Robert K. Logan Department of Physics and St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto logan@physics.utoronto.ca Abstract: Ong’s notion of secondary orality that emerged with the written word is expanded to include the way orality changed with the emergence of the alphabet, the printing press, telegraph, radio, television, computing, the Internet, social media and AI. Orality is
Robert K. Logan logan@physics.utoronto.ca Abstract: The notion that an AI device could spontaneously take control of its programmer/creators and then enslave or annihilate humankind is shown to be something that could never happen given that a computer cannot have any desires or a will of its own. A review of human, non-human animal, plant, fungi,
Robert K. Logan Department of Physics and St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto logan@physics.utoronto.ca Orality is the communication of humans with each other through the spoken word. Before the emergence of the written word, it was the primary and only form of human verbal communication. As pointed out by Walter Ong with the emergence of
I first met Marshall McLuhan in 1974 at the Coach House on the campus of St. Michael’s College, the University of Toronto. I was a professor of physics carrying out research in theoretical elementary particle physics, lecturing undergrad and grad courses and supervising grad students. In addition to these straight forward duties of a physics