In reply to Harold Jarche » Born in a storm.

laws of media
Fabulous site! Great to see McLuhan's retrieval. Curious whether the Wikipedia is a sufficient example of an 'echo-chamber' considering there are 'outside' links to keep open the enclosures. Hyper-space, a red herring anyway, perhaps based more on resonance and interval whereby the 'echo-chamber' is the siren refrain, the troubadour of audio-tactile perception--flogging the blog, killing print slowly but surely letter by letter in revenge as the written word once obeyed only silent reading over voice and song. Few choirs rejoice in the library.

Therefore the reversal suggests a labyrinth in search of the interconnecting thread of 'this whole alphabetic invention and translation process' between mental image and symbolically transcribed letter. A Holy Grail, so to speak--the very origin and nature for the making of the utterance that gets written into being as proposition, gesture, question, sentence, paragraph, bookmark...

Print as a 'written object' reality manifestly reverses at best into oral folklore, myth and legend such that fact and fiction capriciously and moreover, mischievously, chases gamely the other's tale. The eye's once seeing letters as word objects now listens to the sounds of the alphabet. The tangible printed shapes of the alphabet becomes gradually undone, undone, moving our senses to perceive stuff from from eye to ear. How different each interprets the world if one dominates the other, especially if unconscious of that fact.

And, as tides rise as the moons wanes, as analogy subsumes logical systems, as empirical time and space collapses into quantum uncertainty, as 'print the magical technique of rationality' collapses into the swirling maelstrom of oral rhyme, the nemesis of rationality, throwing it into vertigo, we may or may not notice the print world, with neither bang nor whimper, electro-magnetically evaporates right before our very eyes.

Ruefully, there's nothing profound about this, really. No amazing riddle, enigma, chimera at large pulling our leg. Simple explanation, unfortunately, so painfully plain to see, while extraordinarily oblivious. There, right there, like a dot on an 'i'. The magic of each single letter we compose into the artifacts called 'words' we read, shapes so solid, real shapes, our scribbled iron wrought fence.

In oral traditions the merry blurring of private and public entities naturally happens, and, lacking all recognition of identity and boundaries in civil norms, lawless armies enforce and dictate by casting both saviour and monster into Zeus for hire. Perpetual insecurity brings about shrieking techno-tribes in their homeland, rapping on drums, rapping on drums, setting off bombs, dismembering bodies of memory with shock and awe, death between commercials in homage to whatever myth works.

Peace and war become indistinguishable tragic-comedy, breathing deep, holding its nose, throwing rose petals, looking straight into the sun, standing in majesty and delirium, full of triumph, vanity, terror, folly.

First the good news. Yes, 'the medium is the message'. MTV post-literacy seems to have a its perils since there's no writing on the wall to help us learn from now. Heaven's what's at stake when we so easily stop learning to type and read our ABC's on our Mac's and PC's? I wonder if we can truly comprehend the options of the reversal. The letter of the law is duly reduced from evidence to the will thoust will, nuclear wise or otherwise. The skill to read and write even a few measly pixels, may seem odd and anachronistic with the cheery aberration that, like any dark age, unable to recall much of anything. Sorry, the records were shredded or blacked out rather thickly.

Conversely, oral history is said lived as an archive, passed sometime long ago, blessing the sacred and profane of wisdom, superstition, and wonder, hoping the fertility of the land, rain, smoke, clouds and gods brings enough food, drink, joy and misery to life to make the cold stay warm so people smile, sing and stay satisfied with enough curiosity to paint and carve mystery all over again. Neat, eh...

Strange how our symbolic tools use us so unwittingly--as if their technique is us. Too blatant to notice this strange human inventor of symbols. The same symbols that make us feel we somehow went beyond symbol making, somehow uniquely independent of them, assuming they're just mere tools.

Therefore, in this respect, the 'echo-chamber' being itself an invention, where we are possibly allowing electric orality to unwittingly subsume the written or printed word as a natural cognitive transition in order to anticipate and adapt to a massive (environmental) shift in communication technologies. Primarily this will require adept skills with manipulation of image graphics, audio and (hyper)text, as a full symbolic competency ensemble and repertoire, rather than printed alphabetical text alone, as was the dominant case since the rise of the printing press, reducing interrelated and interdependent issues of both arts and sciences into distilled, distinct and separate subject categories.

The demonstrative capability of the laws of media allows us to assess and anticipate the reversal scenario in order to adapt in advance, like putting on a seat-belt or a helmet--foreknowledge of risk, just in case we forget to buy insurance. The balancing act between electric orality and literacy of the printed word will be a profound challenge as we become more intensely immersed in the body electric surround. Who will write the (collaborative) scripts in the theatre to impute valid authority in the global village?

Ironically, learning to unplug and read independently using old fashion books, magazines and journals, etc., might just keep civilization epistemologically glued together long enough to make it to the next step, whatever that'll be... at least to walk with greater perceptive feet, until then, towards managing future multidisciplinary complexity.