Saved by sari and
I Didn’t Want It to Be True, but the Medium Really Is the Message
Attention is contagious. What forms of it, as individuals and as a society, do we want to cultivate? What kinds of mediums would that cultivation require?
Ezra Klein • I Didn’t Want It to Be True, but the Medium Really Is the Message
As Sean Illing, a co-author of “The Paradox of Democracy,” told me, “McLuhan says: Don’t just look at what’s being expressed; look at the ways it’s being expressed. And then Postman says: Don’t just look at the way things are being expressed; look at how the way things are expressed determines what’s actually expressible.” In other words, the mediu... See more
Ezra Klein • I Didn’t Want It to Be True, but the Medium Really Is the Message
This is anything but an argument against technology, were such a thing even coherent. It’s an argument for taking technology as seriously as it deserves to be taken, for recognizing, as McLuhan’s friend and colleague John M. Culkin put it, “we shape our tools, and thereafter, they shape us.”
Ezra Klein • I Didn’t Want It to Be True, but the Medium Really Is the Message
I think Odell frames both the question and the stakes correctly. Attention is contagious. What forms of it, as individuals and as a society, do we want to cultivate? What kinds of mediums would that cultivation require?
Ezra Klein • I Didn’t Want It to Be True, but the Medium Really Is the Message
Or take Twitter. As a medium, Twitter nudges its users toward ideas that can survive without context, that can travel legibly in under 280 characters. It encourages a constant awareness of what everyone else is discussing. It makes the measure of conversational success not just how others react and respond but how much response there is. It, too, i... See more
Ezra Klein • I Didn’t Want It to Be True, but the Medium Really Is the Message
Don’t just look at what’s being expressed. Look at the ways it’s being expressed. And then Postman says: Don’t just look at the way things are being expressed, look at how the way things are expressed determines what’s actually expressible.” In other words: The medium blocks certain messages.
Ezra Klein • I Didn’t Want It to Be True, but the Medium Really Is the Message
McLuhan’s view is that mediums matter more than content; it’s the common rules that govern all creation and consumption across a medium that change people and society. Oral culture teaches us to think one way, written culture another. Television turned everything into entertainment and social media taught us to think with the crowd.