As was the case with McLuhan, academia struggles to appreciate media ecology. Traditional communication departments divide the field between the administrative approach and cultural criticism. The administrative approach (rooted in the Chicago and Columbia schools) focuses on human skills and… Read More ›
Has anyone else writing today about the Internet and the new media it’s spawned, come off sounding as much like McLuhan on steroids? A triple review of Andrey Mir’s: (Excerpts from William Kuhns’ review in: New Explorations: Studies in Culture… Read More ›
Is the rise of digital media causing the fall of literacy? A review of Andrey Mir’s Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror: Jaspers’ Axial Age and Logan’s Alphabet Effect in City Journal, excerpts. Despite the hopes and fears invested in… Read More ›
Primary orality – Craft Literacy – Phantom Literacy – Semi-literacy – General Literacy – Residual Orality – Secondary Orality (Electronic Orality) – Emancipated Authorship – Digital Orality – Digital Sensorium. An excerpt from Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror: Jaspers’ Axial… Read More ›
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 ›
We expect that new media will do new tricks to cover our old needs. We always think they will improve something we already have. Sometimes they do, but on their own terms. Eventually, media always condition us to do completely… Read More ›
The miniscule but instant hormonal reward for a mere click rewires the brain and reshapes society. We’re not just spending time on the Internet. We are investing time in its improvement.
A review of Lance Strate’s “Media Ecology: An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition”.
There are no phenomena that we experience without mediation of our tools, interfaces, and technologies. So, what else, if not media, do we need to learn first and foremost about everything to get that everything right?
When used by a person, a fence is an instrument to protect and defend, a further extension of the skin, beyond clothes and huts. However, when used by a culture, a fence is an environmental force that transforms a nomadic… Read More ›
People still act in virtual reality in a mostly natural way, as “physical beings”, which is obviously predefined by their (our) previous experience. Moreover, the content of the virtual reality is still the physical reality. This reflects McLuhanian ideas of… Read More ›
Human as Media 