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Review of Andrey Mir's The Digital Reversal: Media, Social Media, AI, and the Fate of Humanity

Andrey Mir's The Digital Reversal, building on his recent series of books with pathbreaking analyses, is so far ahead of any other scholarly work in understanding what's going on in the media world, and hence the world per se, today, that it hurts, even as it brilliantly elucidates. I'm in strong disagreement with Mir's insistence in his final chapter that humanity as we know it is inevitably doomed by the media evolution he so astutely traces and explains, but I nonetheless am sure that if you want to know where we are and perhaps what to do about this immensely difficult world we inhabit in 2025, you can do nothing better than read The Digital Reversal.

The foundation of Mir's book, the basis of its title, comes from Marshall McLuhan's "Laws of the Media," which postulate that all technologies have four modes of existence: they amplify or enhance some aspect of communication and life, they obsolesce an aspect of life that was previously amplified, they retrieve an aspect that had previously been obsolesced, and ultimately they reverse or flip into some new kind of technology that has some relation to the original but is markedly different. Since I first began thinking about the Laws of Media or Tetrad and published a Preface to one of McLuhan's first articles about the Laws in 1977, I've found radio and television to be a clear example of how the Laws work: Radio amplifies speech, music, news, verbal communication by sending it instantly across great distances with no wires; obsolesces printed newspapers and wired telephones; retrieves face-to-face verbal communication; and reverses into television. Now, lest you think that there's not much difference in the impact of radio and television, consider that radio made possible not only FDR and Churchill, but Hitler and Stalin, whereas the political impact of television brought us JFK, Reagan, and Obama, and, on the other side of the world, Gorbachev. That's because radio boosted unseen power, in contrast to television, which showed us what the would-be people of power looked liked. Nixon lost the television debates with JFK and thereby the election because Nixon looked sweaty and shifty in his reaction shots on TV while Kennedy looked cool and comfortable and in control.

Mir's Digital Reversal, then, delves into something that happened to us -- is still happening to us, right now -- after the revolution in personal computers and the Internet in the 1980s and 1990s. The reversal happened quickly, virtually overnight, if we look at the time it took the printing press to make its mark, and then electronic media, and every media shift that came before those two momentous developments. "The blogosphere, cellphones, and tablets already belongto media archaeology," Mir correctly notes. And he proceeds to tell us the results of this reversal. Building upon his Postjournalism and the Death of Newspapers (2020), Mir notes that the search for truth and the goal of accuracy in traditional journalism has been supplanted by the quest for Likes and Shares online and the self-affirmation they provide. Joining this reversal is what Mir calls the "emancipation of authorship" and I call "consumers becoming producers" (in New New Media, 2009), with conservatives and reactionaries joining progressives online in the 2010s, coalescing into MAGA aggrieved Americans and outright lies, electing Donald Trump in 2016, falling short in 2020 (probably due to COVID), and putting Trump back in office in last year's election.

But Mir expects this digital reversal to do far worse than Trump to humanity. After detailing the impact of the digital reversal on everything from how we know -- epistemology -- to how we sense and perceive, in a philosophic tour-de-force that Immanuel Kant would have welcomed, Mir turns to an issue that everyone in and out of academe seems to be talking and writing about these days: AI. And his view on that, I'm happy and unhappy to say, explicitly builds upon my "anthropotropic" theory of media evolution, that I came up with and developed in my 1978 doctoral dissertation, Human Replay: A Theory of the Evolution of Media: as media evolve, they attempt under our invention to replicate as much of our natural modes of communication as possible, as the media extend our communication beyond our original, unmediated modes. Writing extended our voice beyond its immediate surroundings, but sacrificed the pitch and all the acoustic characteristics of speech. Telephone and radio eventually corrected that, but at the expense of what we see when someone talks to us face to face, in person. Television corrected or "replayed" that crucial missing nonverbal visual aspect of speech.

Mir argues, regarding AI, that it will be responsible for the greatest flip of all: human replay will flip into human replacement. That is, the AI that we invented will replace us, merge with us into something in the AI's favor, in the very near future. Among the many casualties, we won't go physically out beyond the planet into space anymore. "Deep space exploration—anything beyond Mars (and even that’s unlikely)—will never happen. There’s no real practical need for it" because "why bother escaping polluted, annoying Earth for Mars if you can escape into an induced, endlessly modifiable reality? Chasing interstellar travel is like staring into the rearview mirror." (My response: We'll keep going physically out into space, because we'll never find out what we're doing here in this universe from down here on this planet -- see Touching the Face of the Cosmos: On the Intersection of Space Travel and Religion for more.)

But not going out beyond this planet is the least of Mir's apocalyptic vision for the immediate future, which "will occur sometime in the middle of this century". Mir writes, "humans themselves are becoming digital—so far just metaphorically, but soon literally, and not in the literate sense of the word." Not just metaphorically? Meaning, what? That sometime around 2050, if I live that long, that my blood cells, DNA, or whatever will literally turn into some kind of digital code, which will replace my self-awareness? Mir says about Douglas Rushkoff and his book Team Human: "he takes a moral stance and insists on people’s ability—and even duty—to seize back control of media evolution". Who says it's out of control, let alone totally out of control? Trump's ascension is drastically not enough to support this claim. True, he was elected U. S. President once, but he also was defeated once, and the first time he won, he nonetheless lost the popular vote. A far more likely explanation for his success in 2024 was Biden's disastrous performance in their June 2024 debate (see my continually updated McLuhan in an Age of Social Media for more -- it makes the point that maybe debates have outlived their usefulness).

Mir's final paragraph -- all his paragraphs are deliberately the length of Tweets -- advises “'Endure and abstain' is literacy’s last resort, futile but noble." But as Jim Bishop wrote in New York Journal-American on March 14, 1959: "The future is an opaque mirror." Mir is flawless, perceptive, ingenious, poetic when he writes about the past up to the present. But like any other mortal, he cannot possibly predict the future with any acumen, certainly not 25 years from now. By then, this very book, The Digital Reversal, may well have woken enough of us up, so we don't sleepwalk into this AI nightmare.

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Published on August 14, 2025 11:28

Dexter: Resurrection 1.6: What's Half of Gemini

Another excellent episode of Dexter: Resurrection -- 1.6

[And there will be spoilers ahead ....]

First, let's talk a little about Batista. He tells the NYPD detectives -- Wallace and Oliva -- exactly what's going on, to a tee. I have to say, much as I really like Batista, this means only one thing: Batista will have to die. He knows way too much about Dexter and how he operates. Whether Dexter will kill him, or a possible long shot, Harrison, or maybe Batista will just get hit by a bus, he'll have to go. A season 2 beginning with Dexter behind bars just doesn't strike me as likely,

But speaking of which, I was sorry last week to see Mia arrested, and I was even more sorry this week to see her permanently gone. Shows the depth of danger Dexter will be facing once Prater is on to him.

And there were two notable things about Dexter's righteous kill tonight. First, I liked that the body of Dexter's victim was a shower curtain away from discovery (by Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine as Blessing -- starring at this same time in Smoke). Second, the fact that the Gemini killer was so named because the serial killers were identical twins was a cool twist in the serial killer narrative genre. One of the best of the many good things about Dexter: Resurrection is that it pulls out so many stops.

And it does this with a winning attention to detail, like Doake's photo as the Bay Harbor Butcher, and Dexter's face when he sees this. Michael C. Hall not only hasn't lost a beat in his current performance as Dexter, I'd say he's better than ever.

Reviews of Season 2: Dexter's Back: A Preview and Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out of This? and The Plot Gets Tighter and Sharper and Dex, Doakes, and Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and All's ... Well

See also about Season 1: First Place to Dexter

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Published on August 08, 2025 18:23

Foundation 3.5: Cleaving Closer to Asimov's Trilogy

Gaal's words to Dawn near the end of Foundation 3.5 say it all:

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

Hari Seldon's Plan did not account for such a strong Empire at this stage of Galactic evolution. Meta-note: Of course it didn't. There was no Cleonic triumvirate DNA-enabled clonal rule of the Empire in Asmov's trilogy or its sequels. So, in effect, Gaal is speaking for Asimov here.

And we can see at this point of the third season of this television adaptation of Asimov's masterwork now playing out on Apple TV+, that the forces of television, Asimov, and narrative logic are giving the clonal triumvirate quite a beating at this point: Dawn has been cast out in a space suit into outer space, unkempt Day who has already all but abdicated has fled the Trantor scene, and back home on Tranter, Dusk is just about set to move into death to keep the Empiric rotation going.

Now, of course, not only is none of this written in Seldon's Plan, none of it is written in stone. As I often say in my reviews, unless you see a character's head blown off or body blasted to smithereens, there's a chance he or she is still alive (see 24 for many examples). Someone or some force could rescue Dawn from deep space; Day could get homesick and come home; Demerzel could decide to give the current Dusk more time for existence. But the movement towards a weakened Empire, as called for in Seldon's Plan, is undeniable.

Meanwhile ... in episode 3.5 we learn that Magnifico's music may be a weapon used in the Mule's capturing and control of people's emotions. My friend Joel McKinnon thinks Magnifico may actually be The Mule, and Magnifico is controlling the cardboard villain who has announced himself as The Mule. This is an interesting theory, but it would have to account for what we saw when the villainess Mule -- that is, The Mule with hair -- actually did his palpably fatal damage on Kalgan.

One thing is sure: there'll be some powerful, game-changing events ahead in this third season of Foundation.

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Published on August 08, 2025 09:26

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.4: Lots of Laughs and Serious Business

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Well, "The Trouble with Tribbles," an episode from the original Star Trek series, written by David Gerrold, is generally aptly recognized as the funniest episode in all of Star Trek's iterations. I'd say that honor now has another contestant in Star Trek: Strange New World's episode 3.4 on Paramount Plus.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

The serious part of the plot involves a holodeck that could end up killing its inhabitants. Now, as far as we knew back in the 1960s, the holodeck wasn't around in TOS -- it was introduced in TNG in the 1980s. And now we know the reason: the holodeck in this Strange New Worlds prequel to TOS can kill if you don't treat it right. And, before that, it can lock you inside it if you don't solve the mystery you asked it to solve, that is, the reason you wanted to walk into the holodeck in the first place.

So that was one of the three serious parts of episode 3.4. I'll tell you the second and third, after I go over the funny parts. These all center around the cancellation of a faux TOS -- The Last Frontier -- after only one season. The was a send-up of TOS in more ways than one, but fundamentally because TOS was cancelled after three seasons.* But unlike TOS, which was one of the best shows ever on television, and deserved to run at least 20 or more years, TLF was idiotic, and it was literally science fiction that it wasn't cancelled after the first few episodes.

But the clips we were treated to in episode 3.4 of SNW was first-class comedy in all kinds of ways. Here are some of my favorite:

"I'm an actor, not a doctor!" The actor (Ortegas) who plays a doctor on TLF says defensively, a nice nod to McCoy on TOS,"My lines and my skirts have been getting shorter and shorter with every episode," (Chapel) advises."social commentary with rubber masks and buried mask -- you know, science fiction" (Uhura) skewers science fiction! And the funniest: I don't know, but to me, (Pike)'s character Bellows looks Al Franken. Would you agree? Now, as to the other serious parts: that would be learning that Spock is a descendant of Arthur Conan Doyle (through Spock's mother, obviously, which explains Spock's super logical mind as not just inherited from his Vulcan father), and the tango that La'an and Spock do at the end, and the kiss that followed. Maybe it was a very good thing after all that Chapel disappointed Spock so deeply ...
*See my essay “How Star Trek Liberated Television” in Boarding the Enterprise, ed. David Gerrold & Robert J. Sawyer (Dallas, TX: BenBella Books), pp. 185-196, for more.

See also Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.1-3.3: Gorn, Spock & Chapel, and The Walking Dead

And see also Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2.1: Nurse Chapel ... 2.2: Racism and Sexism in the Courtroom ... 2.3: Time Travel and Alternate Universes ... 2.5: Chapel and Spock ... 2.6: Jimmy Kirk ... 2.7: Pike, Spock, and Boimler ... 2.8: Ethically Wrenching ... 2.9: The Operetta ... 2.10: Young Scotty and Five Other Great Things about This Season 2 Finale

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Published on August 06, 2025 18:02

Podcast: Life & Death of a 20th Century Troubadour: Paul Levinson and Josh Meyrowitz about Phil Ochs

Welcome to Light On Light Though episode 414, the complete "radio documentary" on WFDU-FM from 1977 -- "Life & Death of a 20th Century Troubadour" -- in which Josh Meyrowitz and I discuss the life, death, and timeless impact of Phil Ochs and his music.

Check out this episode!

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Published on August 04, 2025 14:55

Life & Death of a 20th Century Troubadour: Paul Levinson and Josh Meyrowitz about Phil Ochs

Welcome to Light On Light Though episode 414, the complete "radio documentary" on WFDU-FM from 1977 -- "Life & Death of a 20th Century Troubadour" -- in which Josh Meyrowitz and I discuss the life, death, and timeless impact of Phil Ochs and his music.

Relevant links:

Lou Canto media conversions Marilyn and Monet

Check out this episode!

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Published on August 04, 2025 14:55

Dexter: Resurrection 1.5: Father and Son and the Watch

Another top-notch episode of Dexter: Resurrection -- 1.5 -- which featured a much-needed reunion and establishment of some long-awaited rapport between Dexter and Harrison.

[And there will be spoilers ahead ... ]

The key to the reunion was Dexter finally telling Harrison how his mother came to be murdered, and how Dexter's mistakes in dealing with the Trinity Killer came to that. The Harry in Dexter's mind witnesses the event, and tells Dexter -- and us -- how deeply he approves. Dexter needs to kill, but he needs his son to live, and that's of course what Harry most wants for his son and grandson.

But the story of how Dexter finally got his son to sit down and listen to him was also an emotional powerhouse. Dexter, still attracted to Lady Vengeance aka Mia, is even more attracted to killing her when she explains to him that she's moved from just killing rapists (something that makes Dexter feel akin to her) to just killing anyone who suits her as a victim (something that makes Dexter want to kill her, as he would any other killer). When this doesn't happen -- and I'm glad it didn't (as I said a previous review, I think she's a character with possibilities) -- Dexter plants the watch of Harrison's victim (also a rapist) in Mia's apartment, which the cops find after Dexter calls in the police to stop Mia from murdering a guy who isn't a rapist. Get it?

A little complex, but the net result is Dexter and Harrison are on speaking terms, at least for now. And in other news from this episode, I bet Det. Wallace won't buy that the murder-in-the-hotel case is closed, and it was great to see Leslie Stahl as herself in a prime interview with Leon Prater.

Reviews of Season 2: Dexter's Back: A Preview and Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out of This? and The Plot Gets Tighter and Sharper and Dex, Doakes, and Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and All's ... Well

See also about Season 1: First Place to Dexter

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Published on August 01, 2025 15:42

Foundation 3.4: Cleon Knows His PKD

Another superb episode in the third season of Foundation -- 3.4 -- in which the series continues to integrate the Cleon triumvirate story with Asimov's original Foundation trilogy, alternated in many ways but still ringing true enough to Asimov's vision to be expansive rather than smothering of what Asimov put on his pages.

My favorite sliver of a scene has Day chiding Demerzel with a question borrowed and transmuted from Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, brought to the movie screen in 1982 by Ridley Scott as Blade Runner. Day concludes his testy conversation with Demerzel -- he's understandable uncomfortable with her -- with a question, "Do robots dream of wiping their own asses?" Not as elegant as Philip K. Dick, but, hey, a lot of years have passed since he came up with that title.

And it was good to hear Demerzel talk about Asimov's three laws of robotics, and then the zeroth law, as she struggles to understand how she has evolved, who and what she's become and must do. She's an advanced piece of work, indeed. Not only can she think and talk with her head physically detached from her body, she can navigate the complexities of the universe with the best of 'em -- e.g., Hari and Gaal -- and knows that the Second Foundation is the best way of stopping The Mule.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

Speaking of which -- the Second Foundation and The Mule -- I actually like that Pricher wasn't converted by The Mule (who did manage to read his mind), and is literally in league with Gaal. This is a significant departure from Asimov's story, and I think it's a good one. I've always been at least slightly unhappy about Pricher's conversion to The Mule all those years before their story was streaming on Apple TV+, and it will be fun to see where this twist goes.

Gaal continues to play a vastly more important role in this rendition of the Foundation saga than her male counterpart in the trilogy. Not only is she in bed with Pricher, she has intellectually seduced Dawn, and drawn him into the cause of the Second Foundation. As I said in a previous review, this realignment of the major players in the story of The Mule, in which powerful elements of the Empire are joining the Foundations in their desperate looming war with that demon manipulator of minds, is refreshing and promises some major unexpected developments. As became clear back in the days back when television was just being born as a mass medium, Seldon's psychohistory can only go so far.

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Published on August 01, 2025 09:21

Smoke 1.6: A Perfect Narrative Structure

I usually wait until the end of the season before I post a second review of a TV series for which I reviewed the first episode or two after the series began. But episode 1.6 of Smoke on Apple TV+ was so remarkable, with such a perfect narrative structure, that I had to say a few words about it now.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

Most of this episode is devoted to current and former arson investigators closing in on the disquieting truth, to say the least, that Dave Gudsen (brilliantly played by Taron Egerton), an arson investigator, is himself one of the two arsonists literally lighting up the town, culminating with his last defender, Police Chief Harvey Englehart (well played by Greg Kinnear) finally coming to this conclusion himself.

But as the lights are about to go out for Gudsen, he realizes that Freddy Fasano (brilliantly played by Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine) is the other arsonist. Gudsen rushes to the house which Fasano is about to burn down with him and his latest victim inside, and stops Fasano in his tracks with a fire extinguisher. In other words: at the very moment that Gudsen is about to be denounced and arrested as one of the arsonists, he's become a life-saving hero, in a brilliantly balanced story in which Gudsen is hero and anti-hero at the same time.

His personal portrayal -- his depiction as a man -- is noteworthy and perfectly balanced too. Earlier in the episode, we find him unable to consummate the encounter with his ex-wife in bed. At the end of episode, we find him standing triumphant, a superhero, fire extinguisher in hand -- having prevented the blaze and driving Fasano to the ground -- and very clearly aroused.

An episode eminently worthy of an Emmy.

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Published on July 27, 2025 10:55

And So It Goes: The Extraordinary Billy Joel Documentary

My wife and I saw the second part of the extraordinary Billy Joel documentary last night, after seeing the first part last week. I've been a big fan of Billy Joel since "Piano Man". I thought and still think "Only the Good Die Young" was a masterpiece song, same for "Say Goodbye to Hollywood," and same for "Uptown Girl" which also has a masterpiece video. In fact, I can't really think of any Billy Joel recording I don't like, and the same only applies only to a dozen or so other artists beginning with The Beatles.

But as to his life, the person who wrote and recorded all those great songs, I never knew too much. I knew of course he'd been married to Christie Brinkley. I knew he'd been touring for a while with Elton John -- another piano man -- but that ended on an acrimonious note (they later reconciled). I heard him a few times on The Beatles Channel on Sirius/XM Radio -- talking about The Beatles and playing their records -- and I knew about his recent long run in Madison Square Garden. My wife and I were going to a lot of concerts prior to COVID, and I had in my mind that we should go so see Billy Joel, but that didn't (yet) happen.

But I didn't know much about his personal life, and how that related to his music, and And So It Goes -- directed by Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin -- does a brilliant job of telling that true story. Here are some of my takeaways (in no order of importance, because all are important):

Billy Joel found writing lyrics somewhat of a burden. Given that his lyrics were uniquely descriptive, setting scenes and telling stories that seemed to splash out as naturally as the rain, I (as a songwriter) found that especially interesting.Billy Joel's manager, his one-time brother-in-law, robbed him of millions of dollars. As is clear in this documentary, Joel, in addition to being incredibly talented, is also highly intelligent, so I found that surprising as well. It's well known that doo-wop groups were regularly robbed of their royalties by record companies in the 1950s, but Joel's misfortunates happened 50 years later.Billy Joel always loved classical music. (His father, who abandoned his family when Billy was a boy, was a classically trained pianist.) I knew, of course, that Jeff Lynne and ELO did/do, but Billy Joel always seemed firmly rooted in rock 'n' roll.Billy Joel has always been quick to denounce his tone-deaf critics in the media. Good for him.The musical stars that spoke up for Billy Joel in the documentary lit up the screen: Paul McCartney (who said Billy's "I Love You Just the Way You Are" was his answer when he was asked which song did he wish that he had written), Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Garth Brooks, Nas, Sting, and Pink)Billy Joel has been beset by demons all of his life -- which makes his extraordinary accomplishments even more impressive.All too often, these kinds of eye-opening, definitive documentaries happen after the subject is no longer with us. Good for Billy Joel for giving that to us now. His active participation in And So It Goes is itself a testament to what a mind-blowing talent he has.
Creds to HBO for putting this on! As I my wife mentioned, this is the second great documentary on HBO this summer, after My Mom Jayne.

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Published on July 26, 2025 14:48