L.M. Sacasas on Instant Messenger Over Instant Messenger

But there’s a subtler idea in PG’s argument—that a certain kind of thinking is only possible through writing. He doesn’t say specifically what kind of thinking that is, but I can take an educated guess: When you turn the vast, interconnected network of thoughts, feelings, and ideas in your mind into a line of words, you find sequence, order, and st... See more

When we are capable of self-awareness, it’s usually for very brief periods of time: the ‘window of consciousness’, during which we can hold a thought or work out a problem, tends to be open on average for roughly seven seconds. What neuroscientists (and it must be said, most contemporary philosophers) almost never notice, however, is that the great

... See more

Every communication medium is political, a conduit of power as much as thought. In extending the range of speech, writing widened the scope of personal and institutional influence. A written word had the potential to shape the thinking and behavior of far more people, around the globe and down the ages, than a spoken one ever could. The expansion o

... See more

The concept of communication is sustained, generated by technology, so really with the Internet we attain the highest limits of communication. But what I would ask is, ‘Who is it that communicates?’ Who is it? There is one terminal and then another. There are two terminals, two specific areas of abstraction which change the information. But also, a... See more

When I try to think about thinking, for instance retracing where an idea of mine came from, the limitations of English force me to say that "I" "produced" an "idea." But none of these things are stable entities, and this grammatical relationship among them is misleading. The "idea" isn't a finished product wi

... See more