Geo Barcan: Marshall McLuhan: Mediums as the massage

​​​​​Marshall McLuhan: The medium is the massage

 

• medium ~ process ⇒ restructuring patters of social interdependence
• societies are shaped by the media and not by its content
• alphabet as a technology
• The age of anxiety: trying to do today's job with yesterday's tools, yesterday's concepts

The older, traditional ideas of private, isolated thoughts and actions - the patterns of mechanistic technologies- are very seriously threatened by new methods of instantaneous electric information retrieval (...) - p. 12

• dialogue on a global scale ⇒ global village
• mass audience (creative, participating force) as the successor of the public

In an electric information environment, minority groups can no longer be contained - ignored. Too many people know too much about each other. Our new environment compels commitment and participation. We have become irrevocably involved with, and responsible for, each other.