Howard Wetzel

Howard Wetzel has been a hospital-based RN for more than three decades. He was introduced to the McLuhans in the early 70s, and has continued an active dialogue with Eric McLuhan since. He is an independent thinker with interests in health care, arts, theology, and media studies. He is interested in the impact of media on cultures and the Church in history and in the present.

Wayword by Mr. and Mrs. Garrett Soucy

. . .the process of perception is that of incarnation. Marshall McLuhan, The Medium and the Light ‘Wayword’ (available on CDBaby) is a second collection of songs by Mr. & Mrs. Garrett Soucy, a collection of songs with many allusions to both Christian faith and McLuhan’s ideas about media and culture.  I note the artists’ […]

The Percept of Witness

It is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder. Kallistos Ware, English bishop of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Titular Bishopric of Diokleia. Consider the child’s […]

How Cell Phones, Computers, Gaming and Social Media Are Changing Our Brains

I once got into testy e-mail exchange with a media ecologist over my use of the word addiction in regard to media behavior. He adamantly preferred the word habit for behavior, whether acceptable or problematic, leaving addiction to recovery problems of physiological substance abuse, alcohol, heroin, etc. I had deliberately left out the defining limit […]

Plasticity and Imagination

The understanding of the brain’s activity conveyed by popular scientific writing misses much of the continuum of thought and consciousness. We are fascinated at the supposed correspondence of anatomy to function shown in the images of radioactive glucose uptake. We are astonished at the ability of a handicapped woman’s brain driven to interact with an […]