04 June 2005
Progress Platforms the Primitive
Marshall McLuhan advocates that technologies are first and foremost extensions of our human selves which extend our human capacities. He also states that "the medium is the message."
I try to grapple with these concepts and have come to interpret them to mean the following.
If we think about TV then we think that it is a one to many form of message delivery. The medium is structured this way. Any information sent via television, is sent from a small group to the masses. Regardless of the content of the message, the end result is that the masses are receiving information from a limited source. If television watchers could remember this fact then they would remember that the content is not neccessarily a majority consensus, but just information as projected from a small few.
The message here is that our government is ruling over us as a mass and our individual agency to change things is quite limited.
If we instead take the internet for example, then we have a many to many structure for information exchange. People have more agency as to which information to view. This sort of information is actually from individuals and is diverse in its stucture and content.
In this medium, the message is that we live in a democracy where if we are given a chance to excercise our voice, then we do have something to say. Also what individuals have to say is actually of interest to other people. The people form groups of likeminded collectives who can engage in discussion topics of their choice. We have become a postmodern society of minority groups who can exist as a substructure to the overriding government system.
I guess I interpret "the medium is the message" to mean that a certain age of technology, represents how the people are being governed. This may not be what McLuhan meant, but it still makes sense this way to me.
I was thinking then, that if this age of computers is meant to be the "age of leisure" then what is the message that is coming through this medium? Here I am more referring to the content of the internet. What is it that people are doing online, in this new millenium of Y2K?
They say that THE oldest profession on earth is prostitution (apparently). Here in this new age of leisure, so many hours of the day are filled up with people watching porn! I know us academics think that the internet is so much more than this, but my friends show me otherwise. The fact is, there is so much porn on the internet that people are filling hours of their new-age, leisure time by immersing themselves in this virtual world of flesh.
What is the message? Despite these elaborate technological extensions of ourselves, we are still bound by biological procreative drive. No mater how much we intellectualize ourselves to rise above our inherited, primative needs, these urges will always consume a considerable part of our lives. There is a demand for porn, and hence a great supply. The privacy of anonymity allows a greater audience to consume pornography than traditional media outlets allow.
My message is then, that the primitive has become exalted through progress. The plethora of porn existing online is merely an extension of our biological human selves. The medium is not to blame, it is just an outlet. The message is not pornography, it is just how we are built. The medium has provided an interconnected platform for our primitive selves to play.
I try to grapple with these concepts and have come to interpret them to mean the following.
If we think about TV then we think that it is a one to many form of message delivery. The medium is structured this way. Any information sent via television, is sent from a small group to the masses. Regardless of the content of the message, the end result is that the masses are receiving information from a limited source. If television watchers could remember this fact then they would remember that the content is not neccessarily a majority consensus, but just information as projected from a small few.
The message here is that our government is ruling over us as a mass and our individual agency to change things is quite limited.
If we instead take the internet for example, then we have a many to many structure for information exchange. People have more agency as to which information to view. This sort of information is actually from individuals and is diverse in its stucture and content.
In this medium, the message is that we live in a democracy where if we are given a chance to excercise our voice, then we do have something to say. Also what individuals have to say is actually of interest to other people. The people form groups of likeminded collectives who can engage in discussion topics of their choice. We have become a postmodern society of minority groups who can exist as a substructure to the overriding government system.
I guess I interpret "the medium is the message" to mean that a certain age of technology, represents how the people are being governed. This may not be what McLuhan meant, but it still makes sense this way to me.
I was thinking then, that if this age of computers is meant to be the "age of leisure" then what is the message that is coming through this medium? Here I am more referring to the content of the internet. What is it that people are doing online, in this new millenium of Y2K?
They say that THE oldest profession on earth is prostitution (apparently). Here in this new age of leisure, so many hours of the day are filled up with people watching porn! I know us academics think that the internet is so much more than this, but my friends show me otherwise. The fact is, there is so much porn on the internet that people are filling hours of their new-age, leisure time by immersing themselves in this virtual world of flesh.
What is the message? Despite these elaborate technological extensions of ourselves, we are still bound by biological procreative drive. No mater how much we intellectualize ourselves to rise above our inherited, primative needs, these urges will always consume a considerable part of our lives. There is a demand for porn, and hence a great supply. The privacy of anonymity allows a greater audience to consume pornography than traditional media outlets allow.
My message is then, that the primitive has become exalted through progress. The plethora of porn existing online is merely an extension of our biological human selves. The medium is not to blame, it is just an outlet. The message is not pornography, it is just how we are built. The medium has provided an interconnected platform for our primitive selves to play.
