{"id":492,"date":"2017-02-25T16:51:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-25T16:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mediawerks.ca\/?p=492"},"modified":"2022-11-24T18:36:29","modified_gmt":"2022-11-24T18:36:29","slug":"the-fog-of-war-yuriko-furuhata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mediawerks.ca\/n\/2017\/02\/25\/the-fog-of-war-yuriko-furuhata\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fog of War: Yuriko Furuhata"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The fog of war is the uncertainty in situational awareness experienced by participants in military operations. It is a psychological condition directly contingent on the availability of information and the clarity of communication.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Filednotes:
Genealogy of the Media Environment: Fog Sculptures to Canned Air<\/strong>
Yuriko Furuhata (McGill University)
Workshop on Media Ecologies<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For media scholars, the intellectual appropriation of the word \u201cecology\u201d brings together the disparate notions of \u201cmedia\u201d and the \u201cenvironment.\u201d Japanese discourse on Media Ecology begins around the same time as the Toronto School of communication theory<\/a>, in the mid-twentieth century. In Japan, the Society of Futurology was a hub of intellectuals from diverse disciplines, who studied flows of information and the media environment, and who were greatly influenced by Tadao Umesao’s classic monograph \u201cAn Ecological View of History: Japanese Civilization in the World Context<\/a>.\u201d This was possibly the first book in Japan to appropriate the discourse of ecology to describe the media, consolidating the assumption that the media is<\/em> an environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Japan Society of Futurology offers a point at which the bourgeoning convergence between communications, science, culture and the media environment of the mid-twentieth century can be theorized. Canned air illustrates this convergence. A gag item at novelty shops, it is a sharp commentary on the commandeering of the natural environment. For the Chinese expat, canned air is a familiar (if polluted) reminder of home<\/a>; for the deskbound Beijing office worker, a fresh O2 booster from the Rockies<\/a> provides a fleeting illusion of escape from the air-conditioned cubicle farm.[1]<\/a> In an altogether different context, canned Fukushima air surfaces to reactivate interest in a nuclear disaster that disappeared all too quickly from the public eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n