Marshall McLuhan is a cool guy. Aside from having a hilarious cameo in one of my favorite movies, he seems like a pretty smart guy.
One principle of his that I find particularly interesting is his principle of auto-amputation. According to McLuhan, each time we, us humans, create technology we offload to the technology something that we would otherwise do entirely on our own.
During the industrial revolution, the mechanical loom offloaded the work of weaving from ourselves to a machine. Now, with the internet, we offload the mental labor and memory to a machine.
Basically, "humans auto-amputate or offload work -- physical and/or mental work -- to machines."
I want to ask this question: First we offloaded physical labor, now we're offloading mental/intellectual labor. What next? The labor of free will? The labor of pleasure and happiness?
According to Bruce Mazlish, electronic media is the "fourth outrage or insult to humanity's view of itself by making it impossible for us to deny our inherent dependence on technology." Mazlish also suggests that humans co-evolve with our tools. Considering how wild and untamed the tool of the internet is, that's kind of a scary thought.
Mazlish says we must reframe our minds to understand our tools and how we use them. These changes will help us make better sense of "matters that are within the frame."
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