Monday, October 18, 2004

McLuhan

McLuhan

Understanding Media

"The cellphone is not a phone any more than a computer is a computer," says Federman. "It's a device that delivers content."
Called a "mobile" by most of the rest of the world, the cellphone can serve as a database of calendars and contacts, social-convener, mate-finder, camera, pager, social-protest organizer, electronic wallet, music machine, fashion statement, and, oh yes, a wireless telephone.
The mobile "allows us to be ubiquitously connected," says Federman, and by extension, "be in pervasive proximity to our tribe, no matter how distantly those members are scattered."
McLuhan's other famous idea, of the global village, of course, is evident to all. Satellite TV images, the Internet, email and the cellphone all shrink our world.


I. John Harvey. "Now the Mobile is the Message" -- The Toronto Star, November 11, 2004.

McLuhan's laws of technology adapted to fit the mobile phone model:

The laws hold that all technology exhibits four effects:
It contains an element of retrieval. It brings back something that already exists. In the mobile's case, the telephone.
It enhances existing technology. Mobiles cut the wires associated with phones.
It renders something obsolete. The mobile eliminates the need to be in a specific place, rendering land phones somewhat obsolete.
It reverses progress to some degree. By overdoing the new, we run out of benefits and slip into what McLuhan called "reversal," which, in this case, might take the form of the intrusion of the mobile into our lives and our inability to escape its siren call.


I. John Harvey. "Now the Mobile is the Message" -- The Toronto Star, November 11, 2004.

McLuhan talks

McLuhan festival

McLuhan for Managers

The Bias of Communication

Time-biased media

Space-biased media

McLuhan's Wake by Kevin McMahon

The Medium is the Message

James Joyce

Finnegan's Wake

Wyndham Lewis

Ezra Pound

Three Ages of Man:

1. The Preliterate era
2. The Gutenberg Age
3. The Electronic Age

Eden

The Global Village

Media: Hot and Cool

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Hot

Hottest

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