Communication
in Evolution: Social and Technological Transformation
[...]
AB: We have left the “global village”, we surf the Web of Webs
but the technical abilities of the average citizen are not
much greater than those of a Neanderthal. Beneath the veneer
of culture, what sort of human being is this digital culture
creating?
DdeK: The average citizen is always in Neanderthal mode. That is
why we get such Neanderthalian politicians. The
digital culture is the cognitive phase of electricity. Just as we took the muscular phase (heat, light and energy)
for granted, we are taking this new phase for granted. Most
people only worry about how their body works when they have
a backache, or about their car when they have to bring it
to the garage. And even then, they don’t want to know. But
there is hope. The transformation is happening just as surely
and unconsciously as it did at the time of the council
of Trent when wise people were trying to put an old
order into a religion that was being rapidly undermined by
a totally new conception of man. Today, we are literally run
over by the globalized and connective condition of humankind
without the slightest moment of doubt.
AB: You claim that information processing systems – especially
hypertext – are extensions of our mind, rather like psychotechnologies.
If we juxtapose your data with the latest advances in genetic
engineering and cloning, what sort of future awaits us?
DdeK: I call them psychotechnologies because they have one specific
feature that they do not share directly with genetic engineering,
that is their relationship to language. All technologies that
code, sort and transport language also modify it and modify
the speaker, listener, and generally the user of language.
Language entertains an intimate relationship with our mind
and all technologies that affect language also affect the
strategies we use to organize time, space and self. Hence
psycho-technologies restructure our minds. But even if genetic
engineering can eventually affect the way we (or the animals
we change) think, it bypasses language to address the basic
building materials of the physical being. These are different,
although equally important manipulations of the status quo
of our being. I
can’t predict the future that awaits us, my sole ambition
is to predict the present.
AB: Why does “virtual culture” seem to us to be an innocent concept
whereas the idea of “virtual democracy” appears suspect?
DdeK: Actually
neither concept is innocent. Arthur Kroker wrote some rather perceptive and biting comments on the Virtual
Class and the Data Trash world; on the other hand, with blogs,
virtual democracy seems at least to represent a possible transmutation
of democracy without losing its principal character, which
is to give power to the people in reasonably equal measure.
The present question is to what extent can the larger bulk
of the population of the world participate usefully in blogs.
[...]
Communication
in Evolution: Social and Technological Transformation
http://www.mcluhan.utoronto.ca/article_communicationevolution.htm#
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