Lecture conducted by: Daniel Chong
Topic of discussion: "The World according to Marshall"
Post no. 8
According to Marshall, his laws of media are:
An Extension/Enhancement: Every technology extends or amplifies some organ or faculty of the user.
What does the medium enhance or intensify?
Lets take a car for example. This medium extends the legs of an ordinary human, enabling them to go travel further without getting lethargic or tired easily in a short amount of time.
Telephones could also be an enhancing medium. It extends the hearing ability of a human, allowing them to have a conversation with someone kilometers away without having to raise their voice.
Closure/Obsolescence: Because there is equilibrium in sensibility, when one area of experience is heightened or intensified, another is diminished or numbed.
What is pushed aside or obsolesced by the new medium?
Lets take the car again for the example. Due to the existence of this new medium, horses and carriages begin to diminish in demand.
Telephones also diminish the effort of setting up fire signals to communicate with one another, or using messengers that would take a longer period of time to get the message across. Media is always improving, very quickly. Old media would be forgone, newer and more effective media would replace them.
Reversal: Every form, pushed to the limit of its potential, reverses its characteristics.
Alright, if the car is overused and abused, it would cause humans to be idle, lazy and fat. It prevents them from moving around or getting to nearby places by walking. That would be the reverse of the abuse of effective new media.
The telephone as well. People would overuse it, causing dangerous health problems from the radiation the device emits. People would also take for granted that communication would and could be easily made anytime of the day, therefore there would be laziness and communication would not be done at all.
Retrieval: The content of any medium is an older medium. (I'm personally not very sure how this applies)
The telephone retrieves the ability to meet up, talk and bond.
Cars on the other hand retrieves the ability to move around and meet people at designated places.
Overall, what Mc Luhan is trying to say is that every new or old medium has its pros and cons. It's up to us to define what thoses are to come up with a suitable design solution that would properly obsolete a media, or create a new one that would benifit mankind.
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The content of any medium is an older medium. For example, in your poster project, the content was derived from a book. A better example would be the way the written word, first came from speech. A current example might be the way many mobile phone games would rely on previous generation of gaming platforms for their codes or titles.
ReplyDeleteRetrieval in the context of the Tetrad Analysis, it refers to something that was obsolete but is now bought back to fashion or usage.
In the slides, the example for the car is the myth of the knight in shining armor. This idea was growing obsolete when the bicycle replaced the horse. But when the car became more common, the steel body of the vehicle and its speed bought back the idea of a heroic and battle ready transportation. The bicycle was just too sweet and silly for that image. Today, it is common for macho car magazines to picture the car with a pretty lady, just as knights in shining armors were suppose to save the princess.
So tetrads are more than just 'pros & cons'. It forces you to see the impact of the medium from more dimensions and in relationship with other mediums.
Thanks! Cleared up about that now! :D
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