Islam Mahrouss March 17

From Marshall McLuhan’s book “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”, he discusses the progression of technology in society and the relationship between technology and the medium. In his book he states, “it is the medium thatControls the scale and form of human association and action. The content or use of such media are as diverse as they are ineffectual in shaping the form of human association”. Here McLuhan is explaining how the medium itself is the message and that it depends on the content of that message. Without the content being defined then the content of the medium will not be clear. We see this idea being applied in technology and we the consumers use and interact with it. For example, Youtube is a huge platform where people post thousands of videos. The content of the videos themselves is what will have an impact on how many people will be on Youtube, but more specifically the group of people that will be watching certain videos based on their interest. This is how technology more specifically affects us today, we have access to so many platforms and we as consumers take in all kinds of information that can shape how we think and perceive certain things. 

McLuhan also discusses how technological advancement is beneficial to human development. I do agree with this because technology has helped humans expand and learn so much about the world we live in, especially right now where we need social distancing and online classes because of the coronavirus outbreak. We are lucky that we have the technology to help us during this time of distress. McLuhan also gives an example of this in his book, “The railway did not introduce movement or transportation or wheel or road into human society, but it accelerated and enlarged the scale of previous human functions, creating totally new kinds of cities and new kinds of work and leisure”. In this example we see how the advancement of technology opened more opportunities for society. There were more jobs available for people, work was also made much easier with the aid of a machine, and technology also provided some entertainment to us.  Although technology may be great it does also take a toll on us as well. It could be easy for us to believe anything whether it was right or wrong simply because of large social media platforms controlling what news and information we see. 

After reading this chapter it has made me wonder how the things that McLuhan has discussed affect us as designers. After some thought I realized that as designers the things we create are based on society today. Especially when every other year there are trends and new softwares being released, this affects how we design. What we make could be popular now but in a few years it might not be, however in the future whatever we do design would be based on the growth and development of what was designed in the past and with the materials used to design it. I think this is what McLuhan was trying to get across in his book, especially how media and technology affect us.