Dear Atila,
Thanks for your interesting posts! Yes, "big data" can help establish
facts in a dystopic world of dissembling disinformation and delusional
denial of reality. But it can also act negatively as part of the
overquantification of life, the counting numbers until only numbers count.
McLuhan's idea of a "global village" in 1964 pointed toward the
possibilities of increased extended electronic communications, such as this
list. But there is no "village." A village has properties much different
from those of a global network. Villages promote strong ties of kinds that
the global network tends not to. A very significant effect of living in the
global network in everyday life is how it acts to confine the human
creature within artificial screen worlds and schematas, not simply liberate
it. A key challenge is in how to keep the human spirit in the forefront of
“weak ties” communities.
McLuhan said in that 1964 work, *Understanding Media*: "By
continuously embracing technologies, we relate ourselves to them as
servo-mechanisms. That is why we must, to use them at all, serve these
objects, these extensions of ourselves, as gods or minor religions."
This is lunacy, to propose servanthood to servo-mechanisms instead of
mastery over them as means of living, whose purport we determine. Count me
out of this Deus-ex-machina religion. Here I find the words of
Prague-matist Vaclav Havel, from his op-editorial "The End of the Modern
Era," in The New York Times, March 1, 1992) far more insightful than the
ideas of McLuhan. What do you think?
"What is needed is something different, something larger. Man’s
attitude to the world must be radically changed. We have to abandon the
arrogant belief that the world is merely a puzzle to be solved, a machine
with instructions for use waiting to be discovered, a body of information
to be fed into a computer in the hope that, sooner or later, it will spit
out a universal solution.
It is my profound conviction that we have to release from the sphere of
private whim such forces as a natural, unique and unrepeatable experience
of the world, an elementary sense of justice, the ability to see things as
others do, a sense of transcendental responsibility, archetypal wisdom,
good taste, courage, compassion and faith in the importance of particular
measures that do not aspire to be a universal key to salvation. Such forces
must be rehabilitated."
Gene Halton
On Sat, Nov 3, 2018 at 1:23 PM Atila Bayat <atila.ba...@gmail.com> wrote:
> New Media studies, or the field of media ecology, as it is called today,
> addresses these kinds of issues. I agree with the authors in finding Peirce
> is relevant as far as the fixation of belief, hypothesis formation, and
> fallibilism - if we can utilize ‘big data’ technology to falsify claims, it
> can serve us well. Nowadays, Media Ecology privileges the subjects of
> ‘alternative news’ and ‘dystopia.’
>
> I remember McLuhan's work well, and was in touch with his son Eric McLuhan
> discussing a project before he passed in the summer. M. McLuhan wrote of
> the global village in 1964, earlier and later, and wonder why it is listed
> as 2008? I will look up those references.
>
> As an aside, McLuhan was trying to help promote Eric Havelock’s book *Preface
> to Plato* into a motion picture/movie in 1968. Havelock made good mention
> of McLuhan in chapter 3 of his book *The Muse Learns to Write *1986.
>
>
> Atila
>
> On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 4:19 PM Gary Richmond <gary.richm...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> List,
>>
>> The Brazilian Peirce scholar and semiotician, Vinicius Romanini, brought
>> this this recently published and pertinent article to my attention. It
>> employs Peircean concepts and methodology. Here's the abstract:
>>
>>
>> https://content.iospress.com/articles/education-for-information/efi180209?fbclid=IwAR1f_XKsqHnHA_3C9eFYUxxmtXBDpV5H0fliXLqqXKEZ1ZjBvjL9N43Y_uI
>>
>> Disinformation, dystopia and post-reality in social media: A
>> semiotic-cognitive perspective
>>
>> Article type: Research Article
>>
>> Authors: Guarda, Rebeka F.
>> <https://content.iospress.com/search?q=author%3A%28%22Guarda,%20Rebeka%20F.%22%29>
>> | Ohlson, Marcia P.
>> <https://content.iospress.com/search?q=author%3A%28%22Ohlson,%20Marcia%20P.%22%29>
>> | Romanini, Anderson V.
>> <https://content.iospress.com/search?q=author%3A%28%22Romanini,%20Anderson%20V.%22%29>
>> *
>> <https://content.iospress.com/articles/education-for-information/efi180209?fbclid=IwAR1f_XKsqHnHA_3C9eFYUxxmtXBDpV5H0fliXLqqXKEZ1ZjBvjL9N43Y_uI#*>
>>
>> Affiliations: School of Communications and Arts, University of São
>> Paulo, SP, Brazil
>>
>> Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author: Anderson V. Romanini, School
>> of Communications and Arts, University of São Paulo, Brazil. E-mail:
>> vinicius.roman...@usp.br.
>>
>> Abstract: Based on recent political happenings, such as Brexit (UK) and
>> the election of Donald Trump (USA), it has become clear that political
>> marketing has been using ‘Big Data’ intensively. Information gathered from
>> social media networks is organized into digital environments and has the
>> power to determine the outcome of elections, plebiscites and popular
>> consultations. New advertising and persuasion mechanisms have been created
>> to undermine the reliability of traditional mass media communication that
>> are familiar to the general audience. Consequently, ‘fake news’ and
>> ‘alternative facts’ have emerged along with the notion of ‘post-truth’,
>> which defines the state of affairs represented in public opinion that has
>> been contaminated by these strategies. Based on the pragmatic-semiotic
>> concepts developed by Peirce, such as belief, mental habits, controlled
>> action, final opinion, truth, and reality, we argue that the ‘global
>> village’, (McLuhan, 2008) may be at a dangerous fork in the road. This
>> author’s ‘scientific method’ was elaborated based on (1) the concatenation
>> of hypotheses, (2) the deduction of its consequences, and (3) the design of
>> experiences and aims to test our beliefs against our results which would be
>> critically evaluated by communities of researchers. This fork in the road,
>> which rapidly evolves as a dystopia built and reaffirmed by the spread of
>> disinformation on social networks, points towards a ‘post-reality’ that can
>> represent an illusory and brief comfort zone for those who live in it but
>> may also represent a tragedy with no turning back for our entire
>> civilization.
>>
>> Keywords: Disinformation, fake news, belief, public opinion, pragmatism,
>> Peirce
>>
>> DOI: 10.3233/EFI-180209
>>
>> Journal: Education for Information
>> <https://content.iospress.com/journals/education-for-information>, vol.
>> Pre-press, no. Pre-press, pp. 1-13, 2018
>> Published: 15 October 2018
>>
>> *Gary Richmond*
>> *Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
>> *Communication Studies*
>> *LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*
>>
>> *718 482-5690*
>>
>
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