In Mir’s big new book, Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror, he explains how media made history and may soon end it. A review by Martin Gurri in Discourse. Contemporary humanity is a child lost in the woods, haunted by… Read More ›
Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror
Agonistic mentality of oral culture
On social media, everyone seeks affirmation from others on a scale unheard of in human history. Not only is the agonistic mentality making a comeback from the oral era, but it also threatens representative democracy (by amplifying polarization) and people’s… Read More ›
Ripple effect of writing: how literacy changed thinking and society
Writing – temple bureaucracy – bookkeeping – palace economy – irrigation, management, engineering – archiving – libraries – classification and cataloguing – codes of laws – scribe schools – semiotics and syntax – priests-scholars – abstract thinking. A chapter from Digital… Read More ›
The mystery of Greece – IV: Piracy and the alphabet
Despite all the similarities between pirates and nomads, there was an aspect that distinguished them. Seafarers had to possess universal skills that could be required for survival when nobody was around. A chapter from Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror: Jaspers’… Read More ›
The mystery of Greece – III: Pirates and the tragic spirit
The tragic spirit brought by the nomads found especially fertile soil in Greece. There, the tragic spirit was elevated from a form of frustration to a sense of heroic self-actualization and the noblest dramatic genre. A chapter from Digital Future in… Read More ›
“It’s a race between the ‘digital sensorium’ and the nuclear launch.”
A discussion about digital orality and reversal from literacy to orality on the internet – from the Worker and Parasite Podcast, January 30, 2024. In this episode, we discuss Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror: Jaspers’ Axial Age and Logan’s… Read More ›
The mystery of Greece – II: Pirates and horses
Both horses and ships gave their masters opportunistic (“tip-and-run”) superiority over sedentary cultures. A chapter from Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror: Jaspers’ Axial Age and Logan’s Alphabet Effect. (Previously in the chapter: The pirates of the Aegean and the opportunistic… Read More ›
The mystery of Greece – I: The pirates of the Aegean and the opportunistic mentality
Piracy prepared the Greek minds for the effects of the alphabet. This might explain why the alphabet effect in Greece was so instant and so transformative. A chapter from Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror: Jaspers’ Axial Age and Logan’s Alphabet… Read More ›
From orality to literacy: from collective indoctrination to personal inquiring (and now back)
The habit of inquiring, brought by literacy, corrupted oral indoctrination. This all began to reverse with electronic media. Amusement, induced by electronic media, undermined the conditions favourable for inquiry. When people are absorbed into emotional resonance with the tube, less… Read More ›
The disservices of the alphabet. Environmental withdrawal.
The social trauma of the alphabet involved the dissolution of society based on tribal unity and kinship. Now, digital orality reverses the media effects of the alphabet and retrieves some features of tribal orality. One of the disservices brought by… Read More ›
Human as Media 