The new overkill is simply an extension of our nervous system into a total ecological service environment. Such a service environment can liquidate or terminate its beneficiaries as naturally as it sustains them. (p.152)
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Extending our senses into technology creates systems that can harm us as easily as they help.
- In plain terms
- Tech environments can destroy users like nature does.
- What can you take from it?
- Be aware tech can turn against you.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Who controls your tech environment?
- What if the system fails?
Another view
Many technologies are designed to be safe and beneficial.
More from Marshall McLuhan
Although meaningless in a tribal context, numbers and statistics assume mythic and magical qualities of infallibility in literate societies. (p.114)
Permalink to quote #27 The automated presidential surrogate is the superlative nobody. (p.157)
Permalink to quote #29 Computers can do better than ever what needn't be done at all. Making sense is still a human monopoly. (p.109)
Permalink to quote #26
Related quotes
We have designed our civilization based on science and technology and at the same time arranged things so that almost no one understands anything at all about …
Carl SaganCarl Sagan quote #4 I, for one, bet on science as helping us. I have yet to see how it fundamentally endangers us, even with the H-bomb lurking about. Science has given us more li…
Philip Kindred DickPhilip Kindred Dick quote #6 Anything you don't understand is dangerous until you do understand it.
Larry NivenLarry Niven quote #1