Ambient Media Culture: What Needs to be Discussed When Defining Ambient Media from a Media Cultural Viewpoint?

Ambient media is a new form of media, which deals with media objects that mediate information throughout the natural environment of people. In ambient media environments, the media becomes part of daily life activities and environments – similar to location based services, where the physical world has a virtual digital overlay providing digital services for the consumer on a specific location. As any new media environment, also ambient media environments enable a new form and way of communication and impact on human culture. This article should provide a first starting point for discussing the wide topic of ambient media, and introduce aspects that relate to the development of an ambient media culture. The article shows different notions and discussions from a media cultural perspective, that impacts on ambient media environments. It compiles the results of the discussions that took place during the 2nd meeting of the Nordic network “The Culture of Ubiquitous Information” in Helsinki on the 19th January 2011. It shall lead to an initial discussion of this aspect and provide new ways of thinking how ubiquitous computation will impact human culture and which impact theories of Martin Heidegger or Katherine Hayles have in this context.