Thus, he is a great conceptualizer, not a great scientist. Hot media are, therefore, low in participation, and cool media are high in participation or completion by the audience. V podtexte je možné badať čosi ako históriu modernej spoločnosti, alebo masovú filozofiu zmiešanú s výbornými mýtusmi. And if media are the extension of ourselves, how do they reflect on the way we change in the mediated environment? His reference base swings from the Old Testament through James Joyce, to Oppenheimer. Well worth picking up and reading, even after all this time. Lapham says is a world of people who worship the objects of their own invention in the form of fax machines and high speed computers, and accept the blessings of Coca-Cola and dresses by Donna Karan as the mark of divinity.
I understand this lack of the message better in seeing media as institutions of power in relation with the other articles for this week , social relations and technological determinism fit in here. Lots of intriguing ideas, but presented with vague language and very little supporting evidence. There were also plenty of parts of this that were completely over my head. The shock that McLuhan experienced in his first teaching post propelled him toward media analysis. However, he's so damned bright that I was still wowed. I don't especially care that a significant amount seems suspicious.
An example he gives of a hot medium is the radio, as it extends just one sense. . Since television and the other electronic media transcends space and time, the world is becoming a global village---a community in which distance and isolation are overcome. When he does offer evidence it is often anecdotal, with no reference to anything concrete. Thus, spoken language is the key development in the evolution of human consciousness and culture and the medium from which subsequent technological extensions have evolved. Unfortunately, I don't think those morsels are worth the effort of reading this book. Understanding Media: the most important book ever written on communication.
He also doesn't use references assuming of course that my edition hasn't just be This made for a very frustrating reading experience. It is essential to understand this both as a transmitter and as a receiver. McLuhan describes the growth of mechanisation as an explosive process as we move further apart and more specialist, but foresaw in electrical technologies a remedy to this, that electrical technology and communication would lead to an implosion, a drawing together of various strands of specialisation, and bring in depth involvement in process and knowledge. More even than the preparation for war, the aftermath of invasion is a rich technological period; because the subject culture has to adjust all its sense ratios to accommodate the impact of the invading culture. Okay, I know I'm being unfair. For that, it can be considered an important primary historical source that can help us understand the historiography of media theory over the last 60 years.
McLuhan writes: The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinion or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance. He made some intriguing predictions in this book such as the obsolescence of printed media. Permeation of the colloquial language with literate uniform qualities has flattened out educated speech till it is a very reasonable acoustic facsimile of the uniform and continuous visual effects of typography. We have to see hot and cool media not in terms of static definitions but as dynamic concepts that are designed to get at the experience and effects of how we use media. The result says McLuhan, are men who are readily captured by the gentleness and guile of women, but who are also surrounded by a barrage of body parts. We know the advantages, even before implementation, but we choose to accept the disadvantages because there is a privileging of all types of technological extension, even deadly and horrific forms.
What's so important about a book that contains many, if not mostly, untenable claims? Understanding Media, which was first published in 1964, constitutes the most representative expression of McLuhan's ideas. As television entered a period of huge growth during the 1950's, McLuhan, then a college professor, became interested in advertising. I really want to give this book a higher rating, because some of his ideas are very interesting and sound plausible and I do think I have learned to look at media and world history in a new way. McLuhan is obviously a smart and cultured man. The advertising companies were doing the controlling, and the desired effect was nothing loftier than selling products to unsuspecting customers. McLuhan was a visionary bullshitter. There have been countless Newton Minows formerly head of the Federal Communications Commission to how much of my awe this book is just bc it confirms my deepest fears about excelling only in Word Literacy and completely neglecting and not even knowing how to approach Visual and Audio Literacy!!!!!! The extraordinary breadth of contributions to Explorations from leading thinkers across the arts, humanities, social and natural sciences makes this journal a founding publication in the now burgeoning field of media studies.
All of this was done in the early 1960s at a time when television was still in its infancy, and the personal computer was almost twenty years into the future. These are a few examples, and almost everything we can think of is subject to similar observations. McLuhan said: Although it may be true to say that an American is a creature of four wheels, and to point out that American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver's-license age than at voting age, it is also true that the car has become an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad, and incomplete in the urban compound. In addition, this extension enables one to travel in relative comfort in extreme weather conditions. This made for a very frustrating reading experience.
Some very interesting ideas about the nature of media and technology. Men do not recognize this because media has become one of man's senses how often do you think about the activity of smell or touch over enjoying a smell or using your hands? L'orizzonte del ricordo si va sempre più abbreviando e con lui anche le motivazioni ideali dell'indignazione etica e morale, della reattività emozionale ad avvenimenti proposti in sequenza sugli schermi, su internet, sui giornali. Copyright the Estate of Yousuf Karsh, California. With these words on the first page of Understanding Media published in 1964, Marshall McLuhan burst onto the intellectual scene with his most influential book. Some sources say he predicted the world wide web 30 years before it was invented.