Leopoldina Fortunati
Body-to-body communication has widely been accepted as the prototype for mediated communication. This paper interrogates the assumption that there is a dividing line between body-to-body and mediated communication. It shows that body-to-body communication intermingles profoundly with forms of mediated communication, to the point that it becomes very difficult to tell them apart. Starting from this framework it analyzes the great imitative capacity of mediated communication with regards body-to-body communication, and how this similarity is destined to grow in time. It concludes that because of these changes body-to-body communication is an increasingly evanescent prototype.