American conservatives face a strange conundrum. By and large they want to preserve a revolutionary media environment—the cultural milieu formed by television. This milieu is currently being replaced by a new digital one. But the televisual establishment is under the consolidated control of people who hate conservatism and, increasingly, conservatives themselves. These controllers, often described simply (and misleadingly) as “the media”, institutionalized the revolutionary character of the televisual medium. Conservatives now realize they must either fight for any place within the televisual milieu or, so to speak, to quit before they are fired.
The great debate I am having with myself, is that, McLuhan seems to suggest that all of this centralizing/dehuminizing is inherent in the technology. In GG he seems to say that this is in part because the visual sense is relied on solely, thus stripping from us our other senses, meaning, it at once dehumanizes us, and sends US throughout. The debate is does technology carry with it this isness of being? If so, we must revisit Heidegger.
I watched a lot of TV and movies as a kid. I read a lot of fiction. I doubt any of these have much to offer anyone. Fortunately, you can turn them off. For now anyway. I'm not surprised the Defense Dept created the internet—it's a powerful weapon. I wouldn't mind if you shut it all down.
Screens encourage us to take leave of our senses, which I consider one of the biggest problems in the world today. Too many people are lost in abstraction, convinced that the little theater in their heads is more real than the actual world. It's not all that far from solipsism to narcissism to psychosis.
Are you familiar with Monica Belevan, a philosopher of design who runs the "Covidian Aesthetics" substack? She characterizes the dawning age as "Hyperbaroque". In her YouTube lecture by that name, she asserts that the baroque "signals a shift from a regime based on rhetoric to a regime based on history." Echoes of James Poulos (and even more gnomic)!
SUPERB article !
Reminiscent of great work by Neil Postman who wrote, “Are We Amusing Ourselves To Death ?”...
...another great and timely work !!
The great debate I am having with myself, is that, McLuhan seems to suggest that all of this centralizing/dehuminizing is inherent in the technology. In GG he seems to say that this is in part because the visual sense is relied on solely, thus stripping from us our other senses, meaning, it at once dehumanizes us, and sends US throughout. The debate is does technology carry with it this isness of being? If so, we must revisit Heidegger.
I watched a lot of TV and movies as a kid. I read a lot of fiction. I doubt any of these have much to offer anyone. Fortunately, you can turn them off. For now anyway. I'm not surprised the Defense Dept created the internet—it's a powerful weapon. I wouldn't mind if you shut it all down.
Screens encourage us to take leave of our senses, which I consider one of the biggest problems in the world today. Too many people are lost in abstraction, convinced that the little theater in their heads is more real than the actual world. It's not all that far from solipsism to narcissism to psychosis.
Are you familiar with Monica Belevan, a philosopher of design who runs the "Covidian Aesthetics" substack? She characterizes the dawning age as "Hyperbaroque". In her YouTube lecture by that name, she asserts that the baroque "signals a shift from a regime based on rhetoric to a regime based on history." Echoes of James Poulos (and even more gnomic)!
Ragnarok awaits!