QR Codes Aren’t Evil

They just feel that way

The left hemisphere thinks that it objectively uses tools. Tools, the left hemisphere thinks, don’t affect the brain: the brain simply yields the tools. Tools are the brain’s b**ch.

Enter Marshall McLuhan, Jacques Ellul, Lewis Mumford, the Jesuit Walter Ong, Neil Postman, and many other thinkers who have begged modernity’s left hemisphere to lift its foot off the cocksure accelerator and ask questions: What is lost when a new tool is employed? What becomes different? How does the tool affect us?

Unfortunately, the questions can’t be answered in left hemispheric terms (i.e., “analytically,” “categorically,” “in black and white”). We can only grope for answers at the beginning, using our intuition and vague impressions . . . our feelings.

Later, after the damage is done, we can use the left hemisphere to pick through the rubble and analyze the pieces, but how much nicer it would’ve been to allow the right hemisphere to pre-empt the damage.

Bailey Sincox has written a lovely essay that tries to bring the right hemisphere to bear on QR Codes. The essay proves nothing but it’s not supposed to. It raises an important question and that’s enough.

It concludes with an experience that even the left hemisphere can appreciate: