Marshall McLuhan was an academic and a writer who coined the term ‘global village’ to explain our new media-connected world. He predicted the internet well before it was invented.
McLuhan introduced the idea of the global village in his book _The Gutenberg Galaxy_ and went on to explore the argument that how we _learn_ fundamentally shapes how we _think_.
For those of us who were taught in the pre-digital age, we primarily learned from printed books. In fact, for the last five hundred years, learning has been primarily from printed books.
McLuhan argued that the ability to learn from books was transformative for human society, launching the Age of Reason and ushering in modern nationalism and industrialism.
By its nature this learning is linear, based on sequential logic. There is a beginning, middle, and end for every book. One idea builds on the next, in order, until there is a conclusion.
Perhaps this type of thinking helped develop that part of our brain that is analytical – the Executive Network.
But this we now know: how we learn shapes how we are wired to think.
But, take a moment and observe: that is not how digital natives learn. Students today have never known a time where there was not the internet filled with information that is all hyperlinked together. In this interconnected environment, there is no single path of learning. Instead, each person's path is self-defined by their Curiosity.
As a result, many of these digital natives don't primarily learn and think linearly. Instead, their learning process is far more multi-dimensional – spatial – as they jump from page to page to create meaning through dynamic triangulation. Something that we might call Trialectical Synthesis.
Perhaps this type of thinking is activating their brain’s Salience Network, that network that creates meaning by synthesizing contrasts.
Activated, the Whole Mind can be unleashed for new capacity for creative thinking.
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