Week 3: TETRA - Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan

This introduction of McLuhan’s writing overall seems to bring on these main observations:

Firstly, that the key to a critical consideration of any media is to acknowledge that all media derives its content from other media. In this there is a suggestion of the importance of a sensitive approach to the study and understanding of medias considers anthropological aspects, because as it is said, "the latest approach to media study considers not only the "content" but the medium and the cultural matrix within which the particular medium operates." The point is again summarized well in the following comparison: "our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. For the "content" of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind. The effect of the medium is made strong and intense just because it is given another medium as "content."

Secondly it is examined how the "transforming powers of new media" has its observable impacts on human senses: an extension of our capacities turns out to trigger profound changes that need to be monitored, the closing quote on C.G. Jung’s observations about the Romans changing being a last reminder of the historical weight of the medium on human activities. The reading makes use of numerous similar historical references and aphorisms to demonstrate to the reader the tangible context of the given observations. Notably the example of Arnold Toynbee, who approached the transforming power of media in his concept of etherialization, which he holds to be the principle of progressive simplification and efficiency in any organization or technology.

Regarding the second part of the reading, Media Hot and Cold, it seems more obvious that the work is dating from 1964, the evident absence of modern medias indicating it, while nevertheless suggesting a coherent look at a modern way of separating mediums into metrical points of analysis. The involvement or interactions between humans and media being scaled as the main factor of identification between a hot media (approximately identifiable as one that doesn't give much chance to the audience to fill the gaps due to the content being clear and requiring less participation) to a cool media (that is in this logic a cool media can be one engaging several senses, where an audience has much more opportunity for interaction) being the main tool of distinction brought by this chapter.

Key Question: Is the Internet a Hot or Cold Media?

MC Lariviere, Miha Eftene, Etienne Bolduc, Madison Hunt, Miko Yassa