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Friday, September 11, 2009
Extend and Amputate
When considering a new medium McLuhan suggests that the answers to the following questions will predict what kind of a culture it will grow.
1. What does it extend?
2.What does it make obsolete?
3. What is retrieved?
4. What does the Technology reverse if it is over-extended?
assignment:
consider facebook through the lens of these questions.
To understand what these questions mean read the following article.
Once on the page, hit ctrl and the letter F and enter the subject you want to read about.
http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/mcluhan.html
1. What does it extend?
2.What does it make obsolete?
3. What is retrieved?
4. What does the Technology reverse if it is over-extended?
assignment:
consider facebook through the lens of these questions.
To understand what these questions mean read the following article.
Once on the page, hit ctrl and the letter F and enter the subject you want to read about.
http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/mcluhan.html
Thursday, September 10, 2009
The Medium is the Message
In 1895 a theatre was filled to watch the following film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cUEANKv964&feature=related
The finely dressed movie goers did not react to the feature film as you might suspect. Instead of complaints about it being short, or just responding with bored incredulity, these movie goers rose, screaming and fleeing from their seats, into the street. I wasn't there, but that's what I've read and the reason for their panic, I think, is that they expected this!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cUEANKv964&feature=related
The finely dressed movie goers did not react to the feature film as you might suspect. Instead of complaints about it being short, or just responding with bored incredulity, these movie goers rose, screaming and fleeing from their seats, into the street. I wasn't there, but that's what I've read and the reason for their panic, I think, is that they expected this!
They did! They had not seen a moving picture before and everything they believed drove them to expect this result, and so they fled in panic. Having no frame of reference to deal with this new media they ran. In some ways this still happens today.
Now for something completely different.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
That was Marshall McLuhan, professor at the University of Toronto back in the mid 1900's. He came up with the idiom "the medium is the message," and it may have made him feel profound but what does it mean? Try and work it out for yourself. What might he mean?
Lights out. Watch this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
A medium is like a substance in which things can be grown. Think of a medium in your bio lab's petri dishes growing bacterial cultures.
A message is not so much the words or slogans that make the message but rather what that slogan is supposed to do. Jesus said "Love your neighbor as yourself", not to make a popular phrase but, so that it would effect change, and people would love their neighbors.
So, a television, which is a fertile ground for developing culture, has an effect on culture, and so that is what it's message is. If you watch TV there will be other effects, social changes, changes to the way your living room is set up, changes to what you do in the evening etc. That is the message.
For a very thorough explanation of this idea check out this website.
http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthemessage.htm
Here are some videos that let you hear Marshall McLuhan talk about it himself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
The Medium is.
And you can quote me on that.
Welcome to the online Journal tracking the activities of one High School class through a year of study in the field of Media and Culture. It will be a place for myself, the teacher of said class, to share with my students the material presented in the class. It will be a place for that material to be shared with those around us. It will be a place to find out what happened while they had the flu. But it will mainly be an exercise in culture creation, a way to not be mere observers, but rather shifters of culture. This brings me to the title. It may be ill fated to call it so, for I believe that the activities of culture shaping are less defensive and more active by nature. But I desire to see students capable of holding a gaze with culture, not so as to be lulled to sleep by it, but rather that they may stare into its heart and understand its power. A power for ill? Sometimes yes; but a power of creative human spirits, made in the image of a creative God, to live out a call to create wondrous things. And the combination of all these things, cameras, gardens, usb keys, loaves of bread and dance routines, is nothing more or less than Culture.
Mr. deGroot
September 9, 2009
Welcome to the online Journal tracking the activities of one High School class through a year of study in the field of Media and Culture. It will be a place for myself, the teacher of said class, to share with my students the material presented in the class. It will be a place for that material to be shared with those around us. It will be a place to find out what happened while they had the flu. But it will mainly be an exercise in culture creation, a way to not be mere observers, but rather shifters of culture. This brings me to the title. It may be ill fated to call it so, for I believe that the activities of culture shaping are less defensive and more active by nature. But I desire to see students capable of holding a gaze with culture, not so as to be lulled to sleep by it, but rather that they may stare into its heart and understand its power. A power for ill? Sometimes yes; but a power of creative human spirits, made in the image of a creative God, to live out a call to create wondrous things. And the combination of all these things, cameras, gardens, usb keys, loaves of bread and dance routines, is nothing more or less than Culture.
Mr. deGroot
September 9, 2009
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