Mir McLuhanism – Econlib

• …Not just digital media Strengthen Realizing information exchange and offline life abolition-they too go backwards literacy and get Orality.

• …This book is about orality, which was once rendered obsolete by the written word, and literacy, which is now being rendered obsolete by digital media.

• —Andrei Mir The digital future in the rearview mirror: Jaspers’ axis era and Logan’s alphabet effect(10 pages)

The saw the premiere in 1969 Sesame street on public television. In the years that followed, adults extolled the program’s virtues. They declared that it teaches children to read. I said to myself: Sometimes I said it out loud. It’s about teaching children to watch TV. ”

During high school, avant-garde Our English teacher introduced us to Marshall McLuhan, known for his catchphrase, “The medium is the message.”my sarcasm about Sesame street This was based on McLuhan’s argument that the nature of the medium has a stronger influence than its content.

Andrei Mir calls McLuhan and his fellow travelers media ecologists. In addition to McLuhan, he names Eric Havelock, Harold Inniss, Jack Goody, Walter Ong, and Neil Postman.

Mir argues that media ecology explains many of the cultural changes we are experiencing. Many of us would say that we are struggling with these cultural shifts because Enlightenment values ​​such as free speech, objective inquiry, and personal dignity seem to be disappearing.

Mill writes,

• Why are people on social media so polarized and unable to understand logic and reason? Why do people want to read less and more? Social media is changing people’s minds and society. How do we change it? What’s next? The answer is digital oral. (p.14)

Mir considers the invention of alphabetic notation to be a useful “rearview mirror” for laying the foundations for analysis. Following Robert Logan, Mir sees the letters of the alphabet as mental wiring for concentration and abstraction. Thus, Mir argues, alphabetic writing created the conditions for a cultural change that Karl Jaspers called the “Axial Age.” The Axial Age, around 500 B.C., was a time when humanity began to see itself in relation to history and God Almighty. Our concepts of science, argumentation, empirical observation, and logic all emerged during the Axial Age.

Consider the change that occurred when humans went from having only face-to-face oral communication to having the ability to read and write. Writing gives us a powerful social memory and reduces the need to rely on personal memory. Illiterate humans live in a multisensory present. For those who can read and write, a more introverted way of life is possible. When we read, we ignore the world in order to focus on visual input. We can move away from the present and live in the past or future. Instead of relying on instantaneous reactions, stop, reflect and think about what you read. We relate to descriptions of people and events that are outside of our personal experience.

Reading requires abstract thinking. This is especially true for alphabetical notation. The meaning of the symbols on the page is not self-evident. We have to interpret and calculate meaning.

When only oral communication is available, collective memory must be a form of commonly accepted wisdom. We highly value those who can faithfully recreate sacred stories. Writing gives you space to think. We can value those who ask questions and criticize.

Writing allowed for the codification of law and ultimately led to an impersonal concept of justice. Printing, which came after Gutenberg, enabled the widespread reproduction of ideas and the scientific method of testing the reproducibility of results.

How will the spread of electronic media, especially in the 21st century, affect our brains and society?

Mir says new media emphasizes quick reaction rather than remorse. They are addictive distractions that take us away from meditative reading.

With the advent of cable news,

• Television stopped being news-centric and began to become viewer-centric. This movement reversed the emotional control evoked by print, brought back a spirituality of suffering both on the air and in the audience, and began a process of cultural and political polarization (15 years later). (has increased rapidly with the advancement of social media). (p.244)

Mir argues that modern media is behind the rise of identity politics.

• Digital oral recreates an environment where collective edification is encouraged while personal questioning is suppressed. (p.217)

• The truth is a referendum based on what you like. (p.228)

• It becomes increasingly difficult to withstand tribal “peer pressure” when the objective truth does not match the tribal truth. (p.235)

So where are we now? Mill’s statement is

• …Blog posts were the last text of the Gutenberg era. (p.317)

This leads me to wonder who the audience for Substack essays, which are reminiscent of blog posts, is. I’m concerned that this readership is biased towards people over 50.

• Digital voice has characteristics of both oral and written communication. Similar to a verbal conversation, responses can be exchanged instantly. Just like writing, you can leave a record and communicate it across time and space. These features suggest that people’s spontaneous and primarily emotional efforts to establish their social status in conversation are no longer temporary. The interactions of millions of people are accumulated, disseminated, and displayed for everyone else to react to.

• This new type of conversation has its benefits. This enables socialization at an unprecedented pace and scale. However, the ease of digital voice exchange has shifted the focus of communication from introspection to reflexivity, from content to attitude. Social media requires everyone to engage with others, their ideas, their concerns and accomplishments, and their very existence. The blogosphere’s viral editor has evolved into the social media’s viral inquisitor.

• (On the Internet) authors do not share physical space and type their responses in isolation. Moreover, such conversations often involve more than one of her interlocutors, making the exchange chaotic. Thematic-expressive dependence of oral responses on preceding utterances is often broken down, and written syntax is no longer the case. All this makes digital conversations a strange hybrid, where interlocutors often simply don’t “hear” each other. Their dialogue is inconsistent. It is fragmented and causes emotional frustration. This is common in digital conversations.

• Additionally, since digital audio is recorded, it is possible to exchange voices rather than just exchanges. It is an exchange displayed to others who can judge and contribute. Therefore, it is an exchange aimed at influencing others. The painful psychology of oral is also prevalent in digital oral, further amplifying frustration and polarization.
  (p.318-319)

Mir goes on to say that “like” buttons, emojis, and other forms of digital communication are even more primitive than voice. They are more like groans or gestures. he writes,

• …Digital oral trains your brain to repeatedly experience small hormonal gratifications with even the slightest participatory effort or just being present. (p.319)

And where are we heading? In just a short section, Mir suggests that we humans are close to leaving the real world and living entirely in a virtual world.

I found this prediction, and indeed the entire book, to be interesting but speculative. It seems plausible, as media ecologists argue, that human brains and culture were influenced by literacy in general, and alphabetic literacy in particular. And the apparent decline in support for the Enlightenment can be attributed to changes in digital media.

However, media ecologists have not conducted rigorous empirical tests of their hypotheses. They do not seek natural experiments that might demonstrate that the causal mechanisms they propose are at work.

Many observers have noted and lamented the departure from objectivity in academia and journalism. Some attribute this to an ideological takeover by postmodernists and the left, a so-called Gramscian march through the system. Others believe that women are partly responsible for the feminization of the system, saying they bring social tools to enforce conformity onto campuses and newsrooms.

Even theorists like Jonathan Haidt, who see social media as the root of all evil, point to specific strategies and tactics employed by major companies as the problem. Just as Sesame Street fans held out hope that television could be reformed for social good, Hite said better norms and guidelines could limit the harms of social media. He seems to be looking forward to it. Followers of McLuhan will be skeptical.