Robot Writing

Says Marshall McLuhan: "All media are extensions of some human faculty– psychic or physical." With this, the co-creator of 1967's experimental book on the philosophy of communication, The Medium is the Massage , provides some interesting food for thought. On the following two pages he makes claims about objects and the human body parts from which they extend. The wheel from the foot, the book from the eye, clothing from the skin. And this is a pretty compelling concept: The wheel is like an exo-foot, a re-imagining of the foot that preforms nearly the same function but is many times and in many ways more efficient. Written text provides us vision of people and worlds we cannot see with our eyes alone. Clothing... well, you get the point. I could not have seen Spike Jonze's Her  at a more appropriate time. First of all: excellent film. The movie's about a guy that falls in love with a computer. But the best part is that almost no-one thinks that's ...

Okay. So, like, as people, we rail against change. I realize not everyone's the same in this regard and that it's entirely situational (if my life was about to change by way of inheriting a ton of money from some distant so-and-so, I'd be so  ready) but no one's ready for the death of a loved one, for their car to break down, finally, forever, to be suddenly faced with having to sell their most precious belongings just to stay alive, etc. But change happens. Life goes on, time persists in whatever bizarre and cosmic way it does, matter moves, and people keep people-ing. In Nicholas Carr's Atlantic  article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" he addresses personal issues with The Google Machine, and bemoans a newly developed lack of attention and deep-reading ability and a general change in the way that he and other outspoken Gen-X technophobes operate on a cognitive and neurological level. But, okay, so we maybe we can't make a habit out of six-hour ...