The Medium is the Massage

Norbert Wiener (72)

Compare this quote to the first quotation on the blog, by McLuhan. Both writers share the same views. 

Computers (and technology) are changing everything. 

YOU are changing. Personally, I am depenedent on technology. I need my phone to be in my hand at all time. I need my computer to take notes in class. I need a camera when I’m going out to take pictures of my friends.

YOUR FAMILY is changing. You interact with your family differently now. For those of us that moved away from home, technology offers great ways to stay in touch with family members that in the past did not exist. My family members also use technology in their own way. For example, my brother is industrial design and he uses technology to draw the things he designs before actually creating them in real life.

YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD is changing. Your neighborhood is expanding. Think of McLuhan’s “global village” concept. You can literally access and send information to and from any place on the globe. 

YOUR EDUCATION is changing. Who goes to the library to look up a book anymore? That is what the databases online are for, right? Is it not crazy to think about how people used to use textbooks for research? Technology has made access to information faster, more efficient and much more vast. And it is only getting more advanced. Consider how much information will be accessible when every book in the world is digitized.

YOUR JOB is changing. Machines have taken over much of the job market. They are simply smarter, better, faster, and more efficient than humans are.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is changing. 

Look at this image straight on.

Now, turn your screen upside down and look again.

Media can control you in many ways, and this is a simple example of that. 

Depending on the way you look at something, what you see and think can change.

This should be taken into careful consideration when viewing any kind of media. The media shows you what it wants to show you, in the exact way it wants you to see it as a viewer. Media and mediums are always controlling us. This photo controlled the way you viewed it, for example.

Think about the ways other forms of media control you.

Magazines place images strategically so that the thing on the page they want you to look at is emphasized, as another example of media control. 

Marshall McLuhan (63)

This quotation address how old ways of doing things are no longer good enough to keep up in our technological day and age. 

This can be related to Wiener’s thoughts of how machines are one day going to begin to outsmart humans- if they haven’t already. 

In Men, Machines and the World About Norbert Wiener discusses his new found field of science called "cybernetics," the study of mechanical and electronic systems he believes are designed to replace the control functions of human beings.

Wiener proposes the idea that a new industrial revolution is taking place in which the energy of the machine is replacing the power of the human. 

Tumblr allows users to make several different types of posts

Text Posts: Users can manipulate font style and size, add headings, page breaks, specialized text, etc., much like the using of a word processor. Compare the ease of typing out a text post on Tumblr to having to use a printing press or typewriter in the past. As McLuhan said, “printing, a ditto device confirmed and extended the new visual stress. It provided the first uniformly repeatable ‘commodity’, the first assembly line- mass production” (50). Technology has made communication extremely simplified. To post this text on the internet, available for the entire world to see, all I had to do was sign up on a free account and make a blog. Then, I clicked “text post” and typed one out. When I clicked “save”, in the click of a button my words were posted on the internet for the world to see. Talk about a global village. In the past, the only people you would ever think to communicate with were those within your immediate surroundings. Today, anyone can use technology to communicate with another person on the other side of the globe. Our society has a much more global mentality than ever before. 

Photo Posts: Users can upload as many photos as they want with captions, or without. 

Quote Posts: Similar to text posts, but the source can be given and the quotation shows up in a larger font on the blog. 

Link Posts: These posts will redirect viewers of the blog to another website, as specified by the blogger. 

Chat Posts: Conversations can be posted the blog. 

Audio Posts: Audio clips can be downloaded and loaded onto the website. Consider the development of this technology. Now audio clips can be shared easily across the internet, whereas years ago there was no technology available to even record audio clips. Men, Machines, and the World About introduces the idea of feedback. Audio clips are a great example of what the this reading was speaking of. The text states, “words such as feedback, input, and output are now used to describe human interchanges” (65) [as they were only previously used in engineering or scientific discourse]. Every type of post made on Tumblr can be considered feedback, and a human interchange. I am writing this post which will later be read by Brittainy Bonnis. She gave me this assignment, and this is my feedback to her. Later, she will in turn give me feedback about how she felt about my original feedback!

By clicking any of the page links above (McLuhan, Postmodernization, Men, Machines and the World About or Themes) you will be re-directed to a new page. This is a way the medium you are using can control you. 

Each page is focused on a different reading, and when the link is followed it will bring up all the posts that relate to the reading you choose to click on. 

By using tags underneath each post I can tag the reading the post relates to and create a page for each reading to show up separately.  

The emergence of mechanic technology drastically changed how people do their jobs. 

As McLuhan mentioned the media “leaves no part of us untouched” this includes how people work. He poses the question; what happens when machines learn to do peoples jobs? 

The Postmodernization reading states, “It has now become common to view the succession of economic paradigms since the Middle Ages in three distinct moments, each defined by the dominant sector of the economy: a first paradigm in which agriculture and the extraction of raw materials dominated the economy, a second in which industry and the manufacture of durable goods occupied the privileged position, and a third and current paradigm in which providing services and manipulating information are at the heart of economic production.”

As McLuhan stated that technology is reshaping our jobs, this is what he meant. Machines have taken over the previous economic paradigms. We are currently in the paradigm that provides services and manipulates information. The dominant sector of the economy has completely shifted due to the fact that machines began to be created that did human jobs more efficiently than humans could do themselves. Machines are better, faster, stronger. Machines do not expect paychecks. Machines will not die, or miss work, or come in late. For many reasons, the technology has continually been produced to do human work better than a human could- and therefore humans have lost these jobs, and moved into different sectors.  

Machines have taken over the need for human labour. 

Depending on how you view this picture, two different images will appear. 

com·mu·ni·ca·tion

noun

the imparting or exchanging of information or news

“Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication” (McLuhan, 1967)

McLuhan states that society is more so shaped by the nature of the media than the content of the communication.

Today, humans have the ability to incorporate many different mediums of media in their lives. Print, photography, written, visual, etc. 

Technology has shifted the way we can view media, and produce it. This blog is an example of this shift. Anyone with internet connection and a device can make a website now, and post whatever they want, with the ability for anyone to be able to view it. This type of global communication ability is something extremely new, and it addresses exactly what McLuhan is getting at. 

“We have had to shift our stress of attention from action to reaction. We must now know in advance the consequences of any policy or action, since the results are experienced without delay. Because of electric speed, we can no longer wait and see” (McLuhan, 63).

Everything in life has become a faster process because of technology. It is now no longer valid to “wait and see”- this process is too slow. We expect everything rather instantly in our society. Technology has cause an extreme increase in the speed at which information travels and decisions are made. 

Humans have begun to rely heavily on machines and technology for tasks and the speed of which these tasks can be completed.

Machines have begun to do things better and faster than humans can. 

“The computer and communication revolution of production has transformed laboring practices in such a way that they all tend toward the model of information and communication technologies” (Postmodernization, or the Informatization of Production, 291). 

Jobs were, in the past, mainly in the labour sector. Now the majority of jobs deal with information and communication sectors. These are where the world is headed. Machines can now do labour more efficiently than humans can. 

Many call the postindustrial economy an information economy. 

“We shall have to realize that while we may make the machines our gods and sacrifice men to machines, we do not have to do so” (Wiener, 72). 

The reliance humans have on machines may begin to backfire when humans realize that we cannot perform our daily tasks without the assistance of a machine. 

We are teaching humans how to use machines instead of teaching ourselves how to survive and thrive without them.

“Then almost all that was taught was“power,” today almost all that is taught is ‘communication’” (Wiener, 65).