canopticon — research, kept whole and written from
Paper series7 papers · read in order or dip in
McLuhan said every medium changes the ratio among our senses. Seven papers take that literally.
Six papers test it — from ADHD and typing to drugs and addiction — and the synthesis finds one configuration that media, drugs and illness all re-temper.
01KrasisThe synthesis of the series: one configuration that media, drugs and illness all re-temper.Synthesis12 min02Sensory syncrasisMcLuhan meant his "sense ratios" literally.The senses20 min03HeterocrasisADHD as a different starting balance of the senses.ADHD16 min04TypomoraMcLuhan said electric media would bring back the voice.Voice & typing22 min05ExocrasisThe computing environment, not the screen, is the medium: keyboard, memory, search and network move part of the configuration of the senses and of memory outside the body.Computing16 min06PharmakrasisEach class of drug sets its own balance of the senses — and the evidence for that is better than for any medium.Drugs18 min07NarcocrasisIn dependence, what goes unseen is not the drug but the shifted baseline: the allostatic state is the medium, the drug its content.Addiction28 min
Each paper cites the published literature with numbered references · published 4–5 October 2026
New here? Start with these three
ArticleSelf-extinguishing maintenanceThe clearest example of what this site does: a pattern with no name, found in the research and named.ArticleWhy people keep scrollingA popular explanation, checked against the evidence, and mostly wrong.PaperKrasisThe long project: seven papers taking one of McLuhan’s claims literally.
Articles & papers
Paying yourself to do your own tasks: what the incentive trials show, and whether an earn-back subscription could workFinancial incentives move behaviour while they run, and losses move people more than equal gains. Paying yourself a wage from your own pocket removes most of what the trials rely on; a subscription you earn back by doing the work is a loss-framed stake, and the research rates it the version most likely to work. Nobody has tested it.10 OctADHD & attentionCanadian recessions and the mortgage channel: rate decisions, CMHC, and five decades of housing-led downturnsEvery major Canadian downturn since 1980 carries a monetary-policy fingerprint, and housing is how the decision reaches people. The clearest case is 1990, where the campaign overshot its own target and Toronto prices did not pass their 1989 peak until 2002.10 OctHousingTemporary foreign workers and Canadian innovation: what the automation evidence shows, and the study nobody has runThe research that says immigration drives innovation studies points-selected skilled migration. Canada's intake since 2016 has been mostly temporary and low-wage, and the causal work on cheap labour runs the other way — a 1% rise in low-skill wages lifts automation patenting 2–5%. The Canadian version of that study has never been done.10 OctCanadian economy & policyWhey protein in hot black coffee: why it curdles, what the heat-stable versions cost, and what is comingCollagen disappears into a hot cup; whey turns it into pale lumps that smell of sulfur. Coffee's acidity sits almost exactly where whey is least stable, and it is served above the temperature that unfolds the protein. The heat-stable ingredients that exist solve it by cutting the protein up, which makes it bitter.10 OctHealth & self-careBill C-11 and Canadian creators in 2026: what the CRTC has actually imposed, and what is still a predictionCreators were told the Online Streaming Act would cost them their foreign audiences by teaching recommendation systems that Canadian videos go unwatched. Three years after royal assent the regulator has imposed no discoverability requirement on anyone, the money is stayed by a court, and no study has measured the harm.10 OctCanadian mediaSee all 30 articles
Named here
Self-extinguishing maintenanceA routine that works so well it removes the thing that made you do it — so it stops, and the problem comes back.Sensory syncrasisThe whole configuration of how the brain blends its senses: how much it trusts each one, how loud it turns them all, whether it fuses or separates them, the balance between body and world, and how long a setting lasts.TypomoraThe typed delay in McLuhan's predicted return to voice: fifty years in which the keyboard, not the medium, kept networked communication typographic.
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