This morning, after reading a long thread on the Scrivener user forums I decided to bite the bullet and switch to using the beta version of Scrivener 3, currently on version 2.9.6. I expected a little trouble and I got some; but only a little.

Today I got an email that said the following:

“I hope u do not mind my english grammar, considering that i am from Indonesia. I infected your machine with a trojan and now have all of your private information from your operating system.”

A person from Indonesia had caught me watching porn, and now invited me to pay him 490€ in bitcoins to prevent this news going public. I trembled in fear.

This is an essay about living and acting inside a world of visual knowledge building.

I will look at several aspects of Marshall McLuhan’s thinking and seek to relate it to the current cultural environment: one in which information is transmitted and received instantaneously, and stored at a distance, in amounts unthinkable even two decades ago. I will briefly attempt to place McLuhan’s cultural commentary within a political framework drawn from the writings of Ivan Illich and Paulo Freire.