Week 3 - Group #1 - Media and Messages -

We are really fascinated by the ideas that “the medium is the message,” the medium is the motivation of social development and it differentiates the different eras of human history. With the changing of mediums, the usage of different human senses to process information is also changing or equalizing. Artists are always the ones that are responsible to see the patterns of the medium. As artists, we need to stand outside the medium and consider the medium beyond what it does. Most importantly, as McLuhan mentioned in the article, we will be abandoned if we specialize in certain skills and stay in our comfort zones. We need to see the connection between different knowledge in different fields. Not only artists but people who run the society must also be aware of this change in medium and they must know how does it work. McLuhan's idea of hot and cold mediums allows us to better understand the essence of the medium. It suggests that the hot medium is one that filled with data and does not require much participation from the audience. However, the Internet nowadays falls outside of this theory, the Internet provides its audience with plenty of information, its audience is able to take part in the medium or further complete the information concurrently. The Internet is both hot and cold medium. The Internet is both hot and cold medium. We are not surprised as this article was written in the 1960s when the Internet did not yet exist. The cultural statements made by McLuhan seems to be racist, but it’s understandable for someone living in the 1960s to have these standpoints. Group member - Eugène Fournier, Michael Watts, Liu WenYue.