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 ›
Media
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
The list of forbidden books on media ecology
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 ›
William Kuhns: Mir-roring McLuhan in the digital era
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 ›
Geoff Shullenberger: The Death of Gutenberg (City Journal)
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 ›
Media platforms of mind
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 shrinking of media eras: the Singularity countdown
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 ›
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 