Week Five

Week Five

Hi all, welcome back!

This week we had a really interesting discussion of Marshall Macluhan's work. He was a Canadian philosopher who had a strong ontological understanding of how mans creations have shaped man. He is quoted a saying'We shape our tools and in turn our tools shape us'. This is a very interesting topic to me as we now exist in a society that funds itself by creating ever new products to sell, often with no longevity or need apart from their ability to make money.

Another phrase Macluhan is noted for coining  is 'The medium is the message'. This is a deliberately paradoxical statement meaning what has been communicated throughout history has been less important than the medium used to communicate it.

 For example, Macluhan believed the print culture puts an emphasis on the visual whereas in oral tradition of communication placed emphasis on the ear. This was something we discussed in class and found that it is easier perhaps to absorb visually rather than orally and that may be why society has become so fast paced.
We now live in a Global Village now in place in which tv, radio etc combine  to create unification and dissipation of information at the cost of conformity. TV and radio disseminates information much more publicly and has much more of an impact then telephones. Meaning the public are being given much more insight into how society is run, a real impact of the medium over the message.

Another note Macluhan made that I found interesting was when he said in an interview that to read means to guess, therefore reading is an activity in rapid guessing at the context and meaning behind each iteration of a word.

David Bowie speaks of the need of an audience for a medium to complete its function he foresaw the monumental impact the internet would have on society good and bad. As if we didn't already love him enough he went and proved he had some good brains!

I'll leave the link for the interview in for anyone interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiK7s_0tGsg

I also got to speak to my group for the first time this week which was so exciting!
It was just me and one other this week but we decided on some themes we could discuss, including the rise of automated jobs, and the temptation of staying in your room existing only online. We had a great catch up about the module so far and our thoughts on what we've been discussing before we allocated different areas we could research independently and bring back to the team. So it was a very encouraging first meeting!
I'll keep you posted as the project develops as I think it's going to be a good one!

As always, thank you for reading!
Coldtoesies