
Applying McLuhan’s Tetrad to the Smartphone (2016) - danielam
https://www.glocality.eu/articles/10.5334/glo.9/
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Fricken
McLuhan's ideas get written about so much, but nobody does it nearly as well
as McLuhan himself. His 1969 interview with Playboy I think is the best
primer:

[https://www.nextnature.net/2009/12/the-playboy-interview-
mar...](https://www.nextnature.net/2009/12/the-playboy-interview-marshall-
mcluhan/)

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iambateman
To me, the smartphone conditions us to experience relationship with other
people through single-finger swipes.

There are many other positive effects that smartphones bring but I don’t think
we’ve fully internalized the negative side effect of the constant dopamine
Drip of social media.

~~~
iambateman
This cranky comment written on an iPhone 6S in a Walmart parking lot.

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derpamine
Nonetheless, this dopamine meme is getting quite tiresome.

    
    
      Oh no! U hacked my dopamine!
    

Let’s come to terms with the fact that self control and executive function is
more than capable of overriding the urge to play video games.

A bunch of VC drones throughout silicon valley are backslapping over how
brilliant their neuroscience exploit payload was, because it makes their
status seem so much cooler, and it’s abstract enough that it defers real
responsibility.

It’s the tech version of the agribusiness meme of victimization by genetic
propensity for obesity.

But maybe transfats and refined sugar have more to do with obesity than genes.

And so, if we really thought carefully about social media and smart phones,
rather than capitualting to the macguffin of dopamine, which has very little
actionable meaning (in the same way the story of genetic propensity leaves the
individual with little room act against a fatalistic assessment) maybe it’d be
a better choice to look at real motivations, than to defer to unassailable
buzzwords.

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B1FF_PSUVM
That was a worthy exercise which explained well the concepts used.

Unfortunately, either the tools or the author were not up to the task of
providing interesting insights.

(IMHO, YMMV, etc. Also, apparently undergrad work, from the pub header.)

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danielam
I agree. It's a good start, but very basic.

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gt_
This reads like a last minute research assignment with a minimum length
requirement. The ‘tetrad’ diagram is probably one of the more distracting and
less useful paths to understanding McLuhan. I encourage anyone interested in
the topic, or McLuhan, to look elsewhere.

