What is being human in the digital era?
That is an easy
question to answer! We have skin and need water to survive and digital media
does not.
Man drinking water to re-hydrate.
Media device not taking in water.
Well if only it was that simple. Marshall McLuhan said "...Any understanding
of social and cultural change is impossible without the knowledge of the way
media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty -
psychic or physical." This is something that he was quoted in 1967. Is
this still relative to the nature of today's media boom? In a way yes it is; it
is very relevant. First we need to understand the psychological
nature of media and how it affects us on a chemical level. Does this even
happen? To an extent it does affect us. However, with that being said it
doesn't physically change us. We, as a human being, are influence by things
which are around us. The media itself is always around us. Whether the physical
media such as a news report give us bad news about a company that we looked up
was stealing our money or a tablet we use to find out that information is still
the same in theory. Hearing bad news affects us on a chemical level as it
changes our chemical balance of neurons to induce sadness. In this case
absolutely it does affect us on a psychic level. McLuhan was correct then as
much as he is now. The situation that we come across will determine how we are
affected by it.
McLuhan says, "The medium is the message"
by which he means it is how information is presented as opposed to what the
message actually is. Keeping this relevant to today's digital age; we as humans
are affected by all that we see and hear in this current world. We experience
all of this via a plethora of mediums but at the same time we have gained a
certain technological intelligence in which we choose how we display this
message. By choosing how we get the message across we can affect the overall
population on a much greater scale. What does this mean in regards to being
human in a digital age? Since we are a part of this technological boom we
ARE affected at physical level by all of this.
We help contribute to this advance in technology so much so that we are
walking a fine line between staying a physical form to being a digital self.
What I mean by this is that the more we "dial in" or "plug in"
we start to lose our concept on what is common to reality because all we know
is media. Being human in this age doesn't necessarily have to be like that. If
we can maintain that break between those two versions of ourselves we can progress
to a level that is unrivaled. We are all subject to the media around us but the
trick is to know when to cut the cord to keep that distinction.
I found this very intriguing. You may as well.
Bill Buxton, Being human in a digital world.
