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> Speaking of the effects of technology on individuals and society as a whole, Marshall McLuhan wrote that every augmentation is also an amputation. Nice to se

> Speaking of the effects of technology on individuals and society as a whole, Marshall McLuhan wrote that every augmentation is also an amputation. Nice to see this because I drafted something about LLM and humans riffing on exactly the same McLuhan argument. Here it is: A large language model (LLM) is a new medium. Just like its predecessors—hypertext, television, film, radio, newspapers, books, speech—it is of obvious importance to the initiated. Just like its predecessors, the content of this new medium is its predecessors. > “The content of writing is speech, just as the content of the written word is the content of print.” — McLuhan The LLMs have swallowed webpages, books, newspapers, and journals—some X exabytes were combined into GPT-4 over a few months of training. The results are startling. Each new medium has a period of embarrassment, like a kid that’s gotten into his mother’s closet and is wearing her finest drawers as a hat. Nascent television borrowed from film and newspapers in an initially clumsy way, struggling to digest its parents and find its own language. It took television about 50 years to hit stride and go beyond film, but it got there. Shows like The Wire, The Sopranos, and Mad Men achieved something not replaceable by the movie or the novel. It’s yet hard to say what exactly the medium of LLMs exactly is, but after five years I think it’s clear that they are not books, they are not print, or speech, but something new, something unto themselves. We must understand them. McLuhan subtitled his seminal work of media literacy “the extensions of man”, and probably the second most important idea in the book—besides the classic “medium is the message”—is that mediums are not additive to human society, but replacing, antipruritic, atrophying, prosthetic. With my Airpods in my ears I can hear the voices of those thousands of miles away, those asleep, those dead. But I do not hear the birds on my street. Only two years or so into my daily relationship with the medium of LLMs I still don’t understand what I’m dealing with, how I’m being extended, how I’m being alienated, and changed. But we’ve been here before, McLuhan and others have certainly given us the tools to work this out.

ryandv 1y ago
> Speaking of the effects of technology on individuals and society as a whole, Marshall McLuhan wrote that every augmentation is also an amputation. To clarify, what's being referenced here is probably the fourth chapter of McLuhan's Understanding Media, in which the concept of "self-amputation" is introduced in relation to the Narcissus myth. The advancement of technology, and media in particular, tends to unbalance man's phenomenological experience, prioritizing certain senses (visual, kinesthetic, etc.) over others (auditory, literary, or otherwise). In man's attempt to restore equilibrium to the senses, the over-stimulated sense is "self-amputated" or otherwise compensated for in order numb one's self to its irritations. The amputated sense or facility is then replaced with a technological prosthesis. The wheel served as counter-irritant to the protestations of the foot on long journeys, but now itself causes other forms of irritation that themselves seek their own "self-amputations" through other means and ever more advanced technologies. The myth of Narcissus, as framed by McLuhan, is also fundamentally one of irritation (this time, with one's image), that achieves sensory "closure" or equilibrium in its amputation of Narcissus' very own self-image from the body. The self-image, now externalized as technology or media, becomes a prosthetic that the body learns to adapt to and identify as an extension of the self. An extension of the self, and not the self proper. McLuhan is quick to point out that Narcissus does not regard his image in the lake as his actual self; the point of the myth is not that humans fall in love with their "selves," but rather, simulacra of themselves, representations of themselves in media and technologies external to the body. Photoshop and Instagram or Snapchat filters are continuations of humanity's quest for sensory "closure" or equilibrium and self-amputation from the irritating or undesirable parts of one's image. The increasing growth of knowledge work imposes new psychological pressures and irritants [0] that now seek their self-amputation in "AI", which will deliver us from our own cognitive inadequacies and restore mental well-being. Gradually the self is stripped away as more and more of its constituents are amputated and replaced by technological prosthetics, until there is no self left; only artifice and facsimilie and representation. Increasingly, man becomes an automaton (McLuhan uses the word, "servomechanism,") or a servant of his technology and prosthetics: That is why we must, to use them at all, serve these objects, these extensions of ourselves, as gods or minor religions. An Indian is the servo-mechanism of his canoe, as the cowboy of his horse or the executive of his clock. "You will soon have your god, and you will make it with your own hands." [1] [0] It is worth noting that in Buddhist philosophy, there is a sixth sense of "mind" that accompanies the classical Western five senses: https://encyclopediaofbuddhism.org/wiki/Six_sense_bases https://encyclopediaofbuddhism.org/wiki/Six_sense_bases [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKN9trFSACI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKN9trFSACI
jerjerjer 1y ago
> It took television about 50 years to hit stride and go beyond film, but it got there. Shows like The Wire, The Sopranos, and Mad Men achieved something not replaceable by the movie or the novel. Can you elaborate on the differences between television and film? Especially considering the examples you cite. I'd agree that live broadcasting is a considerable departure from a film as a medium. Still, the shows you reference are very cinematic - longer, sure, but for me, they are as close to a film experience as possible.

ryandv 1y ago

> Speaking of the effects of technology on individuals and society as a whole, Marshall McLuhan wrote that every augmentation is also an amputation. To clarify, what's being referenced here is probably the fourth chapter of McLuhan's Understanding Media, in which the concept of "self-amputation" is introduced in relation to the Narcissus myth. The advancement of technology, and media in particular, tends to unbalance man's phenomenological experience, prioritizing certain senses (visual, kinesthetic, etc.) over others (auditory, literary, or otherwise). In man's attempt to restore equilibrium to the senses, the over-stimulated sense is "self-amputated" or otherwise compensated for in order numb one's self to its irritations. The amputated sense or facility is then replaced with a technological prosthesis. The wheel served as counter-irritant to the protestations of the foot on long journeys, but now itself causes other forms of irritation that themselves seek their own "self-amputations" through other means and ever more advanced technologies. The myth of Narcissus, as framed by McLuhan, is also fundamentally one of irritation (this time, with one's image), that achieves sensory "closure" or equilibrium in its amputation of Narcissus' very own self-image from the body. The self-image, now externalized as technology or media, becomes a prosthetic that the body learns to adapt to and identify as an extension of the self. An extension of the self, and not the self proper. McLuhan is quick to point out that Narcissus does not regard his image in the lake as his actual self; the point of the myth is not that humans fall in love with their "selves," but rather, simulacra of themselves, representations of themselves in media and technologies external to the body. Photoshop and Instagram or Snapchat filters are continuations of humanity's quest for sensory "closure" or equilibrium and self-amputation from the irritating or undesirable parts of one's image. The increasing growth of knowledge work imposes new psychological pressures and irritants [0] that now seek their self-amputation in "AI", which will deliver us from our own cognitive inadequacies and restore mental well-being. Gradually the self is stripped away as more and more of its constituents are amputated and replaced by technological prosthetics, until there is no self left; only artifice and facsimilie and representation. Increasingly, man becomes an automaton (McLuhan uses the word, "servomechanism,") or a servant of his technology and prosthetics: That is why we must, to use them at all, serve these objects, these extensions of ourselves, as gods or minor religions. An Indian is the servo-mechanism of his canoe, as the cowboy of his horse or the executive of his clock. "You will soon have your god, and you will make it with your own hands." [1] [0] It is worth noting that in Buddhist philosophy, there is a sixth sense of "mind" that accompanies the classical Western five senses: https://encyclopediaofbuddhism.org/wiki/Six_sense_bases https://encyclopediaofbuddhism.org/wiki/Six_sense_bases [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKN9trFSACI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKN9trFSACI

jerjerjer 1y ago

> It took television about 50 years to hit stride and go beyond film, but it got there. Shows like The Wire, The Sopranos, and Mad Men achieved something not replaceable by the movie or the novel. Can you elaborate on the differences between television and film? Especially considering the examples you cite. I'd agree that live broadcasting is a considerable departure from a film as a medium. Still, the shows you reference are very cinematic - longer, sure, but for me, they are as close to a film experience as possible.