1. Marshall
McLuhan
(1911-­‐1980)
Week
04:
The
Medium
And
The
Message

2. Brian
Eno’s
iPhone/iPad
apps:
soothing
music
for
children
too
Ambient
touchscreen
apps

3. Brian
Eno:
pioneer
of Roy
AscoH:
developed
ideas
ambient
music
and
art about
interacJvity
and
student
in
1964 feedback
in
the
visual
arts
from
late
1950s
Connec;ons
from
Eno
to
the
iPad

4. Toddler
using
iPad
-­‐
an
“early
adopter”?
Surrounded
by
digital
media
from
birth?

5. Images
from
Alan
Kay’s
1968
paper
on
the
Dynabook
hHp://www.edibleapple.com/2010/04/30/from-­‐alan-­‐kays-­‐dynabook-­‐to-­‐the-­‐apple-­‐ipad/
Computers
simple
enough
for
children

6. The
One
Laptop
Per
Child
project,
developed
by
Nicholas
Negroponte
at
MIT
Media
Lab
from
2005.
Strong
input
from
computer
language
and
interface
pioneer
Seymour
Papert
(1970s
LOGO
turtle
on
the
right)
Developing
a
computer
for
Third
World
children:
the
OLPC

7. One area where the research is particularly
strong is what is popularly known as
multitasking. Plugged-in kids have gained
a reputation for being masters at toggling
between, say, a homework assignment
and instant-messaging classmates,
downloading music and texting on the cell
phone, surfing the Internet while updating
Facebook pages, and so on.
A 2006 survey by the Kaiser Family
Foundation1 found that middle and high
school students spend an average of 6.5
hours a day hooked up to computers or
otherwise using electronic devices, and
more than a quarter of them are routinely
using several types of media at once. It
also found that when teens are “studying”
Image from
http://neuroanthropology.net/2008/08
at the computer, two-thirds of the time they
/30/culture-on-the-teen-brain/ are also doing something else.
http://www.dana.org/media/detail.aspx?id=13126
Development
of
the
brain
in
a
technological
environment

8. One of the earliest and most noted studies in the field was conducted back in 1992 by
neuroscientist Richard Haier at the University of California at Irvine, who looked at how
frequent sessions with the Tetris video game changed the players' brains. The game
requires players to fit colorful puzzle pieces together at a quickening pace as they fall from
the top of the screen.
Back then, Haier used brain scans to discover that some parts of the brain actually used
less glucose as the players became more skilled at the game. The "Tetris effect"
illustrated how video-game training could make brains work more efficiently - an idea that
eventually led to a whole host of brain-training games.
From http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2009/09/01/4350065-how-games-change-your-brain
Possible
cogni;ve
benefits
of
gaming

9. Marshall McLuhan is perhaps one of the best
known media theorists and critics of this era. A
literary scholar from Canada, Marshall McLuhan
became entrenched in American popular culture
when he felt this was the only way to understand
his students at the University of Wisconsin.
[His] best known and most popular works [are] The
Gutenberg Galaxy: the Making of Typographic Man
(1962) and Understanding Media: the Extensions of
Man (1964)
[…] McLuhan's outspoken and often outrageous
philosophies of the "electric media" roused a
popular discourse about the mass media, society
and culture. The pop culture mottoes "the medium
is the message (and the massage)" and "the global
village" are remnants of what is affectionately (and
otherwise) known as McLuhanism.
[From http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=mcluhanmars ]
The
Medium
And
The
Message

10. "In a culture like ours, long accustomed to
splitting and dividing all things as a
means of control, it is sometimes a bit of
a shock to be reminded that, in
operational and practical fact, the
medium is the message. This is merely to
say that the personal and social
consequences of any medium - that is, of
any extension of ourselves - result from
the new scale that is introduced into our
affairs by each extension of ourselves, or
by any new technology.”
Marshall McLuhan, introduction to
Understanding Media
Understanding
Media
(1964)

11. Many
people
presume
the
convenJonal
meaning
for
"medium"
that
refers
to
the
mass-­‐media
of
communicaJons
-­‐
radio,
television,
the
press,
the
Internet.
And
most
apply
our
convenJonal
understanding
of
"message"
as
content
or
informaJon.
Puang
the
two
together
allows
people
to
jump
to
the
mistaken
conclusion
that,
somehow,
the
channel
supersedes
the
content
in
importance,
or
that
McLuhan
was
saying
that
the
informaJon
content
should
be
ignored
as
inconsequenJal.
http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthemessage.htm
The
Medium
And
The
Message

12. Whenever we create a new innovation -
be it an invention or a new idea - many of
its properties are fairly obvious to us. We
generally know what it will nominally do,
or at least what it is intended to do, and
what it might replace. We often know
what its advantages and disadvantages
might be. But it is also often the case
that, after a long period of time and
experience with the new innovation, we
look backward and realize that there
were some effects of which we were
entirely unaware at the outset. We
sometimes call these effects "unintended
consequences," although "unanticipated
consequences" might be a more accurate
description.
http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthemessa
ge.htm
Innova;on
and
its
consequences

13. McLuhan
tells
us
that
a
"message"
is,
"the
change
of
scale
or
pace
or
paHern"
that
a
new
invenJon
or
innovaJon
"introduces
into
human
affairs."
Note
that
it
is
not
the
content
or
use
of
the
innovaJon,
but
the
Motorola
DynaTAC
8000TX,
first change
in
inter-­‐personal
dynamics
commercial
handheld
cellphone, that
the
innovaJon
brings
with
it.
launched
in
1983
for
$3995
dollars
-­‐ http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthe
with
its
inventor
Dr
MarJn
Cooper message.htm
Innova;on
and
its
consequences

14. At the beginning of Understanding Media,
[McLuhan] tells us that a medium is "any
extension of ourselves." Classically, he
suggests that a hammer extends our arm
and that the wheel extends our legs and
feet. Each enables us to do more than our
bodies could do on their own. Similarly, the
medium of language extends our thoughts
from within our mind out to others.
[…he] always thought of a medium in the
sense of a growing medium, like the fertile
A
3D
snapshot
of
30%
of
the
Internet potting soil into which a seed is planted, or
from
2005,
tracing
connecJons
and the agar in a Petri dish. In other words, a
major
sites. medium - this extension of our body or
From
http://opte.org/maps/ senses or mind - is anything from which a
change emerges.
http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumistheme
ssage.htm
The
meaning
of
“medium”

15. "There is a basic principle that distinguishes a
hot medium like radio from a cool one like the
telephone, or a hot medium like the movie from
a cool one like TV. A hot medium is one that
extends one single sense in "high definition.'
High definition is the state of being well-filled
with data. . . . Hot media are low in
“Hot” participation, and cool media are high in
participation or completion by the audience. . .
. The hot form excludes, and the cool one
includes.” [from Understanding Media]
McLuhan associated "hot media" with specialized
knowledge, industrial economies and individualistic
societies, and "cool media" with oral traditions, agrarian
cultures and tribal societies. Which is precisely how he
arrived at the ironic idea that TV, though ostensibly an
advanced technology, was also giving birth to a global
village. He didn't mean that it was bringing us all closer
together; he meant it was changing our urban, industrial
Western society into a culture that reproduces the tribal
“Cool” characteristics of a village on a global scale.
From http://www.wordyard.com/dmz/digicult/mcluhan-5-3-95.html
“Hot”
and
“Cool”
media

16. Where would the Internet fall on McLuhan's
temperature meter? It remains almost
exclusively a medium that transmits and
reproduces vast quantities of text at high
speeds. McLuhan interpreted the evolution of
writing from ideograms and stone tablets to
alphabetic characters and print reproduction
as a "hotting up" "to repeatable print
intensity." By that standard, the Net is boiling.
“Hot”
On the other hand, its functional
characteristics match those McLuhan
identified as cool. There's no question that
the Internet is among the most participatory
media ever invented, like the cool telephone.
And its cultural patterns -- with its oral-
tradition-style transmission of myth and its
collective anarchy -- match those of
McLuhan's tribal global village.
From http://www.wordyard.com/dmz/digicult/mcluhan-5-3-
95.html
The
Internet:
“Hot”
or
“Cool”?