David Brooks: The medium is the message

This looks like the case of a medium becoming obsessed with itself. few bloggers mistake themselves for the whole of human culture, and their obsessions for those of humanity. Rod, if the people who shape your thought are other bloggers, you're losing touch. You're not a thought leader, but one of a number of people isolated on an island of self-regarding writers.

I've scarcely heard of the iPhone, don't know what Kindle is and don't know the names of the bloggers you mention. I don't think that makes me unusual, and I don't think you could make a serious, objective case that these are influential people. I read Richard Dawkins' stuff occasionally, and I he may be on the very of qualifying as an influential thinker. But the idea that the world is heavily influenced by the thoughts and statements of a small number of interconnected people is, to my mind, somewhat suspect. Think again, Rod.

In thinking about your comments on having time to read everything and what you select to read therefore, I spot a paradox that I resolve differently (most of the time). Short of time, I like to wait until the issue is digested so I can get hold of a few long and thoughtful summaries of it. Of course, we are in different professions; no one is waiting anxiously to hear my thoughts on the world at large (thank goodness). I gave up cable news stations entirely (and I used to work at one) for daily papers and daily broadcasts, and it's even better if I can read about an event in the Economist. Even in the realm of opinion, I find that time is required for thought. This is why I think quality magazines will stay around, if online.

I'd like to see a study regarding that proportion of those discussing McLuhan "knowingly" who know the actual title of his famous book, The Medium is the *Massage*:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Medium_is_the_Massage#Origin_of_the_title

David Brooks: "Inventors, artists and writers come and go, but buzz is forever...These tastemakers surf the obscure niches of the culture market bringing back fashion-forward nuggets of coolness for their throngs of grateful disciples."

For passages like that like that, sometimes only Dwight Macdonald will do:

"Parody is disarmed before such candor."

No, Our Mr. Brooks, history didn't change the day the MeMeMePhone appeared. It changed on two occasions.

The first was recalled famously by Virginia Woolf of her sister Vanessa (nee Stephen, like Virginia) Bell, of a scene in at the Bell's Fitzroy Square flat, c. 1907, when Lytton Strachey, "point[ing] his finger at a stain on Vanessa's white dress", enquired: ‘Semen?’" Woolf tells us she thought, "Can one really say it," and then "we burst out laughing. With that one word all barriers of reticence and reserve went down. A flood of the sacred fluid seemed to overwhelm us."

The other world-changer arrived fifty-five or so years later, as recalled by Philip Larkin (I first typed Roth! Mea gulpa - "Dr. Howard, Dr. Freud..." - after The Three Stooges) in "Annus Mirabilis":

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Up to then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.

Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.

So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

I'd like to see a study regarding that proportion of those discussing McLuhan "knowingly" who know the actual title of his famous book, The Medium is the *Massage*:

Not quite sure where you're going with that, Scott. But any such study would surely explain that McLuhan coined the expression "the medium is the message" years before the fortunate accident that produced the newer variant 'probe' "the medium is the massage."

Chapter one of McLuhan's best known work, Understanding Media, the Extensions of Man is entitled "The Medium is the Message" and that chapter, published in 1964, explores the original aphorism/probe in great detail.

And I think McLuhan would probably agree with Brooks' assessment of the iPhone.

McLuhan would observe this discussion with out a point of view!