, then to socially significant topics, and finally, to political activities.

The conflict between emancipated authorship and the old broadcasting media model will stir up antagonisms between developed and developing countries, and will also intensify social and cultural conflicts within developing countries.

Andrey Mir (Miroshnichenko) is known for his concept of the Viral Editor and his research in media ecology and journalism. After working in print media for twenty years, Miroshnichenko wrote his book, When Newspapers Die (2010). His most recent books are Postjournalism and the Death of Newspapers. The Media after Trump: Manufacturing Anger and Polarization (2020) and Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror (2024). He teaches and studies media at York University, Toronto.

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Reviews of the book

Independent revolutions inside the culture’s visual soul. Podcast by Dimes (starting 16:20).

Mir-roring McLuhan in the digital era. William Kuhns, a review in News Explorations.

Review by Robert K. Logan: Review, Precis and Comments Re Andrey Miroshnichenko’s book Human as Media: The Emancipation of Authorship.

Review by Robert K. Blechman: The Medium Is the Emancipation

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