Their Medium’s Message: Received and Rejected

Recently, I performed a rote act I once did reasonably well. The result was startling: my handwriting looked like the chicken scratching of a disinterested doctor. Initially, I attributed my scribbling to my advancing years. Later that day, however, my wife asked me for a phone number of a family member. I had to consult my phone for the digits. It was then I realized the font of my atrophy. It was not advancing age. It was advancing technology.

In a previous article I asked if social media might be causing “The Murder of Wisdom?” It seems it is doing its damnedest to murder human learning and, hence, wisdom. This conclusion was formed, in part, by Marshall McLuhan’s famous phrase, “the medium is the message.” To elucidate this point, I cited Mark Federman, chief strategist of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology, who remarked how: 

Continue reading at American Greatness. 

Featured image, usbotschaftberlin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.