Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964 is a media theoretical book by Marshall McLuhan.

The book is the source of the phrase " The medium is the message." The plant treated as one of the first of its kind, the impact of globalization on local cultures. It exerted a strong influence on scholars, writers, and social theorists.

Summary

In the first part McLuhan explains the differences between hot and cold media and the way in which a medium translates the contents of another medium. McLuhan was the summary of the content of a medium is always another medium ..

In the second part McLuhan analyzed the known 1964 media, he evaluates the important form of a medium as its content. The analysis includes the spoken word, the word written (for example, in a manuscript ), roads and transport of printed news, numbers, clothing, housing, money, watches, pressure (eg, in lithography or woodcut), Comics, the printed word (eg in typography ), telephone, sound recording, film, radio, television and automation.

McLuhan uses historical quotes and anecdotes to change the way in which new media perceptions of companies. McLuhan thereby lifting out the effects of each medium and presents their content in the background. He distinguishes between hot and cold media. Hot media require the user a low degree of participation, while cold media require intensive involvement of the user. Accordingly, McLuhan defines the radio as a hot medium because listening does not require full participation of the user. The television is defined as a cold medium, since it requires a higher participation of the user.

Media Concept

McLuhan used the words interchangeable medium, media and technology. A medium according to McLuhan any " extension of ourselves," as well as " any new technology ." In addition to forms, such as newspapers, television and radio includes McLuhan bulb, cars, speech and language in its definition of media, since all of these cause as technologies of communication and their shapes or structures the way in which perceived and understood the world will change. McLuhan assumed that the conventional methods in the study of media are not usable because they would only pay attention to the content, which they could not perceive the psychological and social effects. Through this method, the electric light is not perceived as a medium, since it has no content. According to McLuhan enhanced or accelerated any medium existing processes and causes a change of the scale, speed, shape, and pattern of collaboration, relationships and actions, whereby psychological and social consequences arise. The effects of media on humans McLuhan referred to as the message of the medium.

To illustrate his thesis, McLuhan used the example of mechanization, to show that regardless of the product, the effect is the same. McLuhan criticized the traditional media understanding that they are " not scratching the itch 'was descriptive of the. McLuhan saw David Sarnoff, the then chairman of RCA, as one of the media experts who followed the conventional understanding and the explanations McLuhan referred to as the " voice of the current sleep-walking ." Each "Medium add to the one we have already added ", which it will implement " extensions and reductions " of the human senses and body and it forms technically new. McLuhan assumed that a man is thus " narcissistic " hypnotisisert and prevented them from seeing the real nature of the media.

McLuhan also assumed that the contents of a medium is another medium, respectively.

The effects of each medium are limited by the existing social conditions, as it is integrated into the existing and strengthened existing processes. Media also affect different companies in different ways.

According to McLuhan, the only way that real " principles of power" of a medium ( or structure ) is to perceive distances to stand next to her in order to enable the ability of a medium, the ignorant in a subliminal narcissistic trance and " their own assumptions, to transmit values ​​and prejudices on him " to escape. The distanced position enables it to control and predict the effects of a medium. The control and prediction of a medium is McLuhan to be extremely difficult because " it can be effective on the first contact, as the first notes of a melody ." As a historical example of such distancing McLuhan Alexis de Tocqueville and the typography leads to. Tocqueville came into his position because he was man of letters. As a historical example of the effects of a technological embrace a society McLuhan leads to the Western world, the " uniformity, continuity and Sequentialismus " in favor of " rational " abandoned its principles.

McLuhan assumes that media are languages ​​that have their own structures and grammatical systems and that they could be studied as such. He assumed that the media would have effects in which individuals, societies and cultures perceive the world the way and understand the world. Based on his studies in the New Criticism argued McLuhan, technologies that would behave to a culture like words to a Poem: The Second takes its meaning from the molded by the First.

McLuhan's media theory was influenced by Harold Innis.

Examples of media and their message

Hot and cold medium

A hot medium is one that extends one single sense of McLuhan. It is characterized by richness of detail and a large amount of information. From the recipient only a small attention span is required. Therefore, media that are characterized by "low involvement", hot media. One of the hot media McLuhan is one example, the photography, the cinema, the radio, but also the phonetic alphabet or the book.

A cold medium is a medium that is characterized by a "high involvement" of the recipient for McLuhan. It calls for active complement and completion by the recipient. The cold media thus include all communication media such as the telephone, e-mail, Internet, etc. But even cartoons, cartoons, comic, television and the language according to McLuhan cool media.

The fundamental problem that arises in the discussion of this construct is the fact that a medium not of itself "cold" or " hot ", but that these are fundamentally relational terms. If McLuhan, who is famous for his cool prose respectively its cold access to the hot medium of writing, writes that at that time not yet high-resolution medium of television was a cold medium, then this quality is only obtained from the comparison with another medium, or. having a specific aspect of the standing compared medium. In the case of television is its quality results compared to the audiovisual medium of film also, which demands accordingly due to the photographic image sharpness less by the recipient. McLuhan writes throughout as if the media-specific quality is a fixed, ie independent from the existing respective comparative moment size. It was relatively late in the essay he explicates this, the concepts underlying comparison logic. This representation strategy McLuhan calls the reader a high level of initiative or subjective complement and to bring the serious reader to worrying about the structural properties of the media.

The distinction "hot" and "cold" borrowed from Marshall McLuhan of the then-popular genres of the " hot jazz " or " cool jazz ".