The Department of Philosophy is pleased to announce that philosophy major Thomas Mathieu has been awarded an Undergraduate Researcher Stipend. He obtains $5,000 from the Undergraduate Research Initiative to conduct a research project titled "How do we recognize that the medium is the message?" under the supervision of Emine Hande Tuna this summer.
The Project Abstract: The goal of this project is to answer the question 'how do we recognize that the medium is the message?' Specifically, I will ask whether it is possible to analyze (1) the transformation information undergoes when shared on the internet in analogy to (2) the transformation the message of a musical piece undergoes in the process of transcription. I will argue that the processes are analogous and the change is registered at the level of perception. My hypothesis is that, in contrast to traditional models of perception, recently proposed models by Mohan Matthen and Jennifer Church can explain how we perceive (1) and (2) and thereby how and why the change in medium leads to a change in the perception of the same stimuli.
Congratulations, Thomas!