
The internet does to the world what radio did to the world - imartin2k
http://meshedsociety.com/internet-does-to-the-world-what-radio-did-to-the-world/
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intopieces
A more in depth comparison is made by Tim Wu in his latest book, "The
Attention Merchants." Highly recommended.

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slvrspoon
As a somewhat serious casual student of Mcluhan (reading of key books, his
letters, etc.) I will simply add:

1\. Mcluhan didn't "miss" the internet at all he just referred to it as
electric technology and was _fully aware_ of the principles of the web as
medium when he authored Extensions of Man 2\. @Avivo he really wasn't too
naive - he repeatedly wrote that he had never seen evidence any society had
ever been able to educate and control the effects of media on itself.

ps: @cobbzilla- Postman is in any close reading a _terrible_ interpreter of
MC.

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otakucode
Oh it does far, far more than simply what radio did to the world. Radio did
not take the primary engine of all economic activity and commoditize it. The
Internet doesn't just enable us to communicate better. It (and the computers
all around... in time, they will be seen as having arrived 'at the same time')
makes it trivially easy to distribute things. And distribution as a valuable
problem to solve is what led to the Industrial Revolution and basically every
single aspect of our culture. Now, it's trivial. Now, what could have built
you a titanic global corporation turning over trillions in revenue a month can
be done by a clever 12 year old with some spare time on their hands.

The consequences of this can not be underestimated, but inevitably will be. We
built factories to feed distribution. That packed people into cities near
them. Because the valuable work here was solving that problem of distribution,
and because 'machines were doing the work', workers were paid very little.
Which led to adolescents no longer being able to get employment which would
enable them to support any children they might produce. Which led to society
suddenly for the first time needing to control sex. Which led to houses being
built with separate bedrooms instead of common rooms where the whole family
slept (and screwed). This is just one isolated consequence of the value of
solving the problem of distribution (both of the product of work and work to
be done) as an example of how wide-reaching it was. The consequences took
centuries to unfold.

And now in the majority of cases, computers and the Internet go beyond making
it a trivial problem to solve and straight into turning the extensive
distribution networks and ancillary things built to serve them now actively
destroy value. A musician could distribute an album directly to their
listeners... or submit it into a supply chain that would involve thousands of
other people, dozens of companies, delay the release of the album, and make it
a worse product (DRM, restrictive formats, etc).

At first you might think this is a small issue, that it only affects a handful
of industries where the product can be delivered digitally. But it is
stupendously larger than that. It requires a complete rethinking of every
aspect of economy itself. The drawbacks of mass-produced goods which were once
compensated for by the profound value of solving distribution, both to
consumers and to workers, are now uncompensated and will only become more
glaring as time passes.

Socially, the Internet has more of the opposite role of radio. Rather than re-
tribalizing man, it will amplify the individual and while it will facilitate
collective action it will also facilitate freedom from any 'lock in' to the
collective. Are you a member of Tribe X if you have participated in 4 out of
800 things done by Tribe X? If you 'join' and 'leave' within the hour? Is
representative government still a legitimate compromise if it was initially
created to serve a purpose which can now be achieved in a far superior manner
by technology?

Radio gave a few groups the ability to unidirectionally communicate, and most
the ability to bidirectionally communicate with one other person. The Internet
doesn't just give everyone their own radio station. It gives them an arbitrary
number of them. It can give every thought its own radio station. It will have
consequences for the very notion of history, the concept of self, of society
in ways we can only half-competently guess at if we throw out all of our
assumptions (way harder than those not acquainted with a bunch of different
philosophies presumes it is) and start examining 'necessary and sufficient'
for quite literally everything.

Previously, we have rarely even considered "does this thing absolutely and
fundamentally require physical co-location?" This will become the dominant, if
not the only, factor which determines whether something will be rewritten. And
those things which presently do require physical co-location (far fewer than
you imagine if you have not specifically thought about it) will be made to not
require it if the laws of physics make it possible. No other law or tradition
will prevent it.

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niftich
There is honestly not much substance delivered in this post; it's based around
a rather oblique, long-form quote that posits illiterate and sheltered people
were highly swayable by radio's spoken word, much to the surprise of an
educated class raised on print, and suggests that more education may be an
antidote. With the quote over, it declares that education was not a sufficient
countermeasure today.

I fail to see how this rises beyond a deliberately obfuscated _ad hominem_.
There is so much missed potential: one could muse about why messages spread on
the Internet can be used to unite and divide, why classes and cohorts of
people who (accurately or mistakenly) feel marginalized are attracted to
rhetoric, or how a breakdown of trust contributes to a self-fulfilling
cognitive dissonance about factually untrue reporting -- but none of this
happens, just a quote and a quip.

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graeham
Probably not intended, but the implication this argument leads to is for the
development of regulation in use and censorship - like the FCC for radio.

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pentae
ROI. You know what that stands for? Radio. On. Internet.

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etangent
A lot of valid points, but then there is this sentence:

> It goes without saying that the universal ignoring of the psychic action of
> technology bespeaks some inherent function, some essential numbing of
> consciousness such as occurs under stress and shock conditions.”

Wat.

~~~
tmuir
I interpret that as follows:

The fact that nearly everyone is ignorant of the effects technology has on our
minds points to the technology itself being responsible for those effects.

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ArkyBeagle
It should be pretty clear by now that the destabilization of certain old,
corrupt regimes in the former Ottoman Empire leaned heavily on mobile
Internet. We had the sobriquet "Arab Spring" for it, and look what it became.

Mobile Internet seems to have taken the role in this disruption that the
printing press took in the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is perhaps too
early to see if a subsequent Enlightenment is to follow. We know from direct
historical provenance that the regions where Islam held sway were perfectly
capable of a high degree of culture. Right now, however, barbarism seems to
hold sway.

During the rise of Sayyid Qutb, Nasser was able to control things. He did so
somewhat ... brutally, but the situation remained in control.

Libya itself was mostly a criminal enterprise masquerading as a government.

George Orwell wrote at least one thing - "Poetry and the Microphone" which
expressed skepticism about radio. In my own household, it's taken considerable
effort on my part to explain to people that teh TeeVee isn't always good for
your brain. There is still brilliant work done on television, more than in the
past. You just have to be careful.

~~~
digi_owl
The impression i have of this "arab spring" is that bad what harvests in
Russia was the instigator, but that the net acted as a massive pacifier.

This because via the net people could keep up with what was happening without
actually being pulled in. Only when the net connection was cut did the likes
of Egypt flare up. This likely because people now had to get out on the street
and talk to their neighbors to stay informed.

I do agree though that the middle east seems to be having its own 30 year war
going.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
I had no idea a crop (wheat) failure was involved. Thanks for that.

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bobbygoodlatte
I think it's incorrect to lump the internet together as one medium. The
messages that propagate over Reddit are different from those that propagate
over Hacker News, which are different from Facebook.

Why draw a distinction? Because the algorithms behind those products can and
do change.

Right now, hyper-partisan content is everywhere. Why? Because publishers have
collectively realized that partisanship drives clicks. Take away those clicks
by changing the algorithm: the medium changes, the messages change.

Facebook used to have a problem with Farmville spam. It doesn't anymore
because the system changed. Perhaps the same could happen with hyper-partisan
clickbait.

~~~
halfdan
It doesn't really matter how you want to split it. The internet for the
majority of people is Facebook. That's where the mass gets their news.
Reddit/HN and other websites may use different algorithms, but they represent
just a tiny fraction. Think of them as privately operated radio channels -
they do exist, but their role in the world is negligible.

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jolux
>The step from telephone to radio has clearly distinguished the roles. The
former liberally permitted the participant to play the role of the subject.
The latter democratically makes everyone equally into listeners, in order to
expose them in authoritarian fashion to the same programs put out by different
stations. No mechanism of reply has been developed, and private transmissions
are condemned to unfreedom. (from "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass
Deception" in _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W.
Adorno)

I think this passage is brilliantly relevant to these discussions. For me the
internet provides an illusion of interactivity when really most if not all of
it is one-way. The internet is a place where opinions are broadcast, but it is
nowhere near as radically communicative as the telephone except in actual
communication media built off of it (email, IRC, slack, or whatever else etc)
and even then I would argue that is mostly not subjects communicating due to
the delay not present in vocal or signed communication. That we can broadcast
our opinions back does not mean that the speaker and listener are on equal
footing as in telephony, because the communication is indirect.

~~~
kabes
But in contrast with radio, everyone can easily become a global speaker.

~~~
jolux
Indeed, but this just "democratically" turns everyone into a speaker. The
point of this passage is not that we need more speakers and less listeners,
the point is that media which encourage the speaker-listener dichotomy are
inherently authoritarian.

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Shivetya
Gee, another indirect reference to the newly elected United States President.
Considering MSNBC host went as far as calling the acceptance speech
"Hitlarian". I was hoping to escape it here.

~~~
imartin2k
As the author, I can assure you that I personally do not think that Trump
resembles Hitler. But the rise to power utilizing retribalization tendencies
described by McLuhan that follow the emergence of new types of media might be
comparable.

Anyway, I refrained from specifically mentioning Trump because he is far from
the only individual who is capitalizing on the situation.

~~~
guard-of-terra
But why are you assuming that "capitalizing on the situation" is a bad thing?
Why are you even assuming that "the situation" is a bad thing?

What _is_ "internet fallout"? What fell out where?

You could as well praise the very thing you blame.

~~~
imartin2k
Based on my world view, convictions and (of course limited) knowledge of
humanity, I consider trends towards authoritarianism, zero-sum thinking,
marginalization and glorification of the past a bad thing.

I do not see any evidence at all that this would create a better society for
anyone (except the very few who'll be in power).

Of course, I might be wrong. But we have enough learnings from the history of
human kind to make some rather safe predictions about the outcomes of certain
directions and types of thinking.

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nickthemagicman
This is truly brilliant.

Why do we complete underestimate the power of intangible forces?

Nuclear weapons are BIG concern and very tangible.

Education/Propoganda are arguably equally as much of a concern for the human
race...but they're intangible.. so they're taken much less seriously.

I also love the idea presented here of tribal class vs the business/political
class.

It explains the current nationalism so well.

I'd argue that everyone is Tribalistic, just people in bigger cities consider
their tribe to be entirety of humanity because of exposure to so many
different types of people daily vs people in small towns who are in contact
with fewer people thus have much smaller tribes.

~~~
gambiting
>>Nuclear weapons are BIG concern and very tangible.

I'm not saying that they aren't a big concern, but are nukes really that
tangible? Unless you live in Russia, where nukes are literally paraded on the
red square every year, how do you feel their presence? I mean, as far as I
know, the government could by lying about having any. They are all stashed in
submarines or silos somewhere, luckily it's unlikely that we will ever see one
detonate, for your average John Smith nukes could as well be terrawatt lasers
mounted on the moon. I wouldn't call them tangiable I don't think.

~~~
id
> Unless you live in Russia, where nukes are literally paraded on the red
> square every year

Could be America soon.

~~~
wott
I thought you were going to switch to coal missiles?

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dsfyu404ed
Well if you can convince your .gov to buy them we'll happily design a coal
warhead and sell you the missiles.

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cobbzilla
Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" [1] is a great torchbearer for
McLuhan's POV, bringing it solidly into the era of one-way video media (cable
TV, VHS, etc) that dominated 80s/90s public discourse.

The internet, though, is kind of a different beast than radio or TV because it
is so interactive. It's not just 1-way, 2-way, or many-to-many; it's all those
things simultaneously. I'd love any recommendations on books/authors that pick
up the torch from McLuhan and Postman, and try to cast some light on what "the
medium is the message(/metaphor)" means in the hyper-connected age.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death)

edit: Just a thought, it's not only the interactivity that makes the internet
unique, it's also its infinite flexibility: it can emulate print, radio, TV;
but it can also invent its own versions of those media (podcasts, youtube,
twitch, etc). It can invent entirely new kinds of media too: VR, AR, etc. So
maybe the internet is a kind of "meta-media", which makes the analysis much
more difficult; but promises some real gems of insight - if any can be found.

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johnchristopher
> It's not just 1-way, 2-way, or many-to-many; it's all those things
> simultaneously.

Hmm. But isn't the internet/new media heavily balanced towards the 1-way
communication model ? Does sharing, re-sharing and commenting in the void
qualify as 2-way or m2m or is it just an amplifier ? The potential is here but
does it really solidify into existence for the vast majority or is just for
the vocal groups (NGO, journalists, lobbyists, etc.) ?

I have in mind the net delusion [0] and the submarine model [1].

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Net-Delusion-Dark-Internet-
Freedom/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Net-Delusion-Dark-Internet-
Freedom/dp/1610391063) [1]
[http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

~~~
cobbzilla
there is no question that old-school broadcast media is 1-to-many. it's
physically impossible to send a signal upstream in those models (doesn't stop
me from yelling at the TV, but I do know it's futile). we can quibble about
how much the internet is 1:1 vs 1:N vs N:M, but the fact that we even ask
these questions makes the internet a qualitatively different kind of media.

as an aside, what are we doing right here, right now? HN uses the internet as
a print medium. As a blog it is 1:N, and as a discussion forum is N:M. So
yeah, it's complex :)

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avivo
"Just as we now try to control atom-bomb fallout, so we will one day try to
control media fallout. Education will become recognized as civil defense
against media fallout"

Written in 1964, this remains both deeply relevant and deeply naive. "Media"
in this context means the impact of technology on how we perceive and
understand the world (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Media#McLuhan.27...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Media#McLuhan.27s_concept_of_.22media.22)).

It's relevant, as new "mediums" play their part in the decline of democracy
and freedom worldwide.

It's naive, as we as a society have definitely _not_ yet recognized the
importance of education enough — our "civil defense against media fallout"
remains very weak.

~~~
FullMtlAlcoholc
The antidote to this has been known since time immemorial and it. I'm not
claiming that it is easy to achieve, but it is simple: Critical thinking, self
awareness, and a healthy dose of skepticism.

Even with those tools, the flaw ultimately lies within us humans as a species.
The results of the Stanford Prison experiment and the Millgrim experiments
show that humans have a natural tendency to obey perceived authority figures,
even if it means going against our own ideals.

It's sad, but that's why history repeats itself. We are the same species as we
were 70,000 years ago. It is our institutions, modern luxuries, and collective
knowledge which make us civilized. Take that away we will probably act more
savagely than people in dystopic, post-apocalyptic fiction. The bestial nature
of humanity slightly reveals itself int he wilds of LA traffic. People will
call you the worst things and hope that all the bad things in life happen to
you for simply driving slowly because you are in an unfamiliar area.

~~~
smallnamespace
It seems overly simplistic to say that our current ills are due to lack of
skepticism or critical thinking and obeying authority figures.

In fact the Internet has torn down existing authorities and given people the
ability to create new communities as well as new authorities.

For example, climate skepticism explicitly posits that traditional authorities
(scientists, the news, etc.) are wrong and seeks validation in creating _new_
authorities and sources of truth. You might claim that these people are
lacking in critical thinking, but any act of skepticism, no matter how ill-
founded, is in itself an attempt at critical thinking. Same thing with anti-
vaxxers -- nowadays anyone with a crazy theory can find an online community
that validates their beliefs.

The internet has also majorly eroded trust in our existing institutions based
on elite opinion and one-way media, while not creating replacements for those
institutions. At the end of the day, one important role of institutions is to
1) make a decision and 2) get everyone to go along with it, even if the
decision itself isn't perfect.

The Internet has provided the tools for _everyone_ easily criticize and pick
apart _any_ decision, without providing a viable alternative means to come to
consensus.

TL;DR you think the problem is institutions and authority, while I think the
_real_ problem is that the Internet is helping break them without putting them
back together again.

~~~
jon_richards
Isn't that the strategy of propaganda? "Nothing is true and everything is
possible"

~~~
smallnamespace
It's not propagandists that are making people conclude that nothing is true,
it's people putting themselves into echo chambers, aided and abetted by the
Internet.

30 years ago if you had some crackpot theory, good luck finding anyone around
you who agreed and would validate your beliefs. You'd watch and read normal
news like everyone else and that was your source of information.

Nowadays you can come up with some strange idea, look it up on Google, and
then find a bunch of other people who will tell you that you're right, the
media's full of liars, and the scientists are all in it too.

Of course, this happened historically too before the Internet, but the
difference is that in the past movements usually only happened in cities and
college campuses and the like, because people had to talk face to face.
Nowadays, _everyone_ with a smart phone and some free time can self-
radicalize.

Eventually society will notice this trend and people will adjust to it, but
until that happens you're going to see a more fractious society with more
people who won't believe anything anyone else says (at least about particular
topics).

~~~
imartin2k
Regarding critical thinking, I found this quite an interesting line of
thought: [https://points.datasociety.net/did-media-literacy-
backfire-7...](https://points.datasociety.net/did-media-literacy-
backfire-7418c084d88d)

Basically, it might be the taught habit of critical thinking which actually
makes people give up on the values which have been beneficial to modern
civilization.

