Uur brain is not the seat of our mind, but the medium with which we can reach the spiritual. When I heard this for the first time many years ago at a conference on media theory, I was amazed. Were they really serious? Is it crazy or brilliant? There is this wonderful old-fashioned word 'subtle'. Our body is a medium with which we can achieve this.
What our media theories generally have in common is that they are conceived in technical terms. There is a technical medium that is used to share information between different participants. Claude Shannon was the first to define media theory in this way. Now there is much discussion about what a medium is, what information is, who sends it, why and to whom, with what intention? Media are material, technical objects that can store information. Of course, information can also be read, which is the only way it makes sense to us. This is the only way media become part of society.
What actually is information?
I have been looking for a useful definition of information for years. What is it supposed to be? A structure, a process, an energy? Is it abstract, like mathematics? The number 2 doesn't exist in the real world either, just two apples, for example. Abstract theories describe reality with the help of concepts that do not exist in so-called reality. That makes me suspicious. And it makes me even more perplexed that most people are not perplexed by this. This is science and technology, and it works. Without a doubt, but how?
What if we put this technical concept of media to one side and look at moist media instead? Bodies, plants, animals, (viruses and fungi) are wet media. Their DNA stores information, just like the technical media, but we would probably say that the individual living beings cannot be reduced to their DNA. They are more than that. This stored information must first blossom, so to speak, before the wet media are activated. Only when this technical information is alive can it interact with the world and perceive it. And yes, we are currently trying to recreate this very principle with artificial intelligence and autonomous interactive systems.
Moist media
Many wet media have consciousness and therefore access to a part of reality, only they are really able to perceive reality. In contrast, technical systems process information in a simulation which, if it is good, corresponds to reality. Wet media therefore understand communication not merely as information processing, but as genuine interaction; they are part of reality. Through access to consciousness, to the subtle (?), moist mediums can recognize the cohesion of the universe. The interaction of all elements with each other can be thought of here. Moist mediums can see themselves as part of reality because they have a bridging function between the material and the subtle, between matter and spirit. They are not a simulation, they are not hyperreal. They are real.
Wet media are far ahead of technical media. Many have awareness, a sense of context, they are anticipatory, emotional, holistic, improvise, are creative and playful. Wet media train their bodies, repair themselves, are adaptive. But above all, they are communicative, collective, social. At the moment, they are still so much more complex than technical media.
The future is wet.
