A fly in the ointment?

Abstract

Is this the crisis of culture we experience today, or should we consider it a victory, a glorious deconstruction of metaphysical culture? McLuhan’s prophetic vision about the historical phases of orality–literate culture–secondary orality can be interpreted as events of a Hegelian triad. The process should be about the alienation and withdrawal of the Mind: in literate culture the Mind took an objectified, outer and estranged form, that of metaphysical culture. Today, in the open, interactive media of Web 2 we can take possession of the Mind again and free it from the rigid hierarchies. One should be eager to take part in such a universal reform, but somehow, it seems, there is a fly in the ointment.