2. Mediatheories: Content, Form and Software

There are different types of mediatheories which for a long time could roughly be divided into two theory-traditions: one that deals with the contents of media and one that deals with the form: Mediatheory as content-analysis or form-analysis.

Mediatheory in form of content-analysis is the most widespread form of mediatheory. It can be found as the basics for movie or literature criticism. It often has a quite cultural-pessimistic slang, which often deals with the effect of media on the youth. It is only concerned about the contents of media, its semantics and maybe its frequencies. So it often comes to quite ideological conclusions like too much TV and computergames, too much violence in TV and too many programmes have bad effects on the youth. This is quite an ideological point of view and though its widespread it shall here not be taken into account. So forget about it.

The second kind of mediatheory deals mainly with the hardware of media and its historical development. This "'serious' mediatheory sees only the hardware, everything else are semantic hallucinations (because scientists are not interested in hallucinations except of writing them down or as examples for the functioning of hardware, this theory do not need semantics. [..] This mediatheory comes along with a similar attitude as the economic marxism: It has found the source of all being and conditions, a factum as hard, hard as iron and not dismantable: the hardware." (Diedrichsen 1993: 7 -transl. S.J.).

Though this is also a quite ideological view on media it shall be the starting point of this examination of mediatheory. Today the division between hardware and content is not the only one to make anymore. With the evolution of the computer as a universal medium, everything which can be digitalised can be mediated through this medium. So instead of hardware, more and more the software is taking over as most important division, as the link between hardware and content. Therefore we need also new theories, which I would like to call software-theories or the software-view on media. So hopefully we end up at a point of view in between the two traditional strings in mediatheory a kind of"mediatheory [which] laughs to death about the doggedness with which filmtheory, linguistics, the history of art or theater-science defend their specific extensions of man and fight their competitors as cultural decadence."(Bilwet 1994: 8 -transl. S.J.)