New Mediums, New Messages

This post relates to Marshal McLuhan's "the Medium is the Message."  This revolutionary work delved into how new innovations altered society and human thinking.  "The medium is the message." McLuhan explains that a 'medium' is any extension of ourselves (aka technology) and the 'message' is the affects of using it.  Using one of McLuhan's examples from the text, automation, the use of machines for manufacturing, eliminated jobs that were previously done by hand, but generated more jobs in that someone had to create the machines in the first place.

Now, I know, one would think that what was produced from these "extensions of ourselves" are the messages.  Unimportant.  I doesn't matter what is made, whether that be a car from a factory, a phone call from a cell, or a email from a computer. What does matter is how these mediums change how we relate to each other as a human beings.  

For homework, I was told to give three examples of mediums of my own. My line of thinking went toward mobile communication.  Think about it.  How many times do we refer to our cellphones in a single day? To some people, I know their life is tied to that little piece of plastic and metal in their pocket.  

So my first medium is...

 Text Messages 

While the content of this medium can be anything within the realm of written word, pics, videos, and audio, the actual message, by McLuhan's definition, has had a great impact. 

Texts, within the past decade, have become the fastest easiest way to reach someone no matter where they are, what they're doing or what time it is.  Because of texting, I believe a kind of social expectancy has arisen that you have your phone on you at all times, in case a friend or family member needs to reach you.  It's even considered rude if you don't answer with a certain amount of time. God forbid your phone dies...

My second Medium...

        Smart Phones

Content: Phone calls, texts, internet connectivity, etc... meaning more functions than I care to write. :)

The message of the smart phone is even bigger than texts.  The smart phone is the first attempt to combine a computer and phone together.  With internet connectivity coupled with phone calls and texts, there is no reason for you to ever be out of the loop with your friends; in addition, you have the mind boggling vast amount of information the internet readily supplies while you're no where near a computer.  I believe this leads to impatience when wanting to know something as well as becoming more easily distracted in our day to day lives.  It's so hard to stay in the 'here and now' when cyberspace is at our fingertips...

My third and final Medium... 

 Mobile Video Chat


With written messages so popular in text, emails, facebook, and instant messaging, face time with an actual person becomes almost rare in proportion to the amount of people we interact with in a day, digitally and otherwise.  Because of this, it's so easy to become impersonal, detached, in how we communicate. Safely hidden behind a computer screen or cell phone, interactions become incredibly limited.  Now, with Apple's new FaceTime on the iPhone 4, phone calls become actual face to face conversations.  This tech is new and hasn't come anywhere near close to reaching everyone yet, but could the message be that people become more personal in their conversations over the phone?  No way to hide when you're actually looking at the person you're talking with.