User:Emily/Thematic Project/Trimester 03/09

The Medium Is the Message, Marshall McLuhan

(From The New Media Reader)

a means of control --> splitting and dividing all things

medium is the message --> in operating and practical fact <--> merely to say <--> the personal and social consequences of any medium --> of any extension of ourselves

the machine altered our relations to one another and ourselves

the essence of machine technology--> the restructuring of human work and association was shaped by the technique of fragmentation

the essence of automation technology --> integral and decentralist in depth

the "content" of any medium is always another medium (the content of speech is an actual process of thought, which is in itself nonverbal; the content of writing is speech, the written word is the content of print, and print is the content of the telegraph; electric light is pure information, it is not till the electric light is used to spell out some brand name that it is noticed as a medium)

theme --> the psychic and social consequences of the designs or patterns as they amplify or accelerate existing process.

the "message" of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.

"content" --> which could not exist without the medium --> underline that the medium is the message (the content is diverse --> ineffectual)

it is the medium shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action

the business of processing information vs the business of making office equipment or business machines

electricity light/power --> they eliminate time and space factors in human association

extensions of man --> true social and political navigation depend upon anticipating the consequences of innovation

configurational awareness reveals why the medium is socially the message --> the latest approach to media study considers not only the "content" but the medium and the cultural matrix within which the particular medium operates

current somnambulism --> the way people use the technological instruments determines their value vs (David Sarnoff) / --> it ignores the nature of medium

any technology could do anything but add itself on to what we already are

nothing follows from following, except change --> electricity ended sequence by making things instant --> with instant speed the cause of things began to emerge to awareness

mechanisation is achieved by fragmentation of any process and by putting the fragmented parts in a series

mechanisation in movie --> translated us beyond mechanism into the world of growth and organic interrelation

movie medium --> lineal connection to configurations

movie appeared as a world of triumphant illusions and dreams that money could buy

cubism --> give the inside outside, the top, bottom, back and front and the rest in two dimension, drops the illusion of perspective in favour of instant sensory awareness of the whole. --> medium is the message "seizing on instant total awareness"

retain some sense of the whole pattern, of form and function as a unity

---

Marshal McLuhan:

reading = rapid guessing

the natural of art = set a trap for people’s attention

dialogue = encounter interface with others people and situations —> violence = self-expression (quest of identity)

rear view mirror —> future

the television uses the eye and the ear, phrase of Tony Schwartz in a book called The Responsive Chord —> images is constitute by millions of this resonating particles, there is no images, no snapshots, no shutters, there’s no camera. There is an offer , an outpouring of these small bits of information in patterns that are entirely active and dynamic. So the television is resonating form experience

inside outside

putting people on —> teasing them/ challenge them/ upsetting them/ befuddling them/ hurting them

simply pointing to the thing they have ignored; the things that concern them very nearly but have been totally pushed aside as insignificant ==> advertising (has to be a certain comic element in a good advertisement)

comic is always the registration of a grievance

tv charisma —> looking like a lot of other people

radio —> a package medium, hot media (wrap up packaging media)

tv —> cool media or involving character (concerned with processes)

phonetic alphabet —> Euclidean space

left hemisphere (interested in quantity) / right hemisphere (has no bottom line, interested only in quality) acoustically-oriented