The first theme dived into theory of knowledge and theory of science, introducing epistemological questions and challenging us to review concepts like human knowledge, objectivity, reasoning, perception or the existence of absolute truth, even. Although my previous experiences of philosophy were limited to a few high school courses, I soon became acquainted with the relationships between different concepts and had the pleasure of personally facing the limitations of my thinking. Luckily, I think it benefitted my understanding about the rhetoric writings of great minds in the history of mankind – their minds were limited by perception, too. At its most extreme, the purposive questioning of assumptions and their well-argued accuracy on the seminars led to frustration and confusion. However, as a result of reflecting Plato's Theaetetus I adopted the classical three-phased definition of knowledge: knowledge is perception, knowledge is true judgement and knowledge is true judgement with an account. These ideas primed my mind for Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, which broadened my understanding of knowledge with its transcendentally idealistic thoughts of a priori and a posteriori types of knowledge, among other things. An intriguing view related to the nature of knowledge is also offered by a philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb and his black swan theory, explaining the effects of unexpected events that have a major impact on their surroundings but which were thought to be impossible until they happen. Afterwards they are then rationalized and explained, often not very successfully. I think Taleb's theory is another excellent example of the limited human mind and ineptitude to predict things outside perception.
On top of the fundamental challenges of defining knowledge, the theme of critical media theory brought new dimensions to the subject in terms of cultural revolution and technical reproduction. Adorno and Horkheimer (1944) discussed the intellectual movement in the 18th century, enlightenment, which helped me to put the historical change from mythical beliefs to glorifying reason into a wider perspective. What justifies the operating logic of modern western societies of today is a result of development in thinking, as we discussed how enlightenment liberated people from the power of myths. Walter Benjamin's text continued the discussion by building bridges between advancement in thinking and technical improvement, leading to a cultural revolution and the era of mechanical reproduction. This was already significantly closer to what I felt myself more familiar with in the age of continually developing media technologies. Although, my previous focus on these issues had been more on the recent decades rather than centuries.
In addition to the discussion about mechanical reproduction, I have to relate technological determinism as an interesting point of view to the same subject. As a future media professional, I think it is highly desirable to reflect the problem of technological determinism: does the technological development determine the direction of society and mankind, or should it rather be seen as an opportunity of which the mankind is still in charge? I find the power struggle human versus technology still very intriguing and it's also relevant for media technology research. As we discussed on the course, media technology doesn't exist independent of its context – the systems become somewhat visible in the interaction between human and technologies. Further on, when relating media to this equation we have another interesting concept of media determinism. Having mentioned that, I can not dismiss the Canadian culture philosopher Marshall McLuhan, whose work on the field of media theory is often considered groundbreaking. McLuhan's famous aphorism "medium is the message" points out how the development of communication media forms our thinking and ways of communicating.
By building on top of the question of "What is knowledge?", it felt refreshing to review the definition of theory and also the purpose of scientific research in that context. After studying about the characteristics of a good theory and its importance when framing a subject, it became even brighter to me how theory is also justification for empirical research and experiments. Theory in its many senses is often an honest attempt to prove causalities and make generalizations, tracing the process of combining pieces of information and aiming at providing new knowledge. As for the methodological issues in scientific research, we took a closer look to scientific methods covering both the more traditional ones as well as the approaches that I was a bit less familiar with, such as design research and case studies in the context of media technology research. I found it extremely rewarding listening the experiences of researchers from KTH, presenting their own studies and generously answering our questions. The discussion was even fruitful for both sides, I hope.
By building on top of the question of "What is knowledge?", it felt refreshing to review the definition of theory and also the purpose of scientific research in that context. After studying about the characteristics of a good theory and its importance when framing a subject, it became even brighter to me how theory is also justification for empirical research and experiments. Theory in its many senses is often an honest attempt to prove causalities and make generalizations, tracing the process of combining pieces of information and aiming at providing new knowledge. As for the methodological issues in scientific research, we took a closer look to scientific methods covering both the more traditional ones as well as the approaches that I was a bit less familiar with, such as design research and case studies in the context of media technology research. I found it extremely rewarding listening the experiences of researchers from KTH, presenting their own studies and generously answering our questions. The discussion was even fruitful for both sides, I hope.
After spending several hours in the search of objectivity and resulting in a complicated process of perceiving and filtering observations, I got used to having on what I call "healthy suspicious glasses" when analyzing issues that are presented as facts to us. I think this course succeeded in provoking useful doubts towards not only the scientific publications and papers but also the society of which the mass media has great responsibility. When entering the world of constant availability and information flow, whether as an individual or in a professional position, we are surrounded by false information, possible organizational reputation risks, click bait headlines, viral campaigns and other stimulus – all competing of our attention and forming our view without us even being aware of it. I believe the most important giveaway of this course was to feed the critical ground of our thinking as future researchers or media professionals – ability to question, criticize and analyze together with admitting our limitations and failure in the attempts of describing the world as it is.
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