From The Guardian — Not fairly faith, not fairly self-help: welcome to the Jordan Peterson age of nonsense.
However dwelling on social media, seeing the world by means of its lens, is like returning to a pre-information age. First, as a result of all the things is present. Information of earlier discussions fade rapidly – miss a day and it’s nearly not possible to catch up. As an alternative, as with cycles of oral historical past, recollections of the previous are collective and mutable.
As historical past fades, so does reality itself. If data is about extracting sign from noise, social media is about turning up the noise. Among the many move of doubtful info, it may be onerous to find out which to cling to. In the meantime, mob mentality ramps up the chance of talking up towards the beliefs of a giant group.
It’s in such environments that that means turns into tribal. Your beliefs should not actually in regards to the exterior info, however about which group you determine with. Individuals rely much less on their very own capability for motive and extra on one another. That is the petri dish from which methods of religion have all the time tended to come up. —Martha Gill, 2024-11-24
This jogs my memory of a few of the observations of Marshall McLuhan, made about 50 years in the past, and earlier than the Internet. That is McLuhan’s tetrad, primarily based on his Legal guidelines of Media.
Each medium —
extends a human property,
obsolesces the earlier medium (& usually makes it a luxurious good),
retrieves a a lot older medium, &
reverses its properties when pushed to its limits.
The reversal — when a know-how’s properties are pushed to its limits — is a possible unintended consequence. A know-how can have a couple of. When growing a brand new know-how, or deciding whether or not to manage one in our society, it could pay to have some deep conversations about these results.
Simply because these penalties are unintended doesn’t imply they’re unknown.
Society within the electrical period
All quotes by Marshall McLuhan
McLuhan’s media tetrad: each medium:
- extends a human property,
- obsolesces the earlier medium (& usually makes it a luxurious good),
- retrieves a a lot older medium, &
- reverses its properties when pushed to its limits
Digital Networks
- EXTEND our voices within the current — “Information, way over artwork, is artifact.”
- OBSOLESCE long-form studying — “The way forward for the guide is the blurb.”
- RETRIEVE tribal loyalties — “Politics affords yesterday’s solutions to right now’s questions.”
- REVERSE right into a monoculture — “The ignorance of tips on how to use new information stockpiles exponentially.”
