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The effects of technology on communication
Impact of technology on communication
The effects of technology on communication
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The ideas put forth in Marshall McLuhan's Media Hot and Cold, present many theories regarding the effects of media on the world. What qualifies as media, in essence, is any experience or information, imparted on the awareness of an individual and/or societies. These can be physical or nonphysical influences. TV and radio are examples of physical media. Their effects and evolution can be easily observed. However, and perhaps more importantly, McLuhan examines those nonphysical influences which can be observed in the individual and society. It is not enough to merely identify these mediums as such. What is more crucial is the perpetual waxing and waning of influence of such ineffable phenomena, whose identity and existence rely upon their interdependency …show more content…
It all comes down to the mechanics of our senses and nature of our awareness. The self and the mind constitute a superposition of possibilities. The mind has many instruments with which to perceive, interact with, and interpret the world. The profound potential of these instruments are often exceeded by their limitations. The capacity of these instruments, and accuracy with which they interpret the world, to the mind, depend on the cognitive development and mindfulness of the individual; as well as that which is being observed. This constant input of data, happens at a conscious and subconscious level. This information informs emotions, behaviors, and world views. This system is analogous to a computer with many peripherals; necessarily limited, but sufficient to solve the average problem. Like the computer, our peripherals are governed by software; the sophistication of which, would appear to have many iterations, if observed at different points in history. Furthermore, this range of sophistication can also be observed within the lifetime of the individual. It is the neural sophistication of the human brain, which allows for, and institutes, the compartmentalization of this cavalcade of information, to help the individual navigate this reality. The brain both instructs and learns from its instruments. Our eyes distinguish light, determine depth, and assign color to the world. Our sense of smell allows for us to further identify and associate with our world. Ad to these, our hearing and sense of touch, and what we have is an experience; an ongoing image of
Media, the plural form of medium, describes various ways in which we communicate in society. A phone call, email, radio, computer, news on TV, etc. are all forms of media. In our society today, the media plays a significantly large role in influencing society negatively, twisting one’s perspective of the truth. In author Brooke Gladstone’s, The Influencing Machine, she discusses how media is looked at as an “influencing machine,” that’s controlling the mind of its viewers. Throughout the reading, Gladstone guides her readers through perceptions of media and how it influences them to get readers to understand the truth about media and the manipulation behind it.
Media affects everyone and everything; There is no escape. Media is everywhere and surrounds everything. Henry Jenkins and Marshall McLuhan have differing points of view as to what the meaning of media is. They both, however, have their particular ponits which they describe well. Jenkin's talks about the different types of cultures that exist, focusing on popular culture, in his essay, "What Everyone Should Know About Popular Culture.
Newspaper, radio, film, television. These are only a few of the various forms media can take. From the moment we open our eyes to the instant we shut them, we are surrounded by media and absorb the information it hurls at us in an osmosis-like manner. The news ranges from the latest terror attack and political scandals to supposed UFO sightings and scandals involving sandals. We as an audience tend to focus more on the message the media relays rather than on the medium in which it is presented to us. “What?” is asked more than “How?” The key claim Marshall McLuhan makes in his book, The Medium is the Massage, is that the form of media influences how the message is perceived. Let’s illustrate this with a scenario: it’s eight o’clock in the morning.
As McLuhan argued in the beginning of ‘Understanding Media’, some previous scholars such as General David put too much emphasis on the content of media. (McLuhan, 2001:11) As a result, the nature of the medium was ignored, and human beings would become ‘in the true Narcissus style of one hypnotized by the amputation and extension of his own being in a new technical form.’ (McLuhan, 2001:12) McLuhan advocated studying the medium itself rather than the contents of the medium.
In his groundbreaking work, Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan posits that technologies in the “electric age” rendered it impossible for the individual to remain “aloof” anymore . Over the course of the late 19th to early 20th centuries, while an increasing presence of electric machines in daily life irrefutably signaled our nation’s arrival into the electric age, society’s “central nervous system [was] technologically extended to involve [each individual] in the whole of mankind,” McLuhan states (20). Previously disconnected, isolated individuals and groups suddenly became compressed, involved in each others’ lives, and unified into a network. As opposed to the preceding mechanical age, this was an age that sought “wholeness”-- an aspiration that McLuhan refers to as a “natural adjunct of electric technology” (21). McLuhan believes that great progress was made in the electric age; that wholeness was sought and worked towards eagerly.
Our five senses –sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch help the ways in which we perceive the world around us. And while they seem to work independently at time they can effect each other and the way we comprehend something. Seeing something pretty, touching something soft, eating something cold and smelling something rotten are the sense we use to connect with the world around us and will all effect how we move forward in that situation. When you look at the top picture say the color of the word not the word itself. It is harder than it seems and takes a little practice to do it efficiently. It is because we see the spelling we were taught not the color it was written in. It is hard to process it the other way, but not impossible. Take the bottom picture for another example is this a
The media play an indispensable role in modern life, and are considered amongst the most powerful and inaccurate sources of social information, education and entertainment. Our mass media is an electronic (TV, film, video, videogames, internet) visually dominated media with print (newspaper, magazine)...
Throughout the book, McKibben compares the two experiences, contrasting the amount of useful information he received from nature, as opposed to the amount of useless, hollow information the television provided. He goes on in the book to make several very important observations about how the television has fundamentally changed our culture and lifestyle, from the local to the global level. Locally, McKibben argues, television has a detrimental effect on communities.
Marshall McLuhan is best known for coining the phrase “The Medium is the message”. He believed that society today is centred around electronic media. On the other hand David Riesman who’s most famous book is entitled “Lonely Crowd” centred his research around characteristics of American society. What these two men have in common is that they both believed that society could be separated into three distinct phases. Riesman believed that there were three distinct character types, tradition-directed, inner-directed and other-directed. While McLuhan believed that there were three types of society which he called oral societies, written societies and electronic societies. Riesman believed the inquiries into the relationship between social structure and social character. The question central to Riesman was what type of person was being formed in the emerging capitalist societies in the developed nations. McLuhan was theorist of literature whose ideas about media and global culture stimulated discussion among social the...
Perception is defined as the awareness of the world through the use of the five senses, but the concept of perception is often used to isolate one person’s point of view, so how reliable can perception be if no one person’s is exactly the same? The word perception itself is riddled with different, well, perceptions of its meaning. When some hear the word, they might automatically think of it as something innately flawed, that can easily be fooled by illusions, while others may think of its usefulness when avoiding scalding a hand on a hot stove. I am here to agree with both and to argue that perception is something necessary and helpful, and something that should be scrutinized for its flaws. By looking at perception as a way of knowing in the context of memory and human sciences, it can be concluded that perception can contribute to the acquisition of knowledge by constructing a foundation on which incoming stimuli from the environment are able to be quickly interpreted and acted upon, but perception can also hinder the acquisition of knowledge by wrongly interpreting those stimuli, causing inappropriate reactions.
Lewis H. Lapham (New Introduction By) Marshall McLuhan (Author), 1995. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. 3rd Printing, 1995 Edition. The M.I.T. Press.
Marshall McLuhan and Raymond Williams, both cornerstones in their respected media theory and cultural studies, differed in their opinions of the relationship between media technology and social change. McLuhan believed in technological determinism, which is “an approach that identifies technology, or technological developments, as the central causal element in processes of change” (Croteau, Hoynes, and Milan 290). In other words, McLuhan believes that new technology drives the way cultural values and social structures develop. He was interested in the cultural effects produced by electronic media; he was especially interested in the effects of televisions. McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage argued that technology has changed the way humans do things and interact, that “all media are extensions of some human faculty” (McLuhan 5).
Well, let's take a look at the brain. From being in class, my awareness about what I'm doing, what I'm seeing, what I'm hearing, what I'm thinking has come to reflect upon not just what, but how is it all being done by my brain. This morning I woke up, my eyes opened, I looked out my window, I saw the sun rising, it was this beautifully deep yellow/orange color. I thought, "How beautiful" and I smiled with a sense and feeling of wonderment. It could be said that I experienced nothing out of the ordinary this morning. Yet, if I could narrate these few activities in terms of the networking of neurons resulting in my eyes opening, my sight of the sun, my ability to perceive its color, my inner acknowledgment of its beauty and the emotions that sight evoked in me, you would be reading for a very long time and what I did this morning would indeed present itself in quite an extraordinary light. It is in recognition of this, with respect to the brain's aptitudes, that Howard Hughes in his paper, "Seeing, Hearing and Smelling the World" quoted May Pines in expressing, "We can recognize a friend instantly-full face, in profile, or even by the back of his head. We can distinguish hundreds of colors and possibly as many as 10,000 smells. We can feel a feather as it brushes our skin, hear the faint rustle of a leaf. It all seems so effortless: we open our eyes or ears and let the world stream in. Yet anything we see, hear, feel, smell, or taste requires billions of nerve cells to flash urgent messages along linked pathways and feedback loops in our brains, performing intricate calculations that scientists have only begun to decipher"(1).
One scientist, Damasio, provided an explanation how emotions can be felt in humans biologically. Damasio suggested, “Various brain structures map both the organism and external objects to create what he calls a second order representation. This mapping of the organism and the object most likely occurs in the thalamus and cingulate cortices. A sense of self in the act of knowing is created, and the individual knows “to whom this is happening.” The “seer” and the “seen,” the “thought” and the “thinker” are one in the same.” By mapping the brain scientists can have a better understandi...
Hence, the power of media has touched its apex in today’s age. Its societal, political and economic functions reflect its unparallel capacity to affect the human life in all spheres.