Gleeson on Modalities

"You mean my whole fallacy’s wrong?" - Marshall McLuhan

This is especially interesting as these modalities move toward real coordinated action. The enterprise equivalent has of course, been there. Which is the action as something to report as opposed to the action itself. Such behavior has led to management by syntax, procedural cargo cultism, an sycophant pathology.

It has also lead toward extraordinary self delusion, and this tech talk humorously identifies that we all engage in this behavior. The fact that we are consciously creating a narrative to make our history seem more exciting, our actions more "real" than reality itself, our legacies in memory before they have even gelled, should make us reconsider a variety of activities, as well as give us pause whenever we read a tweet, a post, or a corporate report.

How does one get back to the essence of the act? We ought maintain awareness of the potential negative feedback loops that architectures employing these modalities could potentially imply. But we must also recognize how modalities have encouraged such failures today. Power Points claiming victory are the same as twittpics describing unromantic realities that end up forming the basis of @replies from girlfriends gushing over how romantic that event must have been.

Our leaders then, need to act as if they were on West Wing, or the polls will suffer and their power to actually act as leaders will wane, and we in turn need to be the stars of our own reality TV series. And so now we are caught in this strange loop, between McLuhan "where the medium is the message" and Shakespeare.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

h/t Mark Baur