Cana's article critiques McLuhan's theory on technological determinism and the medium is the message. He points out that McLuhan's belief that human society must give in to technology presents many shortcomings in the innovation and social construction of his argument. Cana says that technologies must be created by man therefore there is a control factor that determines the technologies effect on humans. Cana believes that media technologies do not create socioeconomic and political power structures, but that media technologies only reinforce the power of the social structure in which the information is inserted.
Secondly, Cana discusses McLuhan's statement "The Medium is the Message." He asserts that a more appropriate statement would be "The Medium is also the Message" because the medium is providing a wider understanding of the new technology, and its place in the appropriate social structure. Cana believes that the content cannot be independent of the medium and that it is strongly shaped by the medium by which it was intended. McLuhan believed that the medium is an extension of humans' capacities, but content and information processed through the medium must be relevant because without the content the medium is meaningless.
Thirdly, Cana explains McLuhan's theory of hot and cool media is not very helpful. He does not understand how McLuhan can define television as a cool medium (high participation) while radio is a hot medium (low participation). Cana believes this does not make sense and offers the idea that McLuhan may have come to this determination because TV was a new technology at the time. He also believes that McLuhan contradicts himself by saying individuals must engage in TV, but one of his main arguments is that the medium is all that matters not the content.
Cana concludes by offering critiques of McLuhan’s theories. He believes that media cannot have a life of its own. Content and information must be included as part of the medium in order for the medium to have a message. Media technologies do not lack distinctive functions, but these functions are inserted due to socioeconomic and political context that have played a significant role with the technologies.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Todd Kappelman: Marshall McLuhan: "The Medium is the Message"
Kappelman begins his article by describing Marshall McLuhan as the "high-priest of pop-culture." He explains that McLuhan is the 1st father of electronic media, because he focused his career on studying the relationship between technology and pop culture and its effect on humans and their relations with other communities. Kappelman discusses McLuhan's "global village" and points out that he created this idea in the 1960's before the personal computer and at the forefront of television. He offers a quote by McLuhan: "We become what we behold." Kappelman parallels this quote by relating it to today's teenagers who aspire to be like celebrities and relates this to the technological culture shift of the 60's.
Kappelman also discusses McLuhan's analysis of American advertising. McLuhan explains that the objective of advertising is to manipulate, exploit, and control the consumer. Advertising companies are controlling consumers' desires for the products being sold. Modern women have been socialized through advertising to create a certain look in order to gain a husband, promotion, etc. Kappelman asserts that McLuhan was not trying to vilify the advertising industry. He was providing insight into how media function to create these advertisements.
Kappelman continues by explaining McLuhan's theory of the human body's extension with technology. He says that in order for an extension to occur an individual must use this technology to create something new. For example, a microscope is a way of seeing which is an extension of the eyes. He also explains that new technologies have caused other technologies to become obsolete. The gun made the practice of archery out-of-date. These new technologies have also created negative consequences such as car travel causing more pollution and has made individuals lazier and less healthy.
Finally, Kappelman talks about McLuhan's four laws:
"What does it (the medium or technology) extend?" The phone would be the voice.
"What does it make obsolete?" The phone makes the telegraph out-of-date.
"What is retrieved?" Adventure is achieved with a car.
"What does the technology reverse into if it is over-extended?" Phone culture creates the desires for solitude.
He concludes by pointing out McLuhan's belief that the "truth" about media should be revealed and that technology must be analyzed and critiqued in terms of its consequences.
Kappelman also discusses McLuhan's analysis of American advertising. McLuhan explains that the objective of advertising is to manipulate, exploit, and control the consumer. Advertising companies are controlling consumers' desires for the products being sold. Modern women have been socialized through advertising to create a certain look in order to gain a husband, promotion, etc. Kappelman asserts that McLuhan was not trying to vilify the advertising industry. He was providing insight into how media function to create these advertisements.
Kappelman continues by explaining McLuhan's theory of the human body's extension with technology. He says that in order for an extension to occur an individual must use this technology to create something new. For example, a microscope is a way of seeing which is an extension of the eyes. He also explains that new technologies have caused other technologies to become obsolete. The gun made the practice of archery out-of-date. These new technologies have also created negative consequences such as car travel causing more pollution and has made individuals lazier and less healthy.
Finally, Kappelman talks about McLuhan's four laws:
"What does it (the medium or technology) extend?" The phone would be the voice.
"What does it make obsolete?" The phone makes the telegraph out-of-date.
"What is retrieved?" Adventure is achieved with a car.
"What does the technology reverse into if it is over-extended?" Phone culture creates the desires for solitude.
He concludes by pointing out McLuhan's belief that the "truth" about media should be revealed and that technology must be analyzed and critiqued in terms of its consequences.
Marshall McLuhan: Excerpts from Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man
The reading begins with a brief overview of McLuhan's "Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man." He discusses how after thousands of years of technological explosions Western society has imploded within the last hundred years because of electronic technology. He explains that whole human societies have extended their senses into various media and the consciousness of advertising and technology. He describes the surgeon's emotional detachment with the patient in order to perform an operation and offers the idea that Western society has become detached from its self due to the influx of media. He goes on to argue that today "the globe is no more than a village." Electronic technology has connected societies socially and politically and has made it easier for humans to relate with different groups across the world.
The reading continues with "The Medium is the Message" in which he believes the medium shapes human association and action. He argues that a person's personal and social consequence of any medium is an extension of themselves or of any new technology. He goes on to say that the restructuring of human work has led to the fragmentation of machine technology. He explains that content in any medium is always another medium. For example, "the content of writing is speech, just as the written word is the content of speech..." He also discusses historical examples as it relates to the medium is the message. He mentions a quote by Napoleon regarding the media saying that, "Three hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets." McLuhan also discusses De Tocqueville analysis of the French Revolution as it relates to print media by saying the entire country was now homogenized and culturally saturated by the written word. The medium had uniformed the complexities of the ancient feudal and oral society. He mentions several other examples to assert his belief that any medium creates a message and all media are related to one another to build a global information society.
The reading concludes with McLuhan's chapter on "Media Hot and Cool." He explains that a medium is either hot or cool. Hot media require little participation with its audience while cool media requires high participation. Radio is a hot medium because the audience does not provide much participation where as the telephone is a cool medium because it requires participation from both parties in order for the communication to take place.
The main points of the reading are his discussion of all media are extension of human capacity, e.g. Writing is the extension of the ear, eye, and speech. TV is the extension of hearing, visualizing, communicating, etc. Another important point he makes is the particular medium itself creates its own effects independent of representational content, i.e. the meaning conveyed in what is broadcasts on the radio, what is televised on TV, or what is written in the newspaper. Finally, another important point he asserts is his idea that we live in a "global village", e.g. Michael Jackson is dead in LA on Saturday morning, and people in Japan immediately mourn his death. Electronic communication has now enabled people to transcend time and space.
The reading continues with "The Medium is the Message" in which he believes the medium shapes human association and action. He argues that a person's personal and social consequence of any medium is an extension of themselves or of any new technology. He goes on to say that the restructuring of human work has led to the fragmentation of machine technology. He explains that content in any medium is always another medium. For example, "the content of writing is speech, just as the written word is the content of speech..." He also discusses historical examples as it relates to the medium is the message. He mentions a quote by Napoleon regarding the media saying that, "Three hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets." McLuhan also discusses De Tocqueville analysis of the French Revolution as it relates to print media by saying the entire country was now homogenized and culturally saturated by the written word. The medium had uniformed the complexities of the ancient feudal and oral society. He mentions several other examples to assert his belief that any medium creates a message and all media are related to one another to build a global information society.
The reading concludes with McLuhan's chapter on "Media Hot and Cool." He explains that a medium is either hot or cool. Hot media require little participation with its audience while cool media requires high participation. Radio is a hot medium because the audience does not provide much participation where as the telephone is a cool medium because it requires participation from both parties in order for the communication to take place.
The main points of the reading are his discussion of all media are extension of human capacity, e.g. Writing is the extension of the ear, eye, and speech. TV is the extension of hearing, visualizing, communicating, etc. Another important point he makes is the particular medium itself creates its own effects independent of representational content, i.e. the meaning conveyed in what is broadcasts on the radio, what is televised on TV, or what is written in the newspaper. Finally, another important point he asserts is his idea that we live in a "global village", e.g. Michael Jackson is dead in LA on Saturday morning, and people in Japan immediately mourn his death. Electronic communication has now enabled people to transcend time and space.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Towards a Mediological Method: A Framework for Critically Engaging Dimensions of a Medium
Melinda Turnley's article argues that mediological methods should be broken down into seven dimensions in order for students, teachers, and researchers to be able to fully understand the media that are being studied. Convergence has merged traditional media with digital technology to create today's media. Turnley explains that media today are multimodal, making it much more complex to analyze them than it was in the past. Current media include a variety of components--digital text, images, audio, video, etc. By creating seven dimensions as a standard framework for analysing media--technological, social, economic, archival, aesthetic, subjective, and epistemological--students, teachers, and researchers can take a medium's intricate design and break it down into a more easily understandable meaning.
Here is a brief description of each of the seven dimensions:
Technological: Practical elements that are essential for functioning the medium
Social: Metaphors, pictures, and narratives that are related to the medium
Economic: The medium is developed, distributed, and maintained through support from the production resources
Archival: Material components that are collected to document and preserve the medium
Aesthetic: The creation, formatting and design of content that is associated with the medium
Subjective: Assumptions and construction embedded within the format and design of a medium
Epistemological: A medium's assumption to conceive about knowledge, information, truth, intelligence, and literacy
Turnley's goal for creating these dimensions is to provide a quick reference guide when analysing media. She has developed a framework based upon mediological methods that is flexible and accessible. These dimensions can be applied to both old media formats like newspapers and new media formats like blogging.
Turnley has demonstrated these dimensions in some of her classes. Students used these seven dimensions to come up with critical connections with their research. One student focused her project on blogs. She used the archival dimension for analyses as well as the social and subjective dimensions.
Turnley hopes that the creation of these seven dimension will help create a reflective path that will contribute to the field's continued examination into the perspective of new media writing.
Here is a brief description of each of the seven dimensions:
Technological: Practical elements that are essential for functioning the medium
Social: Metaphors, pictures, and narratives that are related to the medium
Economic: The medium is developed, distributed, and maintained through support from the production resources
Archival: Material components that are collected to document and preserve the medium
Aesthetic: The creation, formatting and design of content that is associated with the medium
Subjective: Assumptions and construction embedded within the format and design of a medium
Epistemological: A medium's assumption to conceive about knowledge, information, truth, intelligence, and literacy
Turnley's goal for creating these dimensions is to provide a quick reference guide when analysing media. She has developed a framework based upon mediological methods that is flexible and accessible. These dimensions can be applied to both old media formats like newspapers and new media formats like blogging.
Turnley has demonstrated these dimensions in some of her classes. Students used these seven dimensions to come up with critical connections with their research. One student focused her project on blogs. She used the archival dimension for analyses as well as the social and subjective dimensions.
Turnley hopes that the creation of these seven dimension will help create a reflective path that will contribute to the field's continued examination into the perspective of new media writing.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
The Machine is Us/ing Us
It's funny. When I began watching this video, I thought, this looks familiar. I then realized that I had just watched this same video in my Internet Marketing class.
This thought-provoking video explains the marketing term Web 2.0, a term created by Tim O'Reilly, the founder of O'Reilly Media. Web 2.0 explains the emergence of user interactivity with the Web. Some examples of these sites include social-networking and video sharing sites, blogs, wikis, etc. These websites allow users the ability to revise or update information, share ideas, create video mashups, edit photos, and much more.
The video provides a great depiction of how a user can employ these interactive techniques. For example, the creator uses a single word to change the meaning of it by linking it or changing its font, etc. These changes can dramatically change the meaning of the word by creating simple edits.
So is the machine using us, or are we using the machine? I believe there is a little bit of both. We use the machine daily to communicate with others. Because we are now so accustomed to using the machine, the machine is using us mainly to gain revenue. Today marketers know using these Web 2.o sites will most likely reach the demographic they want to target. By enticing users to use these sites, marketers gain more and more eyeballs, which they hope in turn will lead to increased sales of their products.
This thought-provoking video explains the marketing term Web 2.0, a term created by Tim O'Reilly, the founder of O'Reilly Media. Web 2.0 explains the emergence of user interactivity with the Web. Some examples of these sites include social-networking and video sharing sites, blogs, wikis, etc. These websites allow users the ability to revise or update information, share ideas, create video mashups, edit photos, and much more.
The video provides a great depiction of how a user can employ these interactive techniques. For example, the creator uses a single word to change the meaning of it by linking it or changing its font, etc. These changes can dramatically change the meaning of the word by creating simple edits.
So is the machine using us, or are we using the machine? I believe there is a little bit of both. We use the machine daily to communicate with others. Because we are now so accustomed to using the machine, the machine is using us mainly to gain revenue. Today marketers know using these Web 2.o sites will most likely reach the demographic they want to target. By enticing users to use these sites, marketers gain more and more eyeballs, which they hope in turn will lead to increased sales of their products.
As We May Think
The Atlantic article As We May Think, written by Vannevar Bush in 1945 chronicles the future of electronic technology. Bush emphasizes the importance of moving scientific efforts from warfare technology to electronic technology. He believes this is the future of society and he calculates many inventions that he foresees will help society be more efficient and resourceful. These cutting-edge ideas were probably not easily comprehensible to the society of the 1940's, but many of his predictions were eerily accurate and have come to pass in today's society.
He begins the article by describing past inventions out of which current inventions have evolved. He illustrates Leibnitz's invention of a calculating machine, which essentially embodies the keyboards of today. Bush believes that this invention helped lead to the development of the typewriter. I think this is partly how he comes up with his predicted inventions of the future. Some of these future inventions include the digital camera, the computer, the Internet, and voice recognition machines.
He describes an invention called "memex." The "memex" stores information--private files, books, records and communications--in the system. He explains that the information will be easily accessible and quickly obtainable. He also discusses how the data will be view on a projector-like screen and how the information will be accessed via a keyboard. It's unbelievable to conceive that Bush's idea of the "memex" so closely resembles the modern day computer.
Another interesting prediction Bush discusses is the linking of related ideas. He explains that an idea can be started from a main trail, then comments and other related ideas can be linked to the main trail idea to create a web of similar materials. This seems to foreshadow the emergence of the World Wide Web.
I would assume that many scholars and scientists of the time marveled at this article and I would presume that Bush continued to research and theorize about the future of electronic technology. I would be interested to know if he lived long enough to witness any of his predictions coming to fruition.
He begins the article by describing past inventions out of which current inventions have evolved. He illustrates Leibnitz's invention of a calculating machine, which essentially embodies the keyboards of today. Bush believes that this invention helped lead to the development of the typewriter. I think this is partly how he comes up with his predicted inventions of the future. Some of these future inventions include the digital camera, the computer, the Internet, and voice recognition machines.
He describes an invention called "memex." The "memex" stores information--private files, books, records and communications--in the system. He explains that the information will be easily accessible and quickly obtainable. He also discusses how the data will be view on a projector-like screen and how the information will be accessed via a keyboard. It's unbelievable to conceive that Bush's idea of the "memex" so closely resembles the modern day computer.
Another interesting prediction Bush discusses is the linking of related ideas. He explains that an idea can be started from a main trail, then comments and other related ideas can be linked to the main trail idea to create a web of similar materials. This seems to foreshadow the emergence of the World Wide Web.
I would assume that many scholars and scientists of the time marveled at this article and I would presume that Bush continued to research and theorize about the future of electronic technology. I would be interested to know if he lived long enough to witness any of his predictions coming to fruition.
Giving up my iPod for a Walkman
I really enjoyed reading this article. It brought me back to my childhood. I'm a kid of the 80's, and I distinctively remember getting a Sony Walkman for Christmas. I would guess it was around 1984 or 1985. This was the coolest new gadget of the 80's. Before the Walkman, everyone walked around with their boomboxes. That actually reminds me of an interesting piece I heard on NPR about the boombox. I have posted a link to the article if you are interested in checking it out: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103363836
I found this retro Walkman commercial on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO8FDPtN_8M&feature=related
I think mine must have been somewhere in between this "new and improved" Walkman and the big one the article describes. I don't remember having a battery life problem, but I do remember it eating a tape or two. A fond memory the article reminded me of was all the great mixed tapes my friends and I use to make. We used the 120 minute tapes for maximum playtime. It was so great making these mixes and exchanging them with friends to share the coolest new music we had discovered.
One comment I found humorous in the article was that the boy, Scott Campbell, rejoiced that he was not brought up in this decade. I'm sure I would have felt the same way when I was his age, but now I can appreciate the technology of that time. Don't get me wrong. I love my iPhone and iPod. The first one I obtained was the 40 gig iPod. I was so thrilled to be able to store my entire music collection on it and take it with me everywhere. I would never want to go back to a Walkman, but I do love reminiscing at the memories this old iconic music player brought back to me.
I found this retro Walkman commercial on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO8FDPtN_8M&feature=related
I think mine must have been somewhere in between this "new and improved" Walkman and the big one the article describes. I don't remember having a battery life problem, but I do remember it eating a tape or two. A fond memory the article reminded me of was all the great mixed tapes my friends and I use to make. We used the 120 minute tapes for maximum playtime. It was so great making these mixes and exchanging them with friends to share the coolest new music we had discovered.
One comment I found humorous in the article was that the boy, Scott Campbell, rejoiced that he was not brought up in this decade. I'm sure I would have felt the same way when I was his age, but now I can appreciate the technology of that time. Don't get me wrong. I love my iPhone and iPod. The first one I obtained was the 40 gig iPod. I was so thrilled to be able to store my entire music collection on it and take it with me everywhere. I would never want to go back to a Walkman, but I do love reminiscing at the memories this old iconic music player brought back to me.
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