Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man and Digital Culture Participants

I am reading McLuhan's Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man to hopefully understand more about different types of media. I'm told that this book has been discussed a lot through the years (despite being dated - it was published in 1964), and it proposes that media itself, not its content, should be the focus of study. Since we've been talking about curation and I've been looking into the idea of "the man behind the post," I'm hoping I'll get some more ideas and viewpoints from reading this.

Preview
No pictures in 396 pages of content (but at least I can turn to page 394...). Other than that quick observation, I think McLuhan's going to really focus on his idea that media is what changes society and not the content it produces/supplies. It's broken into Part I and Part II, with Part I introducing his ideas, but Part II focusing on different types of media and the power of the "written word." There's a lot of metaphors - something about a light bulb and "hot media" vs "cold media."

Spiraling into Academic Blogging

After reading this post on academic blogging and this post on the spiral metaphor, I realized these concepts explained by Dr Burton go hand in hand. I'm just going to liken this to a spiral staircase because I'm visual like that.

The first part of our spiral staircase began in phase one. Each individual step was made up of our individual posts not necessarily consistently focused on one idea or theme. As we continue our climb up these steps to the second level right above the landing, we enter phase two of academic blogging. But we wouldn't have gotten to phase two without those steps in phase one. And we can climb back down the spiral stairs to look at points we made in phase one to carry with us in phase two. We develop our ideas. We use crowdsourcing (an idea we learned about in the first third of class, the first few steps of our spiral) and social proof (an idea we've just learned about) to get feedback and create a feedback loop.

(oops not stairs but you get the idea)

After we get public opinion (whether from our "homies, peers, enthusiasts, or experts") our spiral continues to grow into things phase three and beyond. I think what lies ahead can be daunting. You do get further and further away from the ground level as you climb up those spiral steps. But you can always step back down to refer to earlier notes, posts, links, and ideas to get your footing again.

Catching Our Moby Dicks of the Internet

I really appreciated this post because it briefly puts together the things we've discussed in class and on our blog posts. And considering what we've read recently about the long tail in digital culture, I'd like address the ideas of isolation and collaboration with the long tail concept (allowing products that may be overlooked in favor of "the hits" and mainstream materials to become marketable).

We have mentioned a bit how modern technology can make the world a bigger or smaller place. Indulge with me on a terribly written extended metaphor: In Moby Dick we have a group of sailors from different backgrounds (Harvard educated, sailing educated, not at all), different religions (Christian, tribal Pagan), different ethnicity (South Sea Islander, African tribal) all thrown together in one ship Pequod. So we have everyone from all over the world tossed into the surf of the internet. It brings us all together with emails, blog posts, recipe exchanges (Dough-Boy cup of Aunt Charity's ginger-water anyone?), news, etc. We all collaborate together to catch our own personal Moby Dicks of the internet: on a quest for that one whale song you've never heard before unlike any other whale song? want to tackle the impossible project using google docs harpoons and JSTOR?

Maybe I'm just being silly, but we've been told Moby Dick is technology, not just a part of it. So I will continue my metaphor to explain that with collaboration and making the world a smaller place, there is still isolation created from the wonderful space of digital life.

While we're out surfing the internet, on the Pequod in the middle of the ocean, we are cut off from the homeland. I can easily sit in a room with a group of my friends, not talk to each other, and all be on our laptops talking to other people. We are isolated from one another and we're physically in the same room! The ones in the ship, on the internet, we all have one thing in common: a song, an interest, a political group, crowdsourcing to get money to fund a project. The people we leave at home though are where we are known. Ishmael joins this crew of essentially strangers. They don't even know their own captain until chapter 28, don't mention the goal to get Moby Dick until chapter 41. Where is Ishmael's family? How did Queequeg and Tashtego and Daggoo end up on this crew? Are these guys creating avatars for themselves while on this ship? How much does the reader actually know about these crazy crew mates?

As powerful and adventurous the web is, we should also make sure we don't lose ourselves to the high seas and excitement. I'm not saying a good sailing trip isn't healthy. However, where Ishmael has "nothing particular to interest [him] on shore," (pg 1) we do. I'm guilty of spending too much time in front of a screen to find out who I am and what I like, rather than going out into the world and exploring myself. I don't need to sail for hours on the ocean of the web "whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul" (pg 1). There are people to talk to, things to see, and homework to do...though the homework bit might not make my drizzly November soul any more summertime June.