Blog 2: Tech-Lit Draft

Tech-Lit Draft #1

McLuhan’s reading presented various factors that aligned w

ith his past and beliefs. It gave a clear representation of the meaning behind a medium and a message. As I read these few pages I got an inside on his past life as a professor and his ideology towards media and what he believed played a significant role. All quotes and information played a role but a few stuck out to me. One quote mentioned was “To fully understand anything, he argued, you have to look at it from several viewpoints”. I agree with this quote due to the reasoning that everything is looked at from several standpoints so to understand them we need to acknowledge these perspectives. Another quote that was presented was “Step into writing how we step into baths” At this point the bath was a message and the medium was Mcluhan as a whole. To understand writing we need to fully present ourselves in a way where we understand or try to understand it. Another quote presented was “We shape our tools and our tools shape us”. We are a representation of what we go through and what shapes us as individuals. Lastly, the message of a medium is “any changes in scale, pace, a pattern that a medium causes in societies and cultures”. This quote demonstrates the belief he had when it came to the message and medium and the adjustments that are presented.
One question that I took when reading this text was to fully understand the meanings and concepts of what was said. One question was “How did McLuhan present this idea so others can see it from his standpoint?”. A second question was “What ideas and concepts influenced McLuhan to speak about the media and the message and mediums presented?”. A third question was “When he was teaching and suddenly saw there was a generation gap, what certain elements did these students and him have that was a gap between generations?”. A third question was “How did groping, probing, listening, and testing help Mcluhan work in where these were the methods that worked for him?”. The fourth question was “ Where in his career did he see that individuals should see things as a message and a medium?”. Lastly, “Do you think that Mcluhan’s belief on media fits into today’s life and individuals’ understanding of media change, and what made Mcluhan go into media? When was the first time he realized he had a connection and interest to the media?”.
I chose this image because it is a visual representation of what McLuhan believed when it came to media and the observations presented through both society and culture. This image shows sense ratios which are presented through 3 different men and looked out at stages and representations. Two questions are presented which are “To what extent do humans depend on one sense relative to another?. The other question is “What happens when that ratio is modified”. The introduction to new media was presented to Mcluhan as the correlation between the five physical senses. These senses can be classified by how complex they are due to the perceptions presented through these senses.