New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication
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A Global Epistemological Crisis
No full textA description is made of the global epistemological crisis arising from the Covid-19 pandemic; the rise of fake news and deep fakes; deniers of science and objectivity and the use of AI in human decision making
The Inner Sensorium in Media Ecology: Justification for Study of Media Ecology
No full text
This essay explores the pertinence of this interior sensorium to media ecology and its role in shaping human identity in a technological age. 
The Parallel of Media and Economic Staples
No full textMarshall McLuhan’s treatment of communication media as economic staples is derived directly from Harold Innis’ treatment of communication media as staples that impact all aspects of a society. Where McLuhan goes beyond Innis is that he regarded all forms of technology, all human artifacts as media and staples that impact all aspects of society, whereas Innis focused on communication media as monopolies of power and society. 
Introducing Adriana Braga’s Video-Article, Howie and the Outsiders
No full textIntroducing Adriana Braga’s Video-Article, Howie and the Outsider
Play Attention
No full textThis paper explores the intersection of the play principle in culture (Huizinga 1955, Caillois 1961, Lévi-Strauss 1966, Turner 1987, and Hyde 2010) with the emerging literature on attention, both in media practices and neuroscience research. Play is often associated with the trans-cultural trickster archetype as a figure for the necessary disruption and reinvigoration of a culture’s status quo (Hyde 2010). The trickster’s mischief and tricks, often positioned at the figurative crossroads, help us re-imagine the possibilities of choice and chance in the directions we will take, the selves we choose to become. The anthropologist Victor Turner (1987) associates the trickster with play, which he elegantly defines as combining what we have at hand (the imperative) with what could be (the subjunctive). We make paper airplanes and repurpose old clothes into fantastical costumes. Jazz musicians improvise on the old standards. Play is thus strongly associated with ritual, theatre, improvised music, art making, storytelling, and in the kind of media analysis pioneered by McLuhan and Carpenter beginning in the 1950s. More recent breakthroughs in neural imaging (fMRI, PET) increasingly allow us to peer into the workings of the body/brain to trace where activity is occurring, to increase our understanding of neural connections and their relationship to behaviour. Gaining and sustaining attention has become one of neural research’s holy grails: how to improve attention through mindfulness practices; how to recognize and exploit cognitive biases; how to distract attention for profit, persuasion, social engineering, and weaponization of perception. Carr (2008, 2020), Alter (2017), Gazzaley and Rosen (2016), Wu (2016), Levitin (2006, 2014), Austin (1998), Logan and Rawady (2021, forthcoming) and others make important contributions to our understanding of the neuroscience of attention, distraction, and decision-making in societies steeped in digital media and cognitive overload. Understanding how play and improvisation, the operations of attention, and their interdependence in the neural networks of the body/brain, may help us negotiate what are sure to be interesting times requiring complex decisions. 
Links to Explorations Issues #10 to #32 plus Tables of Contents of all Explorations Issues #1 to #32
No full textoai:jps.library.utoronto.ca:article/34186Part I – A short history of the original Explorations journal edited by Edmund Carpenter and Marshall McLuhan.
Part II – The online links to all of the 23 issues of Explorations from Issue 10 to Issue 32 covering the period from the Summer of 1964 to May of 1972.
Part III – The tables of contents of all 32 issues of Explorations which were published in the following years: 1953 to 1957 (#1 to #8); 1959 (#9); and 1964 to 1972 (#10 to #32). Feel free to share this file acknowledging that it was first published by New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication: Vol 1 № 1 (Spring 2020). 
The 21st Century Has Arrived: Three Short Reviews
No full textThree short reviews are made of the following books:
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, by Yuval Noah Harari (2016)
A.I.: Rise of the Lightspeed Learners, by Charles Jennings (2018)
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, by Shoshana Zuboff (2019
A New Song of the Body Electric
No full textA review is made of B. W. Powe’s The Charge in the Global Membrane
Introduction to Renalto Barilli’s Kantian Analysis of McLuhan’s “The Medium is The Message”
No full textAn introduction to Renalto Barilli’s article entitled Kantian Analysis of McLuhan’s “The Medium is The Message
Carlos Scolari and Fernando Rapa\u27s Media Evolution: A Review
No full textA review of Carlos Scolari and Fernando Rapa\u27s Media Evolutio