Jessica Lee- Mar 17th

   Media is heavily used to pass on messages and influence people due to the growth of technology.  In “The Medium is the Message” by Marshall McCluhan, he states that “the medium is the message.”  What McCluhan means by this is that anything new that is introduced to us, we absorb it and then it changes how we function, like creating new jobs.  One example for this is that recently, there has been an increase of kiosks at fast food places which leads to a decrease of jobs for cashiers who take orders from people.  People will use those kiosks instead of going to the counter and ordering from there. 

   Technology has many great benefits however, it does lead to many other negative outcomes.  In McClauhan’s article, he mentions “…we want to get our bearings in our own culture, and have need to stand aside from bias and pressure exerted by any technical form of human expression.”  I believe that this means, our society wants to find our own selves or find where we stand in life and doing this, we have to resist the urge to be influenced by other people’s choices due to what we see in the media.  It is hard to do this, because as human beings we are easily influenced and when we see what is trending or what other people are in their lives it affects us. This is one of the negative outcomes due to technology that we go through as we are getting through life. 

     As designers, we are easily influenced by the media as well.  Since there will be new mediums that will appear, we will have to adapt to create new designs based on those new mediums.  Due to this, our “old” designs will no longer be trendy or in style.  However, it is a phase in our life where we are gathering new experiences and as we do, our designs will be dedicated to what we go through and it will be due to that time period.