UNDERSTANDING MEDIA.   Term Paper ID:30304 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Examines the first seven chapters of Marshall McLuhan's book on the effect of mass communication.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Examines the first seven chapters of Marshall McLuhan's book on the effect of mass communication. Impact of rapid technological change on society. McLuhan's theory that the medium is the message and are one. Hot and cool media. Media as an extension of people's senses. Information systems and learning. Psychic consequences of the new technologies. Paper Introduction: In Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan described and explained media and cultural transformations. This paper will analyze the first seven chapters of his seminal book, which contain his central ideas on mass communication and contemporary culture. THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE McLuhan offers a form of technological determinism as he sees a relationship between the way we live and the way we process information. Cultural change is driven by technological change, says McLuhan, and for McLuhan it is specifically changes in modes of communication that shape human existence. McLuhan saw every new communications development as an extension of some human faculty -- the book is an extension of the eye, the wheel an extension of the foot, clothing an extension of the skin, and Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. We are currently translating our entire lives into "thespiritual form of information" which makes the human family into a singleconsciousness (61). Psychiatry is cited as an example. . . (63).New technologies accomplish the needed surgery on the social body withoutconcern for how it infects the whole. Human beings are then percussedvictims of new technology. MEDIA AS TRANSLATORS Today, says McLuhan, we see ourselves more and more as beingtranslated into the form of information, "moving toward the technologicalextension of consciousness" (57). Work CitedMcLuhan, Marshall. This meant starting with the effect and then finding thatwhich would embody that effect. Whitehead, the great discovery was the technique ofdiscovery, or the technique of starting with the thing to be discovered andworking back. There is a disruptive effect when a hot medium succeeds acool one: A tribal and feudal hierarchy of traditional kind collapses quickly when it meets any hot medium of the mechanical, uniform, and repetitive kind. The moment of the meeting of media is a moment of freedom and release from the ordinary trance and numbness imposed on them by our senses (55). THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE McLuhan offers a form of technological determinism as he sees arelationship between the way we live and the way we process information.Cultural change is driven by technological change, says McLuhan, and forMcLuhan it is specifically changes in modes of communication that shapehuman existence. Only the artist is able to make a consciousadjustment of the various factors of personal and social life to newextensions, and McLuhan described these as "puny and peripheral efforts"(64). This sort of shift has far-reaching implications for the way wecommunicate and the way we shape our messages. For massive social surgery is needed to inset the new technology into the group mind. That is why we must, to use them at all, serve these objects, these extensions of ourselves, as gods or minor religions (46).The principle of numbness comes into play as we numb our central nervoussystem when it is extended or exposed. Cool media include the carton, the telephone,and speech; hot media include a photograph, radio, and television. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. In doing so, wefind that all former technologies that are merely extensions of hands andfeet are translated as well into information systems: Electromagnetic technology requires utter human docility and quiescence of meditation such as befits an organism that now wears its brain outside its skull and its nerves outside its hide (57).The business of man has now become learning and knowing, and our economyexists on paid learning just as all forms of wealth derive from themovement of information. Says McLuhan, This is a very different thing from the numbing or narcotic effect of new technology that lulls attention while the new form slams the gates of judgment and perception. A common cause for a break in any system is the cross-fertilizationwith another system, as the steam press caused for print, or as radio andthe movies yielded the talkies. In the nineteenthcentury, says A.N. Man uses technology to extent or autoamputatedifferent senses, and this affects the remaining senses quite directly: Any invention or technology is an extension or self-amputation of our physical bodies, and such extension also demands new ratios or new equilibriums among the other organs and extensions of the body (45).We embrace any extension of ourselves in technological form that we see,use, or perceive, and we accept these extensions of ourselves into ourpersonal system and undergo the "closure" or displacement of perceptionthat follows: By continuously embracing technologies, we relate ourselves to them as servomechanisms. . McLuhan here examines this fact and tries to seewhy it is so. For the parallel between two media holds us on the frontiers between forms that snap us out of the Narcissus-narcosis. He finds that there is an interaction between the media and thehumans they serve and extend, and this takes place as the "media asextensions of our senses institute new ratios, not only among our privatesenses, but among themselves, when they interact among themselves" (53).Artists today mix their media quite easily, and the interplay of media canalso be seen in the way movies produce stars who then write books. A cool or low literacy cannot accept hot media like movies or radio as entertainment. It matters whether a hotmedium is used in a cool or hot culture: The hot radio medium used in cool or nonliterate cultures has a violent effect, quite unlike its effect, say in England or America, where radio is felt as entertainment. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964. Electric technology has allowed man to extend a model of hiscentral nervous system outside himself, suggesting a form of desperate andsuicidal autoamputation. The media depend on people for theirinterplay and their evolution because they are extensions of men and women,and it is a cause for some wonder that the media do not interact and spawnnew progeny on their own. In the nineteenth century, human attention turned to theassociative and the corporate, and as the machine was substituted for humanaction, a boundary break was passed. CHALLENGE AND COLLAPSE Bertrand Russell said that the great discovery of the twentiethcentury was the technique of suspended judgment. When we say we know more and more aboutman daily, we mean "that we can translate more and more of ourselves intoother forms of expression that exceed ourselves" (57). THE GADGET LOVER McLuhan uses the story of Narcissus drowning because he is enamoredof his own reflection in a pool of water and relates it to the Greek word"narcosis," or numbness, noting that people become fascinated by extensionsof themselves in any material other than themselves to the point ofnumbness. McLuhan relates the different modes ofcommunication to different human epochs, and the most effective means ofpersuasion shifts in each epoch according to the prevailing technology.What McLuhan means by this simple statement is that with the newtechnological media, the medium and the message are one so that the veryexistence of the medium shapes society and determines what we can andcannot do (or believe we can and cannot do). The technique of suspended judgmentanticipates the effect of something and offsets the effect before ithappens. An examination of the first seven chapters in Understanding Media hasrevealed McLuhan's far-reaching theories in the profound effect of masscommunication and the impact of rapid technological change on society. HYBRID ENERGY McLuhan says that the media, as the extensions of people, are "makehappen" and not "make aware" agents, and he explains that the hybridizingor compounding of these agents provides an opportunity to notice theirstructural components and properties. In Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan described and explained mediaand cultural transformations. MEDIA HOT AND COLD In this chapter, McLuhan differentiates media as hot and cool media.A hot medium extends a single sense in "high definition," or the state orbeing filled up with data. The medium of money or wheel or writing, or any other form of specialist speed-up of exchange and information, will serve to fragment a tribal structure (24). This paper will analyze the first sevenchapters of his seminal book, which contain his central ideas on masscommunication and contemporary culture. REVERSAL OF THE OVERHEATED MEDIUM Sometimes the difference between hot and cool media is cultural, andMcLuhan notes the different value placed on the printed word in Moscow whencompared to Washington as an example. In seeking to translate nature into art, man hasfollowed what he calls "applied knowledge." Learning is a process we see as getting from one place to another,and using the terms "grasp" or "apprehend" points to this process "ofhandling and sensing many facets at a time through more than one sense at atime" (6 ). In allthis interplay, there is a lack of understanding of the media problem thatexists even as people interact with different media: The hybrid or the meeting of two media is a moment of truth and revelation from which new form is born. The endless reversals or break boundariesare brought into being through the interplay of bureaucracy and enterpriseand include the point at which individuals are held responsible for their"private actions;" that is the moment of the collapse of tribal collectiveauthority. McLuhan saw every new communications development as anextension of some human faculty -- the book is an extension of the eye, thewheel an extension of the foot, clothing an extension of the skin, and soon. Among theboundaries are those form stasis to motion, and from the mechanical to theorganic in the pictorial world: Today the road beyond its break boundary turns cities into highways, and the highway proper takes on a continuous urban character. Media is defined broadly by McLuhan to be anything that amplifies orintensifies a human faculty and that extends our reach and increases ourefficiency. McLuhan's conception is expressed in the seemingly simple statement,"The medium is the message." He offered different views of what thismeant, but it basically relates to the idea of persuasion in that hebelieved that the medium itself changes people more than the sum of themessages of the medium. They are, at least, as radically upsetting for them as the cool TV medium has proved to be for our high literacy world (31).The distinction is made in terms of degree of participation needed. How we communicate is as important as what wecommunicate, if not more important. McLuhan says that most obvious psychic consequence of any newtechnology is the demand for it: Nobody wants a motorcar till there are motorcars, and nobody is interested in TV until there are TV programs (67). A coolmedium requires high participation, while a hot medium demands only lowparticipation. Another characteristic reversal after passing a road break boundary is that the country ceases to be the center of all work, and the city ceases to be the center of leisure (38). Another issue cited by McLuhan ishow there is a reversal in a hot culture as it reaches a boundary beyondwhich "the system suddenly changes into another or passes some point of noreturn in its dynamic processes," citing Kenneth Boulding (38). If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.

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