Hello, everyone. I'm Stephen West. This is philosophize this.

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what more is there to say? I'm not going to waste anyone's time. Today's episode is part two

on Walter Benhamine. I hope you love the show today. So something important to consider about

Walter Benhamine that maybe isn't as much of the case with a lot of other thinkers we've covered

on this show is that his work is in many ways just as relevant today as it was when he was writing it.

Philosophers obviously are always doing their work within a particular historical context.

This context often shades the questions they think are even worth asking. So when they come up with

answers to these pressing questions, as interesting as their work may be, as much practical value as

you might get out of it if you studied it, the world sometimes can pass their work by in terms of

direct relevance. The work of Walter Benhamine though is not this way. Because as we talked about

last time, one of the main things that concerned him was this relationship between technological

innovations and the sensory experience and subjectivity of people. You change the technology that

surrounds a person, you change the person. This is what we're going to be talking about partially

today. So when he's giving examples, he's going to be referencing things like film and radio and

TV, probably all three things that are on their way out in our modern world. But the way he thought

these affected the individual subject and the political subject can just as easily be applied

to different technologies, things like the internet, things like smartphones, self-driving cars,

whatever you want. When you consider the fact that new technology is introduced faster than it ever

has been before. And how much influence this technology has in mediating our entire relationship

...