Blessed are the unmediated, for they will feel alive

Media, mediation... it keeps me busy.

The other day I realised how much I enjoy living in the city center of Utrecht. I love the fact that I can go practically everywhere by foot. It's so relaxing to 'walk down the lane with a happy refrain', it makes me feel so alive and so in touch with my surroundings. Cycling, catching a bus and driving... they all, in different degrees, require me to pay attention, to traffic, to the very object that is carrying me.

Back to media. McLuhan has this thesis called the 'extension thesis', also described as 'extending the sensorium'. He sees media as extensions of peoples' fysical properties. E.g. the camera as an extension of the eye, a telephone as an extension of the ear, but also a hammer as extension of the human hand and a wheel as an extension of the foot. This leads us to conclude that our lifes are incredibly mediated. Just think of producing (machines as opposed to craftmanship, how much I envy people who work with their hands), gardening (my mom loves gardening; the best thing she finds is just sticking her bare hands into fertile soil), not to mention communicating, I will probably write some more on that later. Back to my simple example of walking:
Walking can be considered 'unmediated' transport. There's no medium involved, there's but the raw awareness of one step after another, my fysical and mental self completely capable to cope with the speed at which I move, observe and process observations. And I can't quite put it in words, but I love it. It makes me feel so on top of things, so authentic, so meant to be, so free, so... human. Even more so, shoes can be considered media... and again I observe my own experience (and those of other people) walking on bare foot: It's heaven, it's what we really want. Just listen to Thomas Dybdahl (great Norwegian singer-song writer): 'I need dirt and twigs that break beneath my feet.' And the dutch band Blof: 'en de grond kust zacht mijn voeten, zij is met mij elke stap' and 'op blote voeten loop ik langzaam door'.

The more I think about it, the more I long for a largely unmediated existence, for unmediated transport, communication, production. At the very least I want to be conscious of this and use those media that allow me to remain close to my fysical existence. Or am I just being romantic here?