"The electric gives powerful voices to the weak and suffering, and sweeps aside the bureacratic specialism and job descriptions of the mind tied to a manual of instructions. The "human interest" dimension is simply that of immediacy of participation in the experience of others that occurs with instant information" (254).
It is as if McLuhan is talking about how the Internet has transformed the media rather than the telegraph. New Media by nature is about human interests. It is about the reaction rather than the action itself. McLuhan talks about the immediacy of the telegraph and it was perceived by literary sophisticates as distasteful. It reminded me a lot of Murdoch's attitude toward aggregators. It is the attitude of those who feel left behind by a medium they don't understand and would rather not try to understand. The difference between the effect of the Internet and the telegraph, I think, is that the telegraph was a compressional force. It forced different mediums to come together (i.e. The Associated Press example). The Internet, I think, is expansional. It forces companies like Google to expand beyond its original intention, beyond its original specialization. And the nature of the Internet itself (inter connecting networks world-wide) makes it the perfect medium for organizations to stretch beyond itself and link multiple outlets together, which creates sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc and aggregators like CT Report. That, of course, explains a lot about how my generation prefers to communicate. We constantly want to be connected, yet have no idea how to do it with our senses alone.
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