Video Book Review

So here's my video book review of Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (or follow this link for just the powerpoint version without voiceover). PS - don't know why the graphic is blurry for the voiceover version and not the music version, but I can try editing that later.

Steps:

1. Think a really long time about what to do to be creative at least a little
2. Go to YouTube and click on creation tools (that you read as curation tools and got really excited for but then realize you read that wrong)
• Let their free audio library entertain you for about ten minutes
• Download three of their free audio clips to use for video
• Of course reading the terms and conditions first to avoid copyright issue
3. Realize your camera on your computer is feeling uncooperative but no fear because creativity is here!
4. Make fun powerpoint to explain points of book and use microphone to do voice over parts do give it that personal connection feel
5. Edit a bit using Windows Live Movie Maker
6. Post it and tag it with digiculture326
7. Wish you had your puppets from last semester's videos with you and not at home so they can make a surprise cameo appearance (and then proceed to watch those videos again and appreciate the cheap quality and brevity there too)

Advertisement for Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man in the Whole Earth Catalog

I didn't find any video book reviews (and I've made a post before on how many interviews there are on YouTube) but I did find this fellow blog post that mentions how the book was meant to stir questions about the technological world and not meant to ask and answer those questions. I also found this cool image (left) on http://www.moma.org (click through for full link, scroll down a little more than half way to find subheading Mediated Art) and a mini review of McLuhan's Understanding Media. I thought it looked pretty cool. Plus it's a short review (tiered content model with this little ad and review all in one, yeah?) to get the book noticed and selling.

Lots of fun with making this review and researching this book. Hopefully all my mentions of it on here and Google+ (as well as to friends of mine) will spread the word some more about McLuhan's contributions to digital thought!

Review: Dan Gillmor's We the Media

I've just finished Dan Gillmor's We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People as part of my research into citizen journalism. You can read my Goodreads review if you'd like as well.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. The stories made it quite easy to get through, though as I noted in my Goodreads review, the examples also dated the book quite quickly. Something I'd like to add that I didn't get to talk about before was Gillmor's brief discussion of copyright at the end of his book. Part of the reason I was left with a good feeling at the end of the book was the way he presented his views on copyright, which corresponded very nicely with mine.

Gillmor supports copyright. He thinks that creators should have incentive to create. However, current copyright law is abusive, and stems creativity (especially since there is no more incentive for creators to be creative if their copyright extends 70 years beyond their death than if the copyright period was much, much shorter). Gillmor licensed this book under a Creative Commons license, which is like saying, as he claims "Some rights reserved." He still believes he and the publisher will benefit from the production of the book, but he has also left it open to inspire more people creatively.

I'm glad I read this book, but I know I'm not done yet. It's time to expand to new citizen journalism horizons.

My Review of Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

Click here for the short(er) and sweet version of my book review. Outside of that, prepare for the more in depth post review on Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.

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.