Universale Vermittlung

The book Universale Vermittlung (Universal Mediation) examines the specific social relationships that have entered the history of digital media and are perpetuated by it. What does it mean when social relationships are mediated by digital devices? Against the backdrop of the history of print media and cinema, media history is presented as a history of social mediation, as a history of social relationships determined by media. As in all previous leading media, this dynamic of social relations oscillates between the universalization of content (in terms of reach and distribution) and particularization (in terms of economic control by media monopolies, appropriation by dominant economic interest groups, etc.). In the theoretical context of the Frankfurt School`s critical theory, the social relationships that take shape in digital media cannot be conceived of without the primary economic relationships. The basic thesis of the book is that market-based relationships (competitive relationships based on individual profit optimization and thus having isolating, disintegrating implications) continue in digital media. In this respect, universal mediation means the generalization of a structure of social relations that materializes in the media. Mediality realizes itself as particular, strategic communication, but also creates a form of universal mediation and thus the telos of universal, understanding-oriented communication. At the same time, as recent years have shown, such tendencies toward competitive isolation have politically authoritarian effects. According to a second thesis of the book, which continues the basic theses of the Frankfurt School`s critical theory, the effective formation of collectives takes place within the matrix of antagonistic and atomizing socialization. In this respect, it is particularly susceptible to authoritarian tendencies and to an affective overcompensation of primary isolation. At the same time, according to the book`s third core thesis, the dynamics of cybernetic control and algorithmic steering also give rise to a historical potential that already plays a central role in the critical theory of the Frankfurt School: with the possibility of exact algorithmic anticipation of needs, forms of distribution become conceivable that are no longer primarily organized via the market. As was emphasized in the historical debate on the possibility of a planned economy (between Hayek and Neurath, among others), the possibility of planning requires sufficiently complex calculation methods that were not apparent in the 1920s and 1930s. With today`s algorithmic platform capitalism, global control systems are emerging that could be up to this task, provided they are released from the logic of exploitation. In this sense, the structures of universal mediation are also media of a global distribution structure that points to post-capitalist perspectives.