Marshall McLuhan – “The Medium is the Message” (1964)
Tyler Clementi’s private sex acts, broadcast over the Internet What didn’t Clementi’s roommate understand when he broadcast this private act over the internet?
Federman structural changes in our affairs “unanticipated consequences” What didn’t Clementi’s roommate understand when he broadcast this private act over the internet?
Federman structural changes in our affairs “unanticipated consequences” “ All of these dynamic processes that are entirely non-obvious comprise our ground or context. They all work silently to influence the way in which we interact with one another, and with our society at large…. ground comprises everything we don’t notice… The message is “the change in inter-personal dynamics that the innovation brings with it…. Seek the non-obvious changes or effects that are enable, enhanced, accelerated or extended by the new thing
“ the personal and social consequences of any medium – that is, of any extension of ourselves – result from the new scale [and pace and pattern] that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves or by any new technology” (107).
“ Innumerable confusions and a profound feeling of despair invariably emerge in periods of great technological and cultural transitions. Our ‘Age of Anxiety’ is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s job with yesterday’s tools—with yesterday’s concepts.”
“ Youth instinctively understands the present environment—the electric drama.”
“ cubism, by giving the inside and outside, the top, bottom, back, and front and the rest, in two dimensions, drops the illusion of perspective in favor of instant sensory awareness of the whole” (111).
Non conformists: child, cripple, woman, colored person
Marshall McLuhan (1964) “ The threat of Stalin or Hitler was external. The electric technology is within the gates, and we are numb, deaf, blind, and mute about its encounter with the Gutenberg technology, on and through which the American way of life was born” (114).
Marshall McLuhan (1964) “ Our conventional response to all media, i.e., that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot …. The effects of technology do no occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance” (114).
Marshall McLuhan (1964) What ELSE does McLuhan say about this at the top of p. 115? What type of research is content analysis?
“ the future of modern society and the stability of its inner life depend in large part on the maintenance of an equilibrium between the strength of the techniques of communication and the capacity of the individual’s own reaction” (116). Shifting from functionalism to psychology & structuralism.