fourworlds

“We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us” Marshall McLuhan

It seems to me that those of us who’ve come to depend on technology for memory support are just the leading wave of a long tide of human adaptation. The memorization skills that were developed over generations of life within oral cultures have been heading towards an evolutionary dead end since the invention of writing.

I like Marshall McLuhan’s perspective that each tool/invention/technology can be viewed an enhancement of a biologically-based human capability. The invention of the phonetic alphabet by the Ancient Greeks extended memory from the brain to the page. It emancipated humans from the rigid psychological structures required to transmit cultural knowledge through the generations. It therefore freed the present from the past and set the stage for the development of abstract thinking.

I wonder what unforeseen human potential will be freed by our increasingly pervasive connection to web-based repositories, social networks and virtual environments?