McLuhan

Medium: we have to elaborate theories, since we don’t really know what it is.
Transmit, store, process

Understanding Media: Starting point for media studies.

Media determinism: simplify everything to explain everything. Critique towards

McLuhan.

Explosion: since the creation of writing

Extension of the body:
Phase 1: extension of body parts (car, telescope, glasses, etc)
Phase 2: extension of nervous system, brain (TV as a start, later the internet)
Phase 3 and final: technological simulation of consciousness, collective process
of knowing.

With phase 2, we abolish space and time. Extreme shrinking of the world.

Anthropomorphism: attribution of human traits to things that aren’t human.

Problem with extension argument: when everything is explained from the human
perspective, the answers may be biased.

Medium is the message. (Ex: This means that it doesn’t matter what two persons are
watching, but that two persons are watching the same thing).

The medium is changing us.

The content of any medium is always another medium.

Example: A book is not about the story, is about the words, speech, etc.

Book > writing > speech > thoughts*

*McLuhan usually stops at thoughts.

Light is on the other side of the spectrum. Following the example, without light,
books can’t be read.

Theoretically, McLuhan might consider god as the source of light.

Good way to perceive a medium:

1) Don’t look at the content
2) Look at the content of another medium

Hot medium: extends one single sense in high definition.

Cold medium: low definition

High definition is not always good. Ex: movies in 4D (3D images + moving chairs
+ water + extra sound effects) usually distract people from the actual film.