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(writing, image, speech and music) and elements from older media types (books,
photos, records etc.).
Some (single, double or multi) media are independent in that they may in prin-
ciple function by themselves in the normal act of consumption. Others are
dependent in that their use requires the simultaneous use of another medium. The
VCR is an obvious example of the latter, since its normal use presupposes a link-up
to a television set – at the very least a monitor. It is a matter of convention among
producers, retailers and consumers if such combinations are considered as a cooper-
ation of two media (one of them dependent on the other) or as a case of one double
(or multi) medium. For example, we normally think of the VCR as a separate
medium to television, whereas we would probably regard antennas or digital decoders
as accessories to TV sets rather than as separate media of their own.
Media machines are often included in what are sometimes called capital goods or
durables since they command larger sums of money and are intended for long-term
rather than momentary use. They function as tools for producing and consuming
software texts, and have as means of production and/or consumption a particularly
central role in media use, since access to such machines makes possible the produc-
tion and reception of a wide range of texts. Media machines have thus become an
important power resource for human interaction and thereby also for control over
communication processes.
It is media hardware rather than software that may be seen as extensions of the
human body, in the way first developed by Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s. This has
been further developed by theorists of human prosthetic uses of technologies, where
machines supplement the finite body, extending its control over the environment
even as it is increasingly dependent on technical aids. It is machines rather than texts
that function as tools that expand human capabilities, creating the cyborg – the
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‘cybernetic organism’ fusing human and machine. In the direction of perception,
machines interact with our senses, while in the direction of production they reinforce
and widen the expressive power of our voices and bodies to make traces in the mate-
rial world. With a radio we can register signals otherwise unnoticeable by our bodies;
with a camera we can produce and save images for the future; with telephones and
PCs we live our daily lives in close symbiosis with communication technologies that
collaborate with our eyes and ears, voice and hands. Machines multiply our capaci-
ties to check vast archives of symbolic forms, create complex texts and communicate
instantly with others across the globe. This extension of the self is particularly effec-
tive with micro technologies that can be attached to the mobile human body.

HARDWARE LOCATIONS
Communicating through media of inscription and transmission compresses time
and space, letting people access meanings across distances by reading texts, watching
pictures and hearing voices that have been stored for ages or disseminated from the
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other side of the globe. Still, all actual media use is located in time and space.
Media are always used by someone somewhere, and at some specific time. There is

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