Real quick. For those of you who just want the stripped Understanding Media version of the book, I made a bullet list of the main points McLuhan makes in the book:
- Media are extensions of man physically
- Telephones extend our hearing, electric technology is our central nervous system
- We do not recognize how media is an extension of ourselves because it acts like one of our physical senses
- We accept media so much we don't think of it as a separate entity from ourselves
- It is numbing us if we spend too much time with media
- Media goes beyond content
- See newspaper analogy explained above
- Hot vs Cool media
- Hot media is low audience participation, lots of data, uniform
- books, radio, film, printed media
- Cool media is high audience participation, less information, inclusive
- television, comics, oral speech, telephone
After all the research I did for Understanding Media, it did pretty well preparing me for a lot of metaphors and tangents that McLuhan uses in his book. I agree with every critic that says sometimes it's hard to follow his ideas. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people attribute his many metaphors and ramblings to lacking evidence, therefore lacking credibility. While the "lacking evidence" part may be true, it isn't something to be critical of McLuhan about. He didn't have as much as we do now on digital culture and technology. He is considered one of the starting critics of digital thinking. It's hard to defend brand new ideas when there isn't research to back you up. So as long as you take his theories and apply your own research and proof behind it, the book is really useful in getting you thinking.
Now to the meat of the book: McLuhan basically talks about how media (the literal object, see technology as a synonym) as an extension of who we are as creators and consumers of content. He also argues that the medium is more important than the content it produces. His famous quote "the medium is the message" rings loud and clear in both parts of Understanding Media. I'm going to restate a bit of what I said in my Goodreads review here. McLuhan explains that it is important to look at the media itself over the content it produces because without the media, there is no content. He uses the analogy of a newspaper. The impact of the newspaper is not the news it presents, but the fact that there is news to share because newspapers make it possible. I kind of thought of a neon sign. You have the lettering of the sign that says the name of a restaurant, but the technology behind the sign (the light) is what allows people to read the sign. Without the technology, the content means nothing. To some extent I agree. Without the computer or phone accessing the internet, the internet means nothing to me. But I don't want to take away all the importance of content either like McLuhan seems to. Sure we should look at how the technological world has literally become a part of who we are as a people and culture. But we should also look at who is producing this content, what the content does for us, and more importantly the people behind creating even more technology and content.
Understanding Media was meant to make people think and start considering technology as a serious topic to research and examine. It is also meant to warn us of the powers of technology. Media will take us over if we aren't careful according to McLuhan. I think if he saw the opportunities media gives us today he'd have a heart attack. He wasn't all adverse to technology though. He had a lot of great insight for a man who was talking about digital culture before it was really being explored seriously. What do you guys think? In the end, I didn't mind reading his book. Maybe a bit long and rambling, but then again I think I do that myself. I connect with McLuhan that way.
No comments:
Post a Comment