Digitization and Retribalisation

When thinking of a topic to write about this week on digital media, my mind wandered immediately back to a book I read some time ago, Marshall McLuhan’s the media is the massage. The book contains some startling predictions and insights into the nature and uses of digital technology and how it’s weaving itself into all affairs of human social life might pan out for us in the long term. One such insight was the fact that digital technology, rather than being an extension of the body (arms, legs etc) like the older mechanical technologies is instead an extension of ones consciousness and community, with the former leading to the the extension of the latter through the conjoining of the whole worlds conscious waking thoughts into the same digital network and thereby creating as McLuhan called it, the global village, and In this global village I believe we have become in a sense tribal once again, due to the close, village like proximity engendered by the new level of interconnectedness, itself resembling an older tribal structure more than the individualism of the pre-digital age. A good instance of this which comes to mind is the increase in global awareness for causes and events happening across the globe including regions which were previously of little interest to a global audience. Whether in Yemen, Palestine or Sentinel Island, popular causes in any region of the world now have the potential to attract global concern and attention in a way that would never have been possible before the social media age. This insight from McLuhan is a startling one considering his book was published all the way back in 1967. Another instance from the book supporting this thesis of gradual retribalization that struck me when thinking about digital media and one also argued for by Mcluhan and others is the gradual reversion to an increasingly oral culture, with communication once again moving from the medium of the written word alone to once again utilizing older oral communication techniques, after all audiovisual media like television, youtube and tik tok utilise a greater variety and more holistic methods of communication including more variety in tone, the increasing use of symbolic representation such as emojis for example, the use of the body as a physical tool of communication, as well as the more immediate and participatory nature of these digital communication tools, thus alternating the ways in which we communicate in a way that has been likened to how those in oral cultures have and continue to communicate.