The Tucson, Arizona shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and other defenseless victims has stimulated a lot of debate about the civility or lack thereof in media and in politics in general. The very suggestion that a connection exists between the two has generated much rancorous dialogue. I find it fascinating that this type of connection was predicted by the 2oth century communications guru, Marshall McCluhan years before the invention of the internet. Forty years before it was even possible, McCluhan warned in The Gutenberg Galaxy that a medium defined by “participation and a multiplicity of inputs” might have dire consequences.( www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/books/review/Carr-t.html?scp) “When people get closer together, they get more and more savage, impatient with one another”, McCluhan wrote before his death in 1980.
What? You don’t believe me? What are you some kind of a liberal, neo-conservative #%/$*?
By Sam DelPresto
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