The Folklore of Electronic Man: Technology as a Form of Language
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The Folklore of Electronic Man Technology as a Form of Language McLuhan Galaxy Barcelona 2011 Eduardo Marisca PUCP | Ashoka
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20-Oct-2014 -
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This presentation explores a latent concept in Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media: that technological forms encompass a given grammar that regulates its possible expressions. Using Ludwig Wittgenstein’s description of language-games and examples from online communities, it explores how these grammars operate and are assimilated by technology users, through an apprenticeship model and a process of trial-and-error. It then goes on to build on Walter Benjamin’s notion of art and “aura” to explore how digital technology has the potential to acknowledge wider audiences as cultural stakeholders with read/write capabilities. It concludes by evaluating how a renewed understanding of how we educate people around technology is necessary to fully incorporate them as participating agents within the folklore of electronic man.Presented in the McLuhan Galaxy conference in Barcelona, May 2011.
Transcript of The Folklore of Electronic Man: Technology as a Form of Language
The Folklore of Electronic ManTechnology as a Form of Language
McLuhan Galaxy Barcelona 2011
Eduardo MariscaPUCP | Ashoka
Technology
Learn
Grammar
Three Things
1.What
2.How
3.Why
IWhat?
“Cardinal Newman said of Napoleon, “He understood the grammar of gunpowder.” Napoleon had paid some attention to other media as well, especially the semaphore telegraph that gave him a great advantage over his enemies. He is on record for saying that “Three hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”
Alexis de Tocqueville was the first to master the grammar of print and typography. He was thus able to read off the message of coming change in France and America as if he were reading aloud from a text that had been handed to him. In fact, the nineteenth century in France and America was just such an open book to de Tocqueville because he had learned the grammar of print. So he, also, knew when that grammar did not apply.”
Delivery Technologies
Protocols
Social Norms
Formulation of Expressions
Grammar
Formal Rules
Shared Meanings
Appropriateness
Cope
Domesticate
IIHow?
Two Things
Trial/Error
Testing Expressions
Measuring Effects
Apprenticeship
Others
Expectations
Nudges
Complex
Hybrid
Multiple
Language-Games
Forms of Life
Communications Breakdown
Chronicling Failures
Chronicling Nudges
Digital Media
Slips
Boundaries
Should I friend myparents/children on FB?
Should I friend myteachers/students on FB?
My boss/employees?
Private/Public
Expression of Emotions
Meaning of Relationships
Social Precedent
Experimentation
Learning From Others
Mental Model
Grammar
IIIWhy?
Internet Folklore
Language Expands
Cultural Stakeholders
More People
Aura
TechnologicalReproducibility
Political Significance
Revolutionary
More People
Expand Language
New Expressions
Digital Reproducibility
Reconfiguration of the Aura
Getting Away With It
Three Implications
ITechnology Education
IITechnological Anthropology
IIIDemocratic Competence Gap
We’re Leaving People Behind
Attitude
Present Day Somnambulism
