What are the premises of the major questions in media theory? Arguing for better questions this contribution notes the persistence of eurocentricism, ­mediacentricism and technological determinism and the dominance of the ­experience of what Jared Diamond calls the WEIRD (Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democracies) nations in framing the terms of debate and study. Anthropology in works such as Larkin (2008) may help defamiliarise the ­presumptions of western media theory and more clearly address the question of ‘Where is the global “Greenwich Mean Time” of Media Theory?’ Arguing for the need to place the technological present in historical perspective (cf Edgerton, 2008) this contribution makes the case for the primacy of historical and spatial contexts over the immediate moment of technological invention – on which so much attention is customarily focussed. To focus on media technologies and ‘inventions’ without considerations of their context runs the risks of embracing such dangerous simplifications as the idea that their socio-cultural effects can be deduced from their presumed technological ‘essences’ – whereas any given technology may very well come to have quite different significance in varying cultural contexts.

中文翻译：

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媒体理论的全局（和时间）在哪里？

媒体理论中主要问题的前提是什么？关于更好的问题，该论文指出了欧洲中心主义，媒体中心主义和技术决定论的持续存在，以及贾里德·戴蒙德（Jared Diamond）称之为WEIRD（西方工业化富裕民主国家）国家在界定辩论和研究条件方面的经验占主导地位。Larkin（2008）等人类学作品可能有助于消除西方媒体理论的假设，并更明确地解决“媒体理论的全球“格林威治标准时间”在哪里？”的问题。认为有必要从历史角度考虑技术的存在（参见Edgerton，（2008年），这一贡献证明了在技术发明的当下，历史和空间语境占据主导地位，而通常人们将注意力集中在这一点上。如果只关注媒体技术和“发明”而不考虑其背景，则会冒着冒险的危险，如认为可以从其假定的技术“本质”中推断出它们的社会文化影响，而任何给定的技术都可能很好地实现这一想法。在不同的文化背景中具有完全不同的意义。