McLuhan argued that, pushed to its limits, a medium flips or reverses its characteristics.
Internet scale pushes information into disinformation, connection into loneliness, and desire into apathy.
A few more years and my mind wasn’t suited for much else. I was anorexic and had no friends; I was absolutely killing it online. I had developed all these health issues and begun posting hospital selfies, crying selfies, depressive bathtub selfies. I was sick and sad. I’m fangirling, a girl said when she recognized me on the subway. I’m spiraling,... See more
The media has propagated a new definition of what it means to be a good consumer of information. They want you to read high-velocity content from multiple information streams and be constantly plugged into what’s happening. They can sell the most advertisements this way.
In Walden , his 1854 reflection on simple living, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The cost of a thing is the amount of ... life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” In Thoreau’s terms, how much of life is exchanged for all this screen time? Arguably, most of it.