云卷云舒:乘槎浮海居天下——读《奇云》

As Cloud Unfolds:Being in the World Onboard a Raft:Reflections on Cloud

彼得斯的《奇云》,是关于人类媒介存有的全面考察。书中认为:媒介是一种"中间位置",该词本就含有"自然""环境"之意,但后几经转折,其涵义基本落在了符号和意义层面,由此忽视了媒介作为一种元素,与自然、人和社会有着密不可分的关联,媒介就是人类生存的环境,环境又是介入人类生存的媒介。基于这样的视野,作者赋予媒介以"杠杆"的动力,从历史到现状,由自然到科技,多方面展示媒介、自然、人类的相互缠绕和演化共生。该书的视野以及对于自然和人文的贯通,为传播学研究打开了一个新的空间。

Peters’recent book"The Marvelous Clouds:Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media"presents a comprehensive examination of human’s mediated being.In the book,Peters stated that medium is a"middle position".Originally,the word of medium refers to"nature"or"environ".Over time,its meaning evolved to focus on the symbolic and signifying aspects,thereby ignoring the fact that medium as an element possesses inseparable relations with nature,human and society.Medium,in fact,is the environment for human being.Vice versa,the environment becomes a medium that intervenes with human existence.Based on this insight,the author endows medium with the dynamics of a"lever".From history to the present,from nature to technologies,his work demonstrates from multiple perspectives the mutual entanglement and evolving symbiosis between medium,nature and human.The vision of the book,especially its fluent sailing between nature and humanities,opens up a new space for communication studies.