McLuhan - Understanding Media (Abstract)
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Main Ideas McLuhan text Understanding Media - The extensions of man
Contents |
Medium is the message
“Effective study of the media deals not only with the content of the media but with the media themselves and the total cultural environment within which the media function.”
– Marshall McLuhan quotation from Playboy interview
According to McLuhan, any technology that creates extensions of the human body and senses can be considered as media. Due to the intrinsic characteristics of any medium, from McLuhan’s point of view, it becomes essential to focus the attention on the study of the medium rather than in its content, the message.
How can a medium create extensions of the human body? Before answering this question is important to define what’s an extension. In this context the term “extension” can be understood as how an individual or society creates or makes use of something that prolongs the human body, that’s to say, its senses. The reason why McLuhan calls the attention to this aspect is because the introduction of a medium produces some kind of effects on the social, economic, cultural and politic spheres of a society. These effects are new and they constitute an innovation to what was going on before their appearance. At the same time, any technological extension affects previous extensions. A good example to take into account is the loss of Morse Code skills due to the development of voice-based-radio. Therefore, as McLuhan stated, the introduction of any medium supposes a modification in the way we perceive and understand the world.
Every new medium, concretely its designs and patterns, affects not only in the physical but also in the social area and it produces an acceleration or amplification of existing processes. For these reasons, at the end, the less significative are the messages that any medium is supposed to help spreading. Related to this, it is important to take into account that nothing arises from nowhere, there are always precedents. Therefore, it is not strange that as McLuhan states “The content of any medium is always another medium”, like so, the content of writing would be speech, print would be the content of the written word... and so forth. What happens is that each medium introduces some new aspects that go beyond what’s strictly the communicative field.
Despite the analysis of several technologies and its further implications, the author of Understanding Media, pointed out that it’s difficult to fully understand “on real time” how media are shaping ourselves and our relationships. As he stated in an interview for Playboy Magazine, “an environment becomes fully visible only when it has been superseded by a new environment; thus we are always one step behind in our view of the world.” For this reason, in order to understand McLuhan’s statements it is very helpful to look at the past and understand how human work and association were structured according to the available technologies. Before the introduction of the phonetic alphabet, there was an oral culture in which all senses were balanced. As McLuhan stands out, tribal man, compared to his literate successors, had a completely different concept of time-space relationships. The irruption of the phonetic alphabet supposed the beginning of individualism and specialization, some of the man traits of literate societies where the visual tends to be the predominant sense.
The appearance and development of a new medium produces a change in the use of human senses, which can be considered as a modification in how we perceive the world. Furthermore, if we take into account that the new medium works as a tool through which we observe, relate, communicate and even act, it is not strange that this new tools become extensions of ourselves.
“Is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action” McLuhan, M. 1964. Understanding Media – The extensions of man. McGraw Hill, New York.
Despite McLuhan’s interest in analyzing how new technologies affected past societies, his main intention was to understand the nature of his contemporary environment, the electronic age. Although his main thesis focused on the role of media, he underlined a specific trait of contemporary media effects: as they allow instantaneous communication, they draw a extremely fast changing environment which makes very difficult for individuals to absorb their impact into their everyday lives. Understanding the scope of the transformation induced by new media becomes crucial in order to forsee some future changes and needs. However, before achieving this, it would be necessary to avoid placing all the stress on the content and practically none on the medium.
Contributor: Eva Durall
Need of anticipating the consequences of innovation
"The latest approach to media study sonsiders not only the "content" but the medium and the cultural matrix within which the particular medium operates."
(..)
"And it is only on those terms, standing aside from any structure or medium, that its principles and lines of force can be discerned. For any medium has the power of imposing its own assumption on the unwary. Prediction and control consist in avoiding this subliminal state of Narcissus trance."
Exclusion in a world based on visual and typographic technology
(Ina)
"uniform and continuous habits are a sign of intelligence, thus elliminating the ear man and the tactile man".
Effects of technology
(Ville)
According to McLuhan, any technology is a medium, not just what usually is considered media (e.g. newspapers, tv, radio). Example: Electric light is pure information with no message. If it's used to write an ad to a wall it has a message.
What we are considering here, however, are the psychic and social consequences of the designs or patterns as they amplify or accelerate existing processes. For the "message" of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.
The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance.
