Acceleration: Why it is happening in society everywhere?
No it’s not just connectedness, although that’s part of it.
The secret lies behind the true meaning of McLuhan’s quote: ”the medium is the message.”
Most people do not understand the quote, they think that “somehow, the channel supersedes the content in importance” which is not what he meant.
The true message is that: Everyone’s extended self changes society.
Now repeat that aloud and think. Today we can extend ourselves more than ever before. Mobile phones, web sites, Blogs, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, Flickr and so many more are extensions of our own self. Arguably even search itself, so Google and Yahoo Search extend our ability to be us. Actually any device that expands you fits the model.
As our extended person touches more and more pieces of reality, change accelerates, we are part of that change, and we are also affected by it, since all people are now feeding into this system.
The speed of change increases with each new “medium” or device that allows us to once again extend ourselves. And that is why we feel more and more that time shrinks, and change accelerates. Because it does.
Even human interaction and social structures are affected by it. It’s not just technological change, it is real change in human customs and social structures.
I would rephrase McLuhan’s quote this way:
“Our extended self accelerates society’s change.”
And unless a major technological catastrophe happens, this trend will not stop anytime soon.
