McLuhan, The Horizon Report, and My Brain

My initial response to McLuhan's Wake was that of much thought and a good deal of confusion. I spent much of the drive home thinking about what I had just seen and heard, trying to make any sense of it. From reviewing the four questions I began to think of examples and was able to see some patterns in the real world. Perhaps these questions are meant to keep our use of technology in check. In each example discussed in the first class, radio, tv, film, etc. all were over-extended and many teachers and school districts reverted right back to where they came from.
As I read the Horizon Report I began to think about some of the emerging technologies discussed within in terms of McLuhan's questions. For example, mobile phones extend our feet, ears, and voice even farther than land line phones. In fact, mobile phones are making landlines obsolete. A stronger sense of connectivity among communities, social networks, fellow students, and people as a whole. But, if phones are really used in most classes for everything that textbooks, pencils, and even laptop computers used to do, will people revert back to seclusion? I cannot say I have a good answer for that. One very good point the Horizon Report brought up was our need to be concerned with ownership and copyright of content, research, ideas, and publications. With much of the technology turning to open-source platforms and other technology allowing anyone to contribute what they know to the overall knowledge base of the world, is copyright really that important to EVERYONE? Even for myself, a very serious amateur historian of the Bethlehem Steel, if I posted content about my findings and my ideas, I would not be as concerned with copyright of my material like I would one of my songs. The information I gather I want people to know and be able to readily access.
As I began to think further about readily accessing information I realized that it is a fundamental human condition to want to know everything about where we came from, who we are, why things are the way they are, etc. For me, it's knowing how the Bethlehem Steel came to be, how it came to end up as it is today. For others, the topic may be something else. But being able to readily access all the information that we as humankind know, is something all people from all across the globe desire and can value. So in conclusion as I think about McLuhan's questions - while they prove valuable when looking at individual technologies - in terms of the bigger picture, in the end, there is nowhere to revert back to. What human being would want to give up all we have learned by putting our minds together using technology to store all the knowledge in the world, and go back to not knowing and understanding? Then again, there is also an argument to be made for those 'simple times' we all hear about in history.