internet and media

The constant connection to the matrix, as it were, to a mediated existence, has born a kind of Puritanism that comes with the knowledge that you are constantly being surveilled, documented, that you are constantly in public in some way, being perceived, even when you are in your private space. This is what “distinguishes current youth from... See more

By facilitating such introspection, literacy heightened self-consciousness, laying the foundation for individualism. And by encouraging abstract, systemic thinking — and enabling ideas to disseminate widely across space and time — writing spurred the development of universalistic worldviews, in which general rules, rights, and moral precepts apply... See more

Meanwhile, social media re-embeds discourse in “the arena where human beings struggle with one another.” Communication takes on a combative and preening tone. Ideas are tethered to personas and social contexts. People generally apprehend the factional valence of an argument — which groups endorse it and which do not — before they ever give it... See more