McLuhan for the Digital Age — Understanding TikTok, Instagram and AI

This is NOT an online meeting but an in-person meeting.
Meeting in English.
Reading the book is not required.

During the book discussion the leader of the discussion presents the most interesting parts of the book. The great emphasis is placed on discussion.

Book Description
What would Marshall McLuhan make of TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, dating apps and AI chatbots?

In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man and Laws of Media, Marshall McLuhan offers a way to analyze technologies beyond the content they deliver. Media are not neutral channels: they extend human senses and abilities, reshape our patterns of perception and interaction, and transform the societies in which we use them. The four laws of media — what a medium enhances, obsolesces, retrieves and reverses into when pushed to its limits — provide a framework for exploring these transformations.

McLuhan died before the rise of the Internet, smartphones and social media as we know them today. But what happens when we apply his ideas to technologies he never experienced? Do short-form videos change how we pay attention? Do dating apps turn relationships into a form of browsing and selection? Do AI chatbots bring back conversational forms of communication while changing our relationship with knowledge and expertise?

This discussion is an opportunity to use McLuhan's ideas as tools rather than treat them as doctrines. Together, we will analyze contemporary media, explore their less obvious effects and ask what they might be doing to us — individually and collectively.

Discussion Topics

• What does it mean to say that “the medium is the message,” and how can we apply this idea to digital platforms?
• TikTok and short-form video: What do they enhance, what do they make obsolete, what older forms do they retrieve, and what might they reverse into?
• Instagram: How does turning everyday life into images change identity, social status and relationships?
• YouTube: Does it combine television, books, lectures and conversation — or create a fundamentally new way of learning?
• Dating apps: How does turning potential partners into searchable profiles change attraction, choice and the experience of relationships?
• AI chatbots: Do they retrieve conversational culture and oral forms of knowledge, or create a new relationship between humans and information?
• The Internet as a whole: Does it bring us back toward an oral, interconnected culture, or does it intensify the individualism and fragmentation associated with print?
• What do today's media reveal about the limits of McLuhan's theories? Where do his concepts explain digital life well, and where do they fall short?