The latest book by media theorist Andrey Mir raises hypotheses that are as lucid as they are unsettling about the future of literate culture and the human race itself. By Eugenio Palopoli. This is a review of The Digital Reversal… Read More ›
Media literacy
Digital orality: The flip of text into texting
Media are the hardware of society, and culture is its software. Society follows the patterns set by media. If oral speech was the medium of orality and written speech was the medium of literacy, digital speech is the medium of… Read More ›
New book: The Digital Reversal
The future of the book is the blurb, said Marshall McLuhan. As the future arrives, this book is written in tweets—1,295 of them. Structured in thread-chapters, they explore and explain what media evolution has done to us. (An excerpt from… Read More ›
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 ›
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 ›
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:
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
Our guide through the media labyrinth – foreward to Andrey Mir’s The Viral Inquisitor by Martin Gurri
The Viral Inquisitor and other essays on postjournalism and media ecology by Andrey Mir (2024) has just been published. Buy it on Amazon. Andrey Mir is the most profound observer of media, traditional and digital, writing today. No one else comes… Read More ›
Human as Media 