The medium is the message
This was an extremely hard article to read. I was only able to understand, and really grasp a few concepts of the reading. Hopefully with more research and reading of other student’s blogs I’ll be able to pull the gold nuggets out from the article. However from what I do understand from the article, I do agree with what he is trying to say.
The first thing that struck out to me was the fact that an electric light has a message. It’s a medium that conveys a message because we all share some underlying meaning behind that. All other signs that we drive by everyday convey a message, that to many other people may mean nothing. Another example would be a carpool lane diamond painted on the road. To anyone who doesn’t drive, its just a painted white diamond, to drivers it means you have to have multiple people in the car to be in that lane. It’s a simple concept that is often overlooked daily.
Another concept I was able to understand was his good and his bad concept of objects and mediums. It can be directly related to the Chinese philosophy of ying and yang. Everything has a good and a bad, it all depends on how the user uses it.
All in all, McLuhan had many great concepts. It was just a really dense read that I’ll be sure look into more for the exam this week.
Jossshhuaa!
I also found this article hard to follow. I did not really understand most of the concepts I felt like I was suppose to getting out of this article. I also agree with the concept of good and bad objects of mediums. It is so true that everything has a good side and a bad side. this concept made me think a lot about how people use social networking. There are people out there that use it for good, like connecting with old friends and family. Others out their use it to trick young girls or boys into meeting up with them under fails pretenses and bad things tend to take place. The internet is full of bad and good things, like any medium, and it does really depend on the user and how they use it.
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