Idolization of Technology
Marshall McLuhan , Understanding Media,
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
one of the greatest future threats to liberal democracy was society being caught unprepared by an advancing technology that changes social conditions, so that people find themselves “in a situation which they didn’t foresee and doing all sorts of things they didn’t want to do.”
while the user of media is distracted by its content, he is more susceptible to the actual agent of its influence— the medium itself. Hence, McLuhan’s most famous aphorism, “The medium is the message.”
Viewing social media through this lens, it seems obvious that it is not the content, or what is said on these very popular platforms where the true power to influence lies, rather it is in the medium itself.