After today’s class, write a 250-word summary of your reading and lecture notes on Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message.” Remember to consider and write about the connections that you find between McLuhan’s ideas and those presented in the other readings. Your goal is to cognitively process data > information > knowledge > wisdom.
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In Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Message, we learned that he coined the idea of the ‘global village.’ McLuhan theorized that individualistic culture will end by what he called electronic interdependence. He defined it as when an electronic medium replace visual culture with aural and oral culture. This is what Walter Ong regarded as secondary orality. McLuhan continues by saying that in this new age of electronic interdependence, humankind will move from individualism and fragmentation to quadratic identity or the ‘global village.’ McLuhan also recognizes that this technology that could bring us together can divide us in different ways. McLuhan’s argument is that the medium used to convey information is as important as or more important than the message itself. The medium is what shapes the message. McLuhan sees these medium as extensions of ourselves. The medium will affect our communication
McLuhan expresses concern that we tend to focus on the obvious. In doing so, we largely miss the structural changes in our affairs that are introduced subtly, or over long periods of time. Whenever we create a new innovation – be it an invention or a new idea – many of its properties are fairly obvious to us. We generally know what it will nominally do, or at least what it is intended to do, and what it might replace. We often know what its advantages and disadvantages might be. But it is also often the case that, after a long period of time and experience with the new innovation, we look backward and realize that there were some effects of which we were entirely unaware at the outset. We sometimes call these effects “unintended consequences,” although “unanticipated consequences” might be a more accurate description. McLuhan warns us that we are often distracted by the content of a medium, which, in almost all cases, is another distinct medium in itself. He writes, “It is only too typical that the content of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium.” Many of the unanticipated consequences stem from the fact that there are conditions in our society and culture that we just don’t take into consideration in our planning. All of these dynamic processes that are entirely non-obvious comprise our ground or context. They all work silently to influence the way in which we interact with one another, and with our society at large.
In this article “The Media is the Message” by Marshall McLuhan talks about the different ways you can use mediums to convey a message to a specific audience. Before modern printers and social media were used to relay message people would skillfully handwrite messages then, a man named Gutenberg created standardized print that was faster and more efficient which made the need for hand written messages outdated. Technology can be fatal if we don’t have a full comprehension of how it works. McLuhan says that the way you chose to deliver your message is more important then the medium itself. For example, if someone is trying to reach the view of teenagers they wouldn’t print it in the newspaper but spread it through different social media networks. You need to understand and meet the needs of your audience so that your message so people have an interest in what you’re trying to have acknowledged. Mediums are also an extension of ourselves because it’s the way we communicate with others. It has an effect on the way we communicate, our relationships with others, and the way you use language. For example, a way that mediums affect our use of language is through text messaging which creates new words and shortened phrases. McLuhan made a tetrad diagram where medium is the main focus and how it can be enhanced, reversed, obsolete, and retrieved. The message can be enhanced by changing. It can be made obsolete by new mediums taking over old mediums. It can retrieved because although there are new mediums they use parts of the old mediums and they make it into their own. It can reversed for example by different types of reading technologies such as e-book or other tablets which allows to you yo read in a different way. Mediums impact our society in a big way by changing the way we communicate with others.
In the article “The Medium is the Message”, Marshall McLuhan talks about electronic interdependence. Electronic interdependence is when electronic media replaces visual culture, with aural (hearing) and oral (speaking) culture. McLuhan’s idea of electronic interdependence can be compared to Walter Ong’s idea of secondary orality. Secondary orality focuses on electronic culture such as televisions and phones as a way of communication. These two ideas together creates another belief that McLuhan has, called the global village. With the concepts of electronic interdependence and secondary orality in mind, McLuhan believes that in the new age, humans will move from individualism to a more tribal identity. By this he is means that the use of technology and our obsession over it could essentially bring us together. McLuhan then goes on to talk about the way technology can impact your message. He expresses that the medium that you choose to relay your message is almost or even more important that the message itself. The way that you choose to share your information can shape and influence the message that you are trying to convey. Choosing a technology to accommodate your audience is important because your audience needs to be able to understand what you are trying to say. McLuhan and Bruce Mazlish both have the same feelings towards technology. Mazlish believes that humans and technology work hand-in-hand and they can both agree that it is merely an addition to ourselves. It affects the way we communicate with others, the way we function in society and the way we interact with other people when we are face to face.
The article “The Media is the Message” by Marshall McLuhan it talks about how message is relayed to different types of audiences. People would write handwritten messages which would be a lot slower to what we have today which is standardized printing which was faster and invented by a man of Gutenberg. He introduces the concept of Electronic interdependence. He notes how this could either lead us to be united or completely divided in a lot of different ways. The information in the message is important than the message itself. The messages we sent out is an extension of what we want to say. Overall when we look at oral communication it will die out since there are messages being sent words won’t need to be constantly spoken. He explains how if we were to target certain audience one way wont work we would need to use alternative methods like for example if we wanted to target maybe younger kids they would want to use an electronic like a iPad or a computer than a newspaper or a book since that’s for the older generation. Language is constantly evolving since we have technology and eventually even messages get simplified for example using shortened phrases. These mediums are using parts of old mediums which makes a completely new medium. Mediums make our society and it changes the way we communicate with each other. In society we might tend to forget how communicate person to person due to the constant evolution of technology and messaging.
In “The Medium is the Message” by Marshall McLuhan, McLuhan discusses the idea of the global village. He says that individualistic print culture will be brought to an end by electronic interdependence. When electronic media replaced visual culture with hearing and oral culture (aural and oral culture), this relates to One’s secondary orality. In this new age human kind will move from individualism to a collective identity which is tribal based and this is called the global village. McLuhan believes that this technology will put us on the path of coming together. His main argument is that the medium that you use to convey information is as important or more important than the message itself, the medium shapes the message. The medium that you use like films, tv shows, radio, etc.. each of these are a technology. McLuhan see’s Mazlish’s “technology is an extension of yourself” as the same, what we have to be aware of it has an affect, as a result the different mediums we use has a profound affect on ourselves, impact on the way we think, socialize and change the way we use language. Examples of this include text messaging by people had to innovate the way they write things. As a result from this new technologies like twitter had even created. In the end the medium is going to have an affect on your message because the medium itself is the message. The medium will shape your message and that’s why you have to choose the right medium for whatever you’re trying to convey.
During our last meeting, we reviewed Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message”, from his book The Extensions of Man. McLuhan was a Canadian professor that lived during the 20th century. He was viewed as a pioneer in his field and a visionary during his lifetime, and even after he died in 1980.
One of the focal points of this chapter revolves around what McLuhan refers to as a practical fact, that the medium is the message. In saying this, McLuhan asserts that the medium used to convey information is equally as important, or more important, than the message itself. It is the medium (the technology) that dictates how we react and interact with the message. The message is secondary, and is altered to accommodate not only the audience, but the medium as well. We can look to our research project and presentation for this course as examples. Reading a ten-page research paper to the class would not be a suitable or effective way to present the information acquired during our research process to one another. We will instead use PowerPoint to extract the main points from our research, and share with the class.
During lecture we also discussed McLuhan’s Laws of Media Tetrad. Divided into four laws/categories (enhances, reverses, retrieves, obsolesces), with the medium displayed in the center. The following four questions are framed around each law of the tetrad:
1. What does the medium enhance?
2. What does the medium reverse?
3. What does the medium retrieve?
4. What does the medium reverse when pushed to extremes?
As a whole, the tetrad is used as a pedagogical tool to examine how society accepts and rejects new media.
Those aspiring to be technical writers this article should be especially helpful. The Age of Information encourages quick dissemination, the form in which media relays messages to audiences differs from how it used to. In the article “The Medium is the Message”, McLuhan introduces the concepts of the global village and electronic interdependence. Emphasizing the content of the medium is more important, technologies we use are mediums containing a message shapes that message. We should be paying attention to media, learning how they directly or indirectly affect how we think and communicate. Secondary orality revisits Ong’s take of electronic media substituting what used to be primary orality. McLuhan states not only is the world is getting smaller, its becoming more available and more familiar with our minds and to our emotions. It is now a global village, sense of unity never before seen in the literate cultures prior to the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press. Individualistic tendencies when procuring information followed a discontent from intended audiences receiving what the sender had in mind. Electronic interdependence involves recreating the world in an image. To some point, mediums act as extensions of ourselves. Everything technology has an invisible link to serves to build a collective identity.Using twitter enhances communication for groups separated by distance and time.
McLuhan’s Media Tetrad raises questions in order to critique and study media:
What does the medium enhance?
What does the medium make obsolete?
What does the media retrieve?
What does the media reverse into when pushed to extremes?