Assignment 7 Brenda Morales

Marshall McLuhan discusses how the message can be the medium itself, not just the purpose it was created for. Media has become an extension for human beings, what we see and hear affects how we plan and think; how we talk and interact with others. Media becoming more accessible to people has given everyone the opportunity to view the media of others and may change how we perceive someone, or how we perceive ourselves.  There has also been a change to how we absorb things and how we react to it, this can be shown by how trends and critiques have changed.

The progress of technology can be a hazard though due to how fast we all adjust without putting much thought into how we change, McLucan states; ‘In the history of human culture there is no example of a conscious adjustment of the various factors of personal and social life to new extensions except in the puny and peripheral efforts of artists’. This statement might be  turning false now due to the developments occurring, social life, education, careers have become more involved with media, there is a need to catch up and adjust due to how fast new media gets introduced and how it changes the people around you. Although there have been discussions on how we’ve become dependent to media and how it changes the manner in which we consume it, there still seems to be no attempts to change it; instead we may continue like this or focus on a ‘niche’. Although McLucan’s statement is still correct as we do still find ourselves aware of media and adjust ourselves unknowingly.

Media changes and adjusts people, designers have to keep in mind that although there can be changes to media there has to be an introduction to it.  “Nobody wants a motorcar till there are motorcars, and nobody is interested in TV until there are TV programs. This power of technology to create its own world of demand is not independent of technology being first an extension of our own bodies and senses”. When creating new ideas artists and designers play the role of introducing ideas and may have to risk the fallout of the risk when trying a new idea, they must have the audience in mind the majority of the time, and it’s their role to decide who they want to introduce this idea to. That’s around the time when you decide the media you use, the work you create is second to the media you use because it’s how we interact with the work, how we decide whether it’s worth the effort to interact with the work.