(2018-07-31) Robb McLuhan on War

John Robb on Marshall McLuhan on War. Source: "War and Peace in the Global Village", 1968. Marshall McLuhan envisioned WW3 as a vast online conflict very similar to what we are currently experiencing. A conflict between the new identities and thinking patterns spawned by rapid technological change and those still clinging to traditional identities and patterns.

In 1968, Marshall McLuhan predicted:
"World War 3 is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.""

This insight is on point

McLuhan’s thinking, writing, and speaking style is both enigmatic and provocative. He does this purposely, to make the reader/listener uncomfortable (like a Zen koan) in order to force them out of the comfort of their current frame of reference and make them aware of a larger reality they might not have words to describe yet.

our new technologies transform us as we learn to use them to change the world around us

the technologies we invent are are best seen as extensions of our bodies and these extensions cause subtle, but substantial, changes in 4 perception and thought. Changes that radically transform the way we see ourselves, communicate with each other, and organize our societies.

this transformation is painful and worse: we aren’t fully aware of what is happening to us while the transformation is occurring

The Medium is the Warfare

Changes in the dominant technological medium would create profound changes in identity -- how we see ourselves. This new identity will demand equally profound changes in how society should be organized

This, naturally, creates a rift between those who identify themselves in traditional ways and those who identify themselves in the new way. Worse: these two groups don’t even think in the same way.

Social networking (Facebook added 670,000 active users a day over the last 12 months) is now the dominant technological medium. It’s changing us even as we learn to how to use it to ‘beneficial’ effect

How are how Twitter, Facebook, SMS, YouTube, Instagram, etc. changing our perceptions and thinking patterns? Or, more specifically, how is it changing us in ways that impact politics and warfare? Here’s my top three.

Pattern Matchers

It has turned us into pattern matchers

We are bombarded with vast volumes of information arriving in parallel. It’s simply impossible to process all of that information in a meaningful and critical way (like we do when we read a report or book).

The only thing we can do in response to this voluminous flow, is to let the information wash over us. This means we can only see it in the gestalt (as a unit) and the only way to generate personal value from it from pattern matching

we constantly scan, looking for bits of information that neatly fit into the patterns we have already adopted as our own.

It narrows us: we only engage with new information and conversations that fit into the patterns we already support. It makes us fast, but superficial: we pass immediate judgement on events and information based on the appearance of a fit with our adopted patterns. It also makes us inflexible: new information that calls into doubt an earlier judgement is considered a challenge to our adopted patterns and not the event itself. Since these adopted patterns are seen as essential to online survival, this new information is immediately rejected.

Aggressive and Expansionary

Social networking is both ephemeral and permanent

This combination makes us both aggressive and expansionary

We spend our time aggressively scanning/searching for new information (links, pictures, videos, etc.) that we can consume and share with others (for permanence). New information that expands the boundaries of “our patterns.” (Is that inconsistent? I'm confused.)

We constantly react negatively to information that doesn’t fit “our patterns” and we harass supporters of patterns we disagree with.

As we invest in these patterns, the older, traditional forms of identity fall away (national, religious, party, etc.). They are replaced by plethora of new identities

based on loyalty to newly derived online patterns (#resistance, #insurgency, #maga, #abolishICE, etc.). These patterns become the narratives that bind us to new micro-tribes and micro-identities.

Global Villagers

Social networking crams us together. It radically reduces our proximity to everyone else in the world

As villagers, we are focused on everyone else’s business. We want to monitor what they do and what they say. In turns us into gossips

We strictly enforce norms of behavior, speech, and belief. We become busybodies, prudes, and angry neighbors. (see "Extreme Others Become Visible" node at (2017-02-15) MindMap CultureWar SocialMedia Economy)

We become angry and reactive

Extreme proximity makes it impossible to ignore the things that offend us -- even though it is easy to block/unsub, we don’t. This mindset bleeds over into the real world.

Where are these changes taking us?

McLuhan's formulation suggests the following framework for a coming global struggle/war/conflict

believed that electronic media, since it is an extension of our mind/nervous system, is driving us towards extreme integration (the Global Village and beyond).

This frame creates two sides. A group of people who would attempt to dominate the emerging centralized construct and those who would disrupt it -- in an attempt to preserve existing autonomy/individuality until another technological medium less hostile to it arrives. The integrators and disruptors. (Is "disrupt" the right word here, vs "block/resist"? Note he's thinking of the BlueTribe as "integrators", so yeah I suppose the RedTribe groups like 4chan are disrupting...)

McLuhan, for his part, offered a third alternative, almost offhand. He said: “in order for us to live with ourselves in such depth, in such instant feedback situations, we have to understand everything... we (will) need to take over the total human (social) environment as an artifact.” In short, he suggested that in order to survive this integration without killing ourselves in the process, we will need to learn how to moderate/smooth/ease the intimate social interactions of 8 billion people. There’s one approach that has already demonstrated a potential to do that: a social AI. (GenAI?)