Let's talk about McLuhan

It's just as trippy as it looks.

Back in the 60's Marshall McLuhan wrote a book called The Medium is the Massage, about evolving technology and how it would affect society.

McLuhan talks about a lot of different things concerning technology within his book, some of it eerily accurate to today's society, some of it way off base. I want to talk about a page in particular that has not yet proven to be true, but is fast on track to being the future.

"The older, traditional ideas of private, isolated thoughts and actions- the patterns of mechanistic technologies- are very seriously threatened by new methods of instantaneous electric information retrieval, by the electrically computerized dossier bank- that one big gossip column that is unforgiving, unforgettable and from which there is no redemption, no erasure of early "mistakes."" -McLuhan

Also, we had kickin' fashion sense.

 Essentially, what McLuhan is talking about, is the death of anonymity. Chances are, you grew up in the 90's or early 2000's. Do you remember getting on the internet back then? What was it like? Small websites abounded and no one asked you to sign in before you comment. You picked a nickname on the spot and you were good to go!

Today's internet has gone under tremendous change. The internet has undergone a "Walmart effect". That is, the small personally run websites are disappearing, being replaced by huge conglomerates that all network back into one another.

Not even email is safe anymore.

Go on CNN's website, or Time's. If you want to post a comment, what do you have to do? You have to sign in. If you think registering a profile with that site just to make one measly comment is too much work (as I often think it is), they have an easier option. You can sign in with your facebook account.

Try to log onto youtube. You don't have a screen name log in anymore, it has to be through your email. More and more our ability to be anonymous online is disappearing.



I'll leave you with this video of Christopher "Moot" Poole, founder of the imageboard 4chan, discussing his website and the rapidly disappearing anonymity of the internet.