The role of the self in the social world

This paper addresses the changing relationship of public and private life, as that relationship is altered by emerging communication technologies. Implicit in the writings of Walter Ong, Marshall McLuhan, and the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, is an answer to the changes in the social domain we are now experiencing. Each of these scholars offers valuable insights into how the conceptualization of the self shifts over time. Considered as a group, their collective writings deepen the significance of each singular perspective. These scholars are concerned with the process of social change, with the transformations of technology, and with the evolution of human awareness. In so far as Ong argues for a secondary orality and McLuhan argues for a new awareness of interrelatedness, one must ask to what end? It cannot merely be that the emergence of new social forms implies no consequence, leads to nowhere in particular.