“OURS IS A BRAND-NEW WORLD... ‘TIME’ HAS CEASED, ‘SPACE’ HAS VANISHED. WE NOW LIVE IN A GLOBAL VILLAGE... A SIMULTANEOUS HAPPENING

”Marshall McLuhan, 1967

Two authors:

Paul Levinson

• Born 1947, Bronx New York• American author and Academic• Professor of communications and media studies

at Fordham University in New York City.• Songwriter with The Archies and Ellie Greenwich.

The Authors:

Marshall McLauhan

• Herbert Marshall McLuhan, • July 21, 1911 – December 31 1980 • Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar • Professor of English literature, a literary critic, a

rhetorician, and a communications theorist • A decade after his death he was named the "patron

saint" of Wired magazine.

The Readings - Levinson

Digital McLuhan: A guide to the information millennium (1994) Paul Levinson

An exploration of McLuhan’s main thesis in relation to cyberspace.

The digital age is both well explained (and predicted) by McLuhan and help’s bring his ideas into sharper focus

Provides context to McLuhan’s article and the history of the wordplay in McLuhan’s title thesis The Medium is the Massage (1967)

Draws links between McLuhan’s ‘acoustic space’ and Cyberspace demonstrating the accuracy of McLuhan’s argument

‘Acoustic space’

Levinson argues that McLuhan’s “acoustic” space is now found in the online milieu of cyberspace. ‘Acoustic space’ is pre-literate, it is the world of sound, music,

myth and oral communication. It is total immersion. Information emerges not from fixed positions but anywhere and everywhere. Pre-literate / the tribal man

It is the opposite to ‘visual’ space which is ‘…a result of perceptual habits created by reading and writing with a phonetic alphabet.’ The creation of the alphabet allowed for a world of print,

manuscripts, books, newspaper. Literate / de-tribalised man

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xxJ0dKRzw8

‘Acoustic space’, Seen Online

Cyberspace is a combination of ‘acoustic’ and visual space because it is alphabetic, sound, music, and dynamic Post literate / re-tribalised man Simultaneous involvement of both the acoustic and the visual. McLuhan’s concept of the ‘global village’.

The Readings:

Is it natural that one medium should appropriate and exploit another?

(1968) Marshall McLuhan One key theme in McLuhan’s writing is debating Media

Determinism- A philosophical & sociological theory which explains the nature of the

power of the media and it’s impact on society The medium determines the modes of perception, the matrix of

perception and the matrix of assumptions within which we understand.

It states that new media technologies bring about changes in society/culture

However, he also argues that this is a reflection of society in general.

Is it natural that one medium should appropriate and exploit another?

(1968) Marshall McLuhan

Further: Attempts to create a framework that can be implemented at a

secondary school level to challenge the assumptions of the media

This was to bring the study of media into line with other academic fields that had already examined the effects on society.

Asserts the ‘old’ medium becomes the content for the ‘new’ medium

To truly understand what is communicated we need to understand the language that is communicated.

So…

Is the medium really the message?

Case study: The Internet

Is the medium really the message?

The Internet was a major reason Barack Obama won.

The Obama campaign used bottom up community based techniques.

Online bloggers gave an added scrutiny that has never been seen before

In other words – the internet (the medium) has transform the way we live (the message)

Is the medium really the message?

“The internet is not a medium, and cannot be regulated as one.”

Bill Thompson, 2008. (Journalist and regular commentator on Digital Planet BBC)

Internet is a network, a series of connected computers that can share binary data and use it for various purposes.

He argues that we are only at the beginning of the process of finding ways to use this network, “Some of its uses can and should be carefully controlled, others cannot”.

Is the internet “beyond legal reach”, a space where governments can’t go?

Is the medium really the message?

Has technology become so pervasive that is doesn’t matter as much the we use these communication or entertainment mediums, but rather what we use them for?

Eg: Choosing educational/documentary films over

Hollywood blockbusters Sending love mail or hate mail