Author Archives
Media futurologist
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Effects of writing. Thinking about thinking: logic and theorizing.
Alphabetic writing visualized not the objects or the ideas of objects but speech itself. Viewing recorded speech meant seeing the “footprints” of thinking. A chapter from Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror: Jaspers’ Axial Age and Logan’s Alphabet Effect. The… Read More ›
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Screen time is stolen time: 19 digital rules for kids and families
This is an appendix to my review of Michel Desmurget’s 2022 book Screen Damage: The Dangers of Digital Media for Children. At the end of the book, Desmurget suggests “Seven Fundamental Rules.” However, they do not actually resemble a clear list, so I have… Read More ›
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Effects of writing: arrest of the flow and completeness of the story
Primary orality had some capacities for fragmenting—oral communication was naturally constrained by time and space. The digital flow is not. An excerpt from Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror: Jaspers’ Axial Age and Logan’s Alphabet Effect. Our life is immersed in… Read More ›
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Effects of writing: Fragmentation of the flow and structuring of the world
Written words—and especially letters—halted and disassembled the natural flow of experience, reassembling it into the intelligible structure—knowledge. An excerpt from Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror: Jaspers’ Axial Age and Logan’s Alphabet Effect. …Biologically, life is immersed in the flow of… Read More ›
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On Selfie as an Affirmation of Existence
(This is a pretentious probe; don’t read it if you’re not into such stuff) Andrey Mir See also books by Andrey Mir:
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The Digital Rush
In the early 2010s, old institutions transitioned to Web 2.0 and adopted the values of early digital users—young, urban, educated, progressive. The news media, desperately hoping for digital prospects after losing traditional revenues, were the first and the most affected… Read More ›
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The birth of the Viral Inquisitor
Social media increasingly serve not to facilitate conversations but to sort out everyone’s attitude toward the most pressing issues. The wrong response to someone’s hard-fought truth is punished by reciprocal aggression and various forms of ostracism. An excerpt from the… Read More ›
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Eight theses on digital media literacy
A manifesto of cooperation with the inevitable[i] 1. Media literacy is cooperation with the inevitable 1.1. Media have evolved from implements to environments. One can operate with a stone ax – but within the Internet. People can harness an instrumental… Read More ›
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Big implications of small efforts: how the instant gratification for the click changes our sensorium
Unlike rewards in the physical world, the reward of a click is as trifling as the effort expended. The low quality incites a huge demand for quantity: sensing a hint of pleasure but never satiation, people spend more and more… Read More ›
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The Viral Inquisitor and other essays on postjournalism and media ecology
Media are the hardware of society, and culture is its software; a change in hardware makes all habitual software obsolete and disrupts the previous balances in human conditions. New book, The Viral Inquisitor and other essays on postjournalism and media… Read More ›
Human as Media 