February 1, 2025
the medium is the massage is an unnaturally prescient book regarding the effects of consumerism and capital on the brain. more or less, the form media takes shapes the brain itself; media expands the range of sensations we can feel. the technology used in communication itself is a method of sneaking beliefs into the brain. in luhan’s time, he discussed television as a force creating collective systems of belief as opposed to the fragmenting texts of yesteryear – everyone subject to mass media.
in the current year we find ourselves tossed to and fro by a different masseuse: algorithms. these promise us the fragmentation originally made possible by gutenberg; this is not so but comes to be collectivization by another name.
content is not generated linearly. every creator, due to the speed of our communication, is subject to every other. we are all lost in a sea of each others’ ideas echoing through the world. the speed of these ideas ensures a tighter, interconnected world; ideas made flesh in record time. plasticity is through the roof. algorithms stochastically decide to provide a new node-to-node connection for better or worse.
such a system inherently reflects the collective unconscious more than any past tech. media is a reflection of the creators’ senses – what do we then get when one’s mind is expanded by the feedback of eight billion humans before they themselves create a piece. given that no one sees the same we find contradiction upon contradiction (this is part of why american society is schizophrenic and conspiratorial in its current state).
the mind is both an input and output of this system. we were not meant to have so much flooding our minds, with our own experiences framed by the media we consume.
it is impossible to say that this collective generative unconscious has any one belief but rather operates as a constant switch forming new connections between ephemera.
it is no wonder why paranoia has become the word of the age; everything is subject to everything else and can be the cause of such. a stabbing in england means that one should stay inside in san francisco. a person’s belief online change how one interacts with others in the real world. the distance between all things goes to zero. it follows that one’s actions must send infinite ripples through the world. one is subject to the hazard that their daily coffee purchase is taking away a share of another’s food in hawaii.
the tool of the age is non-judgement; we cannot be forced to have beliefs unless necessary. objects without weight cannot be pulled on; there is no force which can exert itself on the nonexistent/ when presented with the deluge of the current age, one must choose not to see it. focus on the material plane.
[insert tyler the creator cyberbullying tweet here]