‘My main theme is the extension of the nervous system in the electric age, and thus, the complete break with five thousand years of mechanical technology. This I state over and over again. I do not say whether it is a good or bad thing. To do so would be meaningless and arrogant.’
Marshall McLuhan, Letter to Robert Fulford, 1964. Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p. 300.
Most citizens have little time to consider the full implications for living in the digital age.
They don’t perceive how the basic categories of human being have been altered by integrating digital technologies.
As analogue beings – separate from others – it is easy to retreat into simple human response to offset the effects of this great digital tsunami.
A complexity that the digital matrix exacerbates, as it connects everything we think, say or do. Before now, these human-communicative domains were largely separate and discrete.
Today, all human action and values are on display in the socially connected digital world of networks, data and information.
Remember digital technologies develop both new technologies and new communicative agreement and/or comprehension of our infinitely complex Universe.
Over a few decades, digital technology has changed the entire conceptual framework we use to define life on Planet Earth, both positively and negatively.
Digital technology
1) Establishes the domain of the global, making of the world a single community.
2) Connects everyone that includes for the first time, the lowest in every society as well as the highest.
3) Makes available almost every item of knowledge produced throughout history. Interestingly this destroys the notion of elitism which serves the few at the expense of the many. If all data is available to mass populations, why not just put decision making in public hands too?
4) Adds a layer of multiple interpretation and alternatives to traditional explanations for everything. This generates the fake news problem, one only addressed by citizens, through democratic initiative.
5) Creates the opportunity for anyone to investigate and update the entirety of human knowledge, in order to make a success of our new digital network civilization.
No longer a world of analogue individuals, living apart in physical proximity. Full of fear, aggression and greed.
But a new world constructed from digital bits and bytes, where reality is seamlessly transformed between multiple, equitable communities.
And where the abundance of data, information and human communication, lead to a new age of cooperation, collaboration and community.