The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media

Media do not merely communicate, Peters (A. Craig Baird Professor of Communication Studies, Univ. of Iowa; Speaking into the Air) contends, they are the natural elements (as a sculptor's medium is clay, stone, or metal) and technologies that make us who we are. Peters wants to stretch media studies beyond its narrow focus on communication to the elemental conditions—living on land, standing upright, using fire, domesticating animals and crops, living in cities, structuring time and distance—that together constitute the nature of human existence itself. From life as land animals (in which minds and bodies have evolved in ways insightfully contrasted with that of dolphins and whales) to virtual technologies' aura of omniscience (and its impact on conceptions of God), Peters successfully induces readers to reflect on the elementary, elemental side of what it means to be human and part of Earth's overall ecology.