Food and Drink: Engaging the Logics of New Mediation.

Drawing upon the belief that the contemporary conjuncture (as it is experienced in the West) is at least in part defined in relationship to emerging new media, this essay argues that logics of new mediation should not be selectively “discovered” in proximity to the digital and digitizing objects that are traditionally called new media technologies, but that such logics are culturally pervasive. That it is to say, the implications of these logics extend to, and might fruitfully illuminate, changing interactions with non-digital technologies that do not often, if ever, qualify as new media.

The subject of this essay, food and beverage, is a particularly illustrative example. New media technologies and comestibles could not have more divergent means of being in the world—the former calling upon the abstract, rational, and calculative; the latter being thrown into the material, sensual, and experiential. Such a division, however, erodes quickly in the deluge of everyday practices. The ubiquity of food blogs, bar codes, smart appliances, and Paula Dean all belie an intrinsic separation of food and new media. If the logics of new mediation do indeed underwrite our contemporary cultural condition, one that Hayles (1999) suggests describes new ways for individuals to consider themselves subjects in the world, they have certainly done work to redefine the nature of our cognitive and affective relations, not only to digital technologies and mechanical entities, but also to the myriad products of human intervention—including the production, distribution, consumption, and formation of discourse about food and drink.