Screens as human and non-human artefacts: Expanding the McLuhans’ tetrad

Abstract

Following Graham Harman in the charge that Marshall and Eric McLuhan’s laws of media are applicable beyond human-made artefacts, this article takes this framework in considering the screen as medium. The screen is a material and virtual principle found in both old and new communication technologies, as well as in non-human environments (e.g. beaver dams and solar objects). Employing Lucas Introna and Fernando Ilharco’s concept of screenness as starting point and common thread, we formulate tetrads of human-made, animal-made and natural screens. Expanding the tetrad is helpful in exploring human and non-human media ecologies and how they may interrelate. We reveal several resonances across media through the concept of the screen and argue that the proliferation of material surfaces of display occludes deeper histories of media objects as well as connections between human and non-human ecologies. This wider application strengthens the laws of media as an epistemology for the ecological workings of a medium. Our conclusion points to non-human theory in reconsidering both the tetrad and the kind of hard technological determinism read into Marshall McLuhan’s work more broadly.