I’ll warn you ahead of time that this post is pretty much for me. I’m such a selfish blogger.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about four questions we should ask of our technologies. Andy Crouch provides five more:
(1) What does this cultural artifact assume about the way the world is?
(2) What does this cultural artifact assume about the way the world should be?
(3) What does this cultural artifact make possible [that wasn’t before]?
(4) What does this cultural artifact make impossible (or at least very difficult)?
(5) What new forms of culture are created in response to this artifact?
-Culture Making, pp. 29-30ff
You could remember these with MAR:
- Make possible/impossible
- Assume is/should be
- Result
Now let’s be reminded of the four basic questions of Marshall McLuhan (as summarized by Mark Federman):
We used RODE to remember those questions:
Revive, Opposite, Displace, Extend:
- What does the technology revive?
- What is is the opposite that it may revert to? (I’m particularly fond of this one)
- What does it displace?
- What does it extend?
I like asking questions; and these are all good ones to ask.
