Chapters 19, 20, 12, 13 & the Epilogue

E-mail has been a upcoming and influential form of communication within the last two decades. Marshall McLuhan discussed and described the medium as being synonymous with the message itself. E-mails have many things that make them different from letters or even older correspondence such as memos where emails take a bulk of their form from. Most individuals these days use acronyms and initials to shorten the length of what they are writing. At the same time many individuals do not use a proper letter format such as including sincerely, dear, or the regular structure of a formal letter. This is making communication a lot faster and easier to respond to, but increasing less and less formal. They were aiming to make e-mail as fluid as possible. Flaming is a term that is used in describing email conversations and the content with in them. Flaming used to describe someone who was a complete and utter annoyance to those that came in contact with that individual. It has now adapted a more broad meaning including many things as expressing hostile emotions and cursing within expressing these emotions.  Many factors come into play when deriving the cause of flaming. There are many different situations that can effect flaming and the outcome of flaming. Individuals feel that those who follow the rules will get rid of those who do not follow the rules, but in any circumstance there are always going to be rule breakers. When discussing virtual reality and implementing it into our society there are many precautions that need to be examined. Many think that introducing new technology is as easy as inventing something and selling it. There are many tests and prototypes that are conducted and made to ensure compatibility with humans. Many hope that a ambiquitous society is near and will be most helpful in aiding everyone to learn and enlighten individuals to the advancement of our society. Many schools today are implementing online classes, which the students, professors, and schools see as a great opportunity to let individuals learn from home with ease. On the other hand people are afraid that this will make the student body lazy or more capable of cheating through uses of technology. With everything said we as a society need to take necessary precautions when attempting to use or create new technology. When our society becomes totally entwined and dependent on technology is when there could be a serious problem. We need to take a step back and look at what we have done and what we are looking to do. All in all technology and its advancements have brought miracles to millions of people so we should embrace it, but at the same time have a great sense of caution in the back of our minds that we are creating our own fate.

Logan - Chapters 1-4

Chapters 1-4 of Understanding New Media is an introduction to the topic and a short overview of Marshall McLuhan’s work. What I found most interesting about these chapters was the author’s additions to McLuhan’s three ages of communication. McLuhan’s ages were the oral age, the literate age, and the electric age. The author added a first era that he calls the “mimetic age,” which includes the days before and during the evolution of spoken language. The second age Logan adds is one that encompasses the use of digital, interactive media. I also thought McLuhan’s reason for disliking electric media was interesting. He believed that because information traveled so quickly, the action and reaction occurred almost simultaneously, so that we get to “act without reacting.” He believed that as a consequence, we “lived mythically with electronic media.”

            

Digital and Analogical

The other night we discussed the difference between digital and analogical. Digital are discrete units such as words, numbers and letters that have no resemblance to anything.  In addition, digital allows editing to be much easier. It is also more compact and leaves more space available. The problems that come with digitalization, is that it allows for easier plagiarism. However, it is also positive because it allows new creativity. On the other hand, analogical means literally non-logical but, it is something continuous and has resemblance to other things such as time and pictures. Furthermore, analogical requires more space than digital things such as DVR. In addition we were introduced to Marshall McLuhan. He had some very interesting ideas such as the “medium is the message or massage.” It is like a massage because it works and shapes us over a period of time. Furthermore he is known as “the oracle of the electric age” since he predicted Internet or something like the works of Google. Another thing that was fascinating is that he believes the generation gap in neurological. This is because books are no longer “king” and the electronic use caused a direct affect in the nervous system, transforming human nature. He also believed that humanity could be intertwined for good or bad through electronics. I’m very interested to read more about him.