UNDERSTANDING MEDIA: WHAT WOULD MCLUHAN SAY? Image: Thomas Mann Anne Balsamo, Understanding Media Studies September 21, 2015

Fluid Fiction How does one understand the cultural impact of media?

Fluid Fiction What is the relationship between technology and culture?

Fluid Fiction The Medium is the Message | The Medium is the Massage

Fluid Fiction Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time…. Every culture and every age has its favorite model of perception and knowledge that it is inclined to prescribe for everybody and everything. [My work] explores the contours of our own extended beings in our technologies, seeking the principle o intelligibility in each of them. The Medium is the Message |

Fluid Fiction Every culture and every age has its favorite model of perception and knowledge that it is inclined to prescribe for everybody and everything. [My work] explores the contours of our own extended beings in our technologies, seeking the principle of intelligibility in each of them. The Medium is the Message |

Fluid Fiction What is the meaning of a particular technology? How can we see on the unobserved and the unintended impact, as well as on the obvious and preferred? The Medium is the Message |

The personal and social consequences of any medium – that is of any extension of ourselves – result from the new scale introduced into our affairs by any new technology. The message of any medium or technology is the change in scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs. The Medium is the Message |

The content of any medium is always another medium. It is typical that the content of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium. Our approach to media study considers not only content but [also] the medium itself and the cultural matrix within which the particular medium operates. The Medium is the Message |

Fluid Fiction What does the artifact enlarge or ENHANCE? What does it erode or OBSOLESCE? What does it RETRIEVE that was previously obsolesced? What does it REVERSE into when pushed to the limits of its potential? McLuhan’s Method | The Tetradic Grid

Fluid Fiction ENHANCEOBSOLESCE RETRIEVEREVERSE McLuhan’s Method | The Tetradic Grid

Fluid Fiction McLuhan’s Method | The Tetradic Grid

Fluid Fiction The Printed Word The Photograph Motorcar Games The Telephone Movies Television Electronic Media The Four Laws of Media |

Fluid Fiction ENHANCES: Spread of power; fixed point of view; detachment and objectivity; cause and effect reasoning; uniformity and repeatability; nationalism. OBSOLESCES: Gesture and personal memory RETRIEVES: The written word REVERSES: Ubiquity of text without meaning; text as symbol The Four Laws of Media | The Printed Word

Fluid Fiction ENHANCES: Human self-awareness OBSOLESCES: Painting RETRIEVES: Attention to gesture and posture REVERSES: The purpose of travel: not to encounter the strange and unfamiliar, but to visit the familiar and the already seen The Four Laws of Media | The Photograph

Fluid Fiction ENHANCES: Movement through time and space; the suburbs; the shopping mall OBSOLESCES: Walking; physical and social distance RETRIEVES: Armor for the horserider REVERSES: Standing still The Four Laws of Media | The Motorcar

Fluid Fiction ENHANCES: Social interaction within artificial paradises OBSOLESCES: Stress of daily life RETRIEVES: Collective re-enactment of shared drama REVERSES: All the world’s a game, men are merely players The Four Laws of Media | Games

Fluid Fiction ENHANCES: The ear and the voice OBSOLESCES: The telegraph, smoke signals, hierarchy RETRIEVES: Total participation in communication REVERSES: Loneliness, a busy signal, “no one can come to the phone right now” The Four Laws of Media | The Telephone

Fluid Fiction ENHANCES: Multiple worlds; storytelling; dreams OBSOLESCES: Time and single point of view RETRIEVES: The theater; the ensemble art troupe REVERSES: Fantasy as reality; reality as dream The Four Laws of Media | Movies

Fluid Fiction ENHANCES: Viewer as screen; non-linear storytelling; the global village; homogenization OBSOLESCES: Movies, newspapers; linear narrative; high definition RETRIEVES: The close up examination of human emotion REVERSES: 500 channels and nothing to watch The Four Laws of Media | Television

Fluid Fiction ENHANCES: Simultaneity (all pov ’ s at once) OBSOLESCES: Human logic and reasoning RETRIEVES: The nervous system REVERSES: Cacophony and the sender gets sent The Four Laws of Media | Electronic Media

What is culture? What is technology? How to think about technology in non-deterministic ways? How to recognize, so as to intervene, in the determining force of technology? Cultural Studies | The relationship of technology & culture