Marshall McLuhan

McLuhan's outlook on media was well before his time, which I think is what made it so controversial. It's amazing to me that he saw the progression of communication and basically predicted the Internet. I'm not sure I understand McLuhan's Tetrad, but I understand that he felt media shaped an individual more than the content. In all of the reading I did about him, I'm very curious what he would have to say today if he were here. I often wonder to myself where can we possibly go from here? Not only do we have the Internet, but most of us with smartphones carry the world in our pockets everywhere we go. We are never "alone" with the technology we have today. Is that harmful in shaping the individual?

McLuhan's way of thinking was a little hard to understand. As far as his thinking the media is what affects us more than the content, I'm not sure I agree. Unless I was misunderstanding his message. I feel the Internet shapes individuals, but it is highly based on the content. And unfortunately is it very easy to misunderstand the content of others based solely on printed words without body language and facial expressions. I think a lot of time & energy is wasted explaining misunderstandings that occur while online or texting. I wonder what McLuhan would think about that. 

I read an interesting post online HERE where someone tried to apply McLuhan's Tetrad to the Internet. Is this the Global Village McLuhan's was referring to? We have the whole world at our fingertips today and I think it's both a very, very good thing, but has also proved to be a bad thing. But that is based on content, not the media itself.

McLuhan had a lot of interesting thoughts and ideas (the ones I could understand) and that was over 30 years ago. Today one of his last graduate students F. Scott Taylor has written many articles, one of which explains what he thinks Marshall McLuhan would have thought of virtual reality. You can find the article HERE. It is very interesting to read the thoughts of someone so close to McLuhan and to hear what he predicts McLuhan would have thought. He states in there that McLuhan believed all human knowledge can be found in language and due to the Internet our language is also changing. OMG!!

McLuhan's Tetrad asks;

What does the medium enhance?
What does the medium make obsolete?
What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier?
What does the medium flip into when pushed to extremes?

To apply McLuhan's Tetrad to Social media I think we could say;

What does social media enhance? It enhances contact & communication with friends and family from all over, anywhere from down the street to across the world. It also enhances communication of news and other information.

What does social media make obsolete? It makes telephone calls with old friends & family, mailed letters & class reunions obsolete. The purpose of these things was to catch up and see how everyone's lives are going and now we can see all of this on social media sites from day to day. It's making newspapers obsolete also for the same reasons.

What does social media retrieve? It retrieves frequent communication with friends and loved ones that we may not have had the time to communicate with so much before through other means of communication.

What does social media flip into when pushed to the extremes? It can be pushed to being a way for people to become withdrawn from a lot of the outside world and to communicate solely through social media with the computer to hide behind for "protection" from face to face interaction. It can also be a source of stress when misunderstandings take place that aren't an issue in face to face contact. Issues like, why did this person de-friend me? or why didn't he/she comment on my page? Communication can get distorted without seeing body language or the human emotion that is behind a comment or a gesture in real life.