An Interview with Derrick de Kerckhove, director of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology, and author of one of my favorite books on media, The Skin of Culture. He discusses the impact of new technologies on the way we perceive and act in the world.
de Kerckhove Interview - Communication in Evolution - Social and Technological Transformation:
AB: We have left the “global village”, we surf the Web of Webs but the technical abilities of the average citizen are not much greater than those of a Neanderthal. Beneath the veneer of culture, what sort of human being is this digital culture creating?
DdeK: The average citizen is always in Neanderthal mode. That is why we get such Neanderthalian politicians. The digital culture is the cognitive phase of electricity. Just as we took the muscular phase (heat, light and energy) for granted, we are taking this new phase for granted. Most people only worry about how their body works when they have a backache, or about their car when they have to bring it to the garage. And even then, they don’t want to know. But there is hope. The transformation is happening just as surely and unconsciously as it did at the time of the council of Trent when wise people were trying to put an old order into a religion that was being rapidly undermined by a totally new conception of man. Today, we are literally run over by the globalized and connective condition of humankind without the slightest moment of doubt.
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