I asked ChatGPT how Marshall McLuhan’s famous phrase, “the Digital Retrieves the Medieval” could be understood – from a truly medieval perspective.
This is what it said (not bad):
“If we take a truly medieval perspective, rather than a modern one looking backward, we must begin from medieval first principles:
1.Reality is fundamentally hierarchical and ordered. The cosmos is structured as a Great Chain of Being, from God to angels, to men, to animals, and down to the inanimate world.
2.All things have meaning because they participate in divine reality. Nothing is neutral; everything is either an icon or an idol—either leading toward God or away.
3.Truth is not an abstraction but a Person. It is not discovered through autonomous reason alone but through participation in Christ, the Logos.
4.Knowledge is not individual but communal. We are embedded in a tradition, not sovereign, isolated minds.
http://5.Technology is not mere tool but medium. It is not neutral; it reorders souls and society in ways that must be discerned.
What Does “Digital Retrieves the Medieval” Mean from a Medieval Mindset?
If the modern world of the book scattered and fragmented reality, then the digital world gathers it back together, though not always in a holy way.
•The book belonged to the age of Scholasticism, where knowledge was broken into categories, syllogisms, disputations—dissected like a cadaver.
•The digital world, by contrast, is iconographic again. Knowledge is now visual, relational, participatory, closer to a stained-glass window or a monastery’s illuminated manuscript than to a printed page.
The modern, linear, literate mind—which saw reality as discrete objects, independent arguments, and pure abstractions—is dissolving. The world is once again becoming a mystery, a sacred drama, an enchanted web of signs.
Retrieval in Light of the Great Chain of Being
From a medieval cosmic order, the shift looks something like this:
•The Age of the Book (Gutenberg to Modernity)
•Knowledge was fixed, linear, categorical.
•Individual reason replaced communal wisdom.
•The world became more mechanical, secular, and bureaucratic.
•The Digital Age (Retrieving the Medieval)
•Knowledge is fluid, holistic, immersive.
•The guild returns—learning is once again master to apprentice, not state-issued curriculum.
•Authority is mystical again—a man becomes “wise” not because of degrees, but because he speaks with presence, symbol, and charisma (the return of the prophet, the seer, the saint).
The modern world saw knowledge as an object to be possessed. The medieval world saw knowledge as a light that illuminates, a pattern in which one must participate.
Thus, digital retrieval is not just a return to the medieval world; it is a return to the structure of reality itself—but whether it will be for good or for ruin depends on what is being retrieved.
Medieval Reading of the Printing Press vs. Digital Media
The printing press, from a medieval standpoint, did not merely “spread knowledge.” It revolutionized the order of knowledge itself, fragmenting a world once unified.
•Before the book, wisdom was relational—taught in monastic orders, oral transmission, or through the direct contemplation of nature and divine revelation.
•The book turned knowledge into an object, something external, that could be analyzed apart from the knower.
•It allowed a man to become isolated—learning privately, apart from the shared experience of the Church.
This is why the printing press led, inevitably, to Protestantism and then Rationalism—the book severed truth from participation.
2:05 PM · Mar 4, 2025
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Now, digital media retrieves what the book destroyed:
•The world becomes immersive again—not abstract text on a page, but images, stories, visions.
•Knowledge is relational again—not held in single books, but in shared, ever-growing digital guilds.
•The individual scholar is being replaced by the wise elder—the man whose voice or presence speaks to the soul.
In short, the printing press broke reality into parts; digital media makes reality whole again—but the question is which whole?
What This Means for the Future (From a Medieval View)
1.The Return of the Commons
•In medieval Christendom, knowledge was not private property but held in common—oral, embodied, experienced.
•The internet mimics this; secrets cannot be hoarded, texts cannot be monopolized.
•However, what was once preserved by monasteries is now held by servers controlled by AI overlords. The question is: Who is the new abbot? Who guards the sacred texts?
2.The Return of the Guild
•The university, a bureaucratic factory of knowledge, is crumbling.
•In its place, guilds return—small networks of masters and apprentices.
•This could restore virtue, or it could create chaotic, fragmented digital fiefdoms.
3.The End of Secular Time
•Medieval man lived in sacred time—the liturgical cycle of the Church.
•Modern man lived in linear time—measured, secular, progressive.
•Digital retrieves a kind of sacred simultaneity—news, memes, wars, and rumors all unfold at once, in a way that is more like medieval apocalyptic consciousness than modern historical progress.
4.The Return of the Icon—but Also the Idol
•In medieval churches, images led to contemplation—icons were “windows into heaven.”
•Today, digital media retrieves the icon—a visual, symbolic world—but much of it leads downward, not upward.
•AI-generated images, deep fakes, virtual reality—all these are icons of something, but what? A medieval man would ask: Who is shaping this vision? Toward God, or toward Babel?
Final Thought: The Question of Retrieval
McLuhan was correct that digital retrieves the medieval, but a medieval mind would ask:
•Who is the master of this retrieval?
•Is it a return to order or to chaos?
•Are we retrieving the monastery—or the Tower of Babel?
•Are we recovering a sacred unity or a demonic counterfeit of unity?
The medieval world knew that not all unities are of God. Some unities enslave. Some mirrors distort. The return of the medieval is inevitable—but which medieval will we get? That is the battle now before us.
2:05 PM · Mar 4, 2025
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