A review of Andrey Mir’s “The Digital Reversal.” By William Kuhns. From the upcoming issue of New Explorations. Studies in Culture and Communication. At first blush it sounds like a 21st century fairy tale: how at enough clicks of the “I like” thumb-ups icon, everything… Read More ›
Paul Levinson, a student of Neil Postman and a collaborator with Marshall McLuhan, became one of the first readers and critics of The Digital Reversal. Paul is the author of a number of books on media ecology and also a prominent… Read More ›
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 ›
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 ›
A review of Paul Levinson’s “The Plot to Save Socrates” (2006). Time-travel stories are commonly used to explore questions of logic, ethics, philosophy, and social organization. Paul Levinson’s “The Plot to Save Socrates” (2006) adds media ecology to this set…. Read More ›
Historical periods have a distinctive temporal characteristic in their progression: each following historical period was shorter than the previous one. History accelerated because the change of media forced it. An excerpt from Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror: Jaspers’ Axial Age… Read More ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
Human as Media 