Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which they communicate than by the content of the communication. — Certain brain processes might be naturally and unconsciously “directed toward” certain kinds of speech and behavior.
M. McLuhan — E. Feser
Tag: quotes
Distraction
Magic significantly directs our attention to the wrong place. It evokes a sense of wonder rather than understanding. In Technopoly, we are surrounded by the wondrous effects of machines and are encouraged to ignore the ideas embedded in them.
Neil Postman
Transformation
The sin is not that engines are mechanical, but that men are mechanical. — It is not simply that the medium reshapes the people; the people reshape themselves by the help of the medium.
G.K. Chesterton. — T. Veblen |
apparatus changed to medium and materials changed to people.
Final Cause
The knife, itself, incites to violence.
Homer
Literature
The telos of the written word is not primarily in it’s content. That’s absurd. It’s end is in it’s underlying message: that the world can be understood, logical, coherent.
KJF
The value of the printed word is not solely in it’s content. It has a message in it’s own right.
Social Media
The real meaning of social networks isn’t what they’re used for – it’s what they do to us.
Eric McLuhan
Philosophy
Philosophy has no lane. It owns the whole freeway.
Ed Feser
Media
Understanding is half the battle. The central purpose of all my work is to convey this message, that by understanding media as they extend man, we gain a measure of control over them.
Marshall McLuhan
Rhetoric
It is in everyday communicative action that adults learn to recognize the kinds of sophistry and manipulation that, on a larger scale, diminish the public sphere.
Brookfield, 2010 p. 131
Corruption
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
Friedrich Nietzsche