Smartphones evolved from McLuhan’s media extensions into prosthetic parts of the body

Evidence

Whether Apple was truly serving its users and business model and only incidentally exploiting Google’s Achilles’ heel is a matter of debate. But there is no doubt that the sentiment of revolt against the shabbiness of the mobile web was coming from an even deeper and broader place. Writing in the 1960s, Marshall McLuhan described the media as “technological extensions of man”; in the 2010s it had become more obvious than ever that technologies like the smartphone are not merely extensions but technological prosthetics, enhancements of our own capacities, which, by virtue of being constantly attached to us or present on our bodies, become a part of us. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1131

Categorization

• DEFINE: Contrasts McLuhan’s ‘extensions’ with the newer notion of technologies as bodily prosthetics.
• XREF: connects to: Tele-technologies dismantle the body’s unified synthesis of action, perception, perceptibility, and vulnerability — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 953; From Marx to McLuhan technology is theorized as an extension of the body — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 362; The phone is a sensory-deprivation chamber compared with the embodied world (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• From Marx to McLuhan technology is theorized as an extension of the body #expands (0.85) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 362
• Modern communications technology has fundamentally reshaped human consciousness and social relations #expands (0.80)
• The smartphone created a new social norm of perpetual device attention. #expands (0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1039
• Tele-technologies dismantle the body’s unified synthesis of action, perception, perceptibility, and vulnerability #complicates (0.78) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 953
• The phone is a sensory-deprivation chamber compared with the embodied world #complicates (0.75)
• Smartphone screens monopolize attention formation toward a single engineered kind #expands (0.75) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 201
• Phone addiction stems from engineered infrastructure, not personal weakness #expands (0.74) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 328
• Attention harvesting grows more sensitive the closer devices get to the body #complicates (0.72) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1131