4 ms·
The electric medium of the internet as an extension of the brain is a concept which Marshall McLuhan analyzed back in the 1960s. You might be interested in some
by laotzu 11y ago
The electric medium of the internet as an extension of the brain is a concept which Marshall McLuhan analyzed back in the 1960s. You might be interested in some of the things he wrote:
>My main theme is the extension of the nervous system in the electric age, and thus, the complete break with five thousand years of mechanical technology. This I state over and over again. I do not say whether it is a good or bad thing. To do so would be meaningless and arrogant.
>In the electric age, when our central nervous system is technologically extended to involve us in the whole of mankind and to incorporate the whole of mankind in us, we necessarily participate, in depth, in the consequences of our every action. It is no longer possible to adopt the aloof and dissociated role of the literate Westerner.
>Instead of tending towards a vast Alexandrian library the world has become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence.
- pdkl95 11y agoBrian O'Blivion: The battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the video arena: the Videodrome. The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television.
- laotzu 11y ago>The discarnate TV user lives in a world between fantasy and dream, and is in a typically hypnotic state, which is the ultimate form and level of participation. >The inner trip is not the sole prerogative of the LSD traveler; it’s the universal experience of TV watchers. -McLuhan
- pdkl95 11y ago> Television will achieve its apotheosis when it is interactive. > Does TV encourage, or even induce, schizophrenia? Or does it create a separate reality in conjunction with our minds, something that is neither totally our inner life nor totally TV. The networks might call that programming. - Pat Cadigan, from her forward to her short story "Patterns" > Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans "the privacies of life." The fact that technologies now allow an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worth of the protection for which the Founders fought. - Chief Justice Robers, in the majority opinion of Riley v California
- laotzu 11y agoFor an interesting historical analysis on the subconscious effects of evolving media check out the Gutenberg Galaxy by McLuhan. While your Cadigan quote suggests TV induces schizophrenia, McLuhan asks the same question in regards to literacy and the phonetic alphabet: https://books.google.com/books?id=7K7rKIWaXXIC&pg=PR59&lpg=PR59&dq=marshall+mcluhan+gutenberg+galaxy+schizophrenia&source=bl&ots=-eVrfAUG0Q&sig=LVMj3_SKJtiyoEa3k7vKZFj_oqE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAWoVChMI0pyanYnjyAIVSKQeCh3ISwwp#v=onepage&q=marshall%20mcluhan%20gutenberg%20galaxy%20schizophrenia&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=7K7rKIWaXXIC&pg=PR59&lpg=P...