In this text, McLuhan focuses on the transition of human interaction with the technological world and the alteration of perception that it brings with it. He describes technology and media as an extension of man for the evolving aspect of society that it provokes and its behavioral changes. He calls it the “age of anxiety” because the transition has been continuously fast that people still try to do today’s task with yesterday tools and concepts refusing adaptation or not considering the need for a new perspective, leading to an overwhelming feeling of why things are going in this direction. That happened with the printing technology as well, where people had to switch totally the behavior as media was used and adapt to a faster pace of data circulation.
This is also a generational issue because the youth understood or had an easier transition to such mediums, but for the older generation, it has always been a problem which means that they would have fewer opportunities available in society for not having the capacity to handle the technology required. In the education aspect, McLuhan remarks that the youth wasn’t or should not be allowed to be exposed to old methods and behaviors in order to have the right perception of the actual mediums being used at the time.
The switch of the medium is the message regardless of its negative aspects toward a generation has a great influence on designers and the distribution of information. It has allowed designers to persuade and influence society’s behavior by spreading information through the right medium. This means that the message is the essence of the medium, has a faster response and result than it was before where a letter could take a year to arrive or even get lost in the process. Having that in mind we can come to the conclusion that technology-enhanced information has influenced and changed behaviors in the whole world for the effectiveness of its design and message, leading to faster development of electronic data consumption and information process.
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