Amid all these commentaries, I have yet to hear anyone speculate on how the communications media that fueled the Arab revolutions will reshape and define the societies and states that emerge from these uprisings. For much of the 20th century such thinking was the realm of Roman Catholic layman and media critic Marshall McLuhan (1911-80). Any student of McLuhan’s (mostly proven) theories would know this: sooner or later the structures that emerge will be rooted in the technological extension of senses implicit in these communications technologies.
McLuhan’s landmark 1964 book Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man presented his primary thesis: the dominant communications medium in any society unconsciously shapes our psychic and social lives irrespective of the content presented through that medium. His still-famous dictum was “The medium is the message.” His insights provoke a number of questions about current events in North Africa. How does mobile phone texting extend our natural capacities? How does it fit into the mélange of graphic and typographic communications technologies used in these cultures? What values are embedded implicitly in these technologies and the process of interacting with them? How does this reshape their consciousness and societies?
[blockquote] Just as the movable type printing press drove the rise of the Renaissance and Reformation and the eventual rise of Western democracies, ubiquitous texting on mobile phones will have a similar effect, but with a new individual and immediate twist. [/blockquote]
Interesting analogy.
The partial success of the Reformation was due in large part to the widespread availability of printing presses, plus the fact that these were in private ownership, so not susceptible to official censorship.
Much the same issues had arisen 100 years before, but the spread of information could be controlled by the powers-that-be. This enabled the Council of Constance to unleash terrible persecution to silence and terrorise the followers of Wyclif and Hus at the beginning of the 15th century. But by the early 16th century it was no longer possible for the authorities to control the broad and swift spread of information among ordinary people. Documents like Luther’s theses could be spread across continental Europe in a fortnight.