When media and technologies withdraw, they can seem to vanish into thin air. They become ambient, part of the atmosphere. Ethereal. A kind of technology-induced effortless presence of services and appliances becomes part of everyday life, offering pleasures and conveniences. Oftentimes it is all ignored, just like the elements we live in and with. What are the prerequisites for the technologically influenced ambiences of Mundania, and how do these ambiences merge with the practices of everyday life?

Ambient media

In 1996 Bill Gates, founder and at that time chief executive officer (CEO) of Microsoft, wrote an essay on the Microsoft website. He argued that ‘Content is King’, which basically meant that the stuff that was produced and conveyed through internet would make a huge difference. Texts and images, websites, even software. This was before social media like Facebook, or Twitter. Before Google. Before the algorithmically engineered feeds of video clips of TikTok, or the flow of images and videos of Instagram. Before the flood of AI-generated stuff, meandering tech-induced conversations, and the bleed of digital inceptions into ever more dimensions of everyday life. In the decades that followed an enormous amount of content emerged through computation and connectivity. Chats, posts, tweets, snaps and ads. Sounds and video. Images and texts. Informal outbursts and calculated campaigns. Informed tuitions and emotive rants. Automated content production. Affective and informational excess.

Over thirty years before Bill Gates’ essay about the weight of content, Marshall McLuhan wrote instead that ‘the medium is the message’ (1964/1994). This means that the particular qualities of different media are embedded and in symbiosis with any message (or content). For McLuhan: ‘the “content” of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind’ (McLuhan 1964/1994: 18). Since McLuhan, much research has shown that content is hard to separate from media, technologies and social circumstances, but to approach the in-betweenness of media and technologies as part of Mundania, McLuhan's thoughts can be helpful.