Media, Technology, and Mediums Uses and Effects

willed without witting, whorled without aimed
James Joyce

My philosophy was impacted greatly by Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media, Laws of Media, and The Global Village. It is clear that every human construction whether art or artifact is a technic or media, and technology and media are an extension of one or more parts of the human body. The shoe is an extension of the foot as is the wheel. The knife is an extension of our nails or teeth. Computers are an extension of our mental functions and consciousness. This is the definition of a medium or media.
It makes no difference whatever whether one considers as artifacts of as media tings of a tangible 'hardware' nature such as bowls and clubs or forks and spoons, or tools and devices and engines, railways, spacecraft, radios, computers, and so on; or things of a 'software' nature such as theories or laws of science, philosophical systems, remedies or even the diseases in medicine, forms or styles in painting or poetry or drama or music, and so on. All are equally artifacts, all equally human, all equally susceptible to analysis, all equally verbal in structure.
Eric McLuhan
Laws of Media

The medium is the message because by extending or amplifying one or more part of the body out of proportion with the rest then naturally this will have profound consequences for our bodies, consciousness, and societies. The visual language of objects and life in the universe speaks to our "soul" so to speak. All the media which we create is also a language of physical expression and evolution. We live in an ocean of language. Every object is a physical thing and at the same time it is a fragmented abstraction in a huge language of the universe

Marshall McLuhan was a hero to the people of the world. He say deep into understandings of media and its uses. Instead of using his skills solely for personal gain he had a passion for communicating with others. Listen to the speech below the McLuhan gave in 1966. So far ahead of his peers was he that the speech as relevant now as it was in 1966.

Laws of Media

The laws of media will be referred to here as a tetrad.
The tetrad, taken as a whole, is a manifestation of human thinking processes. As an exploratory probe, tetrads do not rest on a theory but a set of questions; they rely on empirical observation and are thus testable. When applied to new technologies or artifacts, they afford the user predictive power; in this sense as well they may be viewed as a scientific instrument.....tetrads are a means of focusing awareness of hidden or onobserved qualities in our culture and its technologies
Marshall McLuhan
The Global Village

Pertinent excerpts from McLuhan's The Global Village
The four questions of the tetrad are:
1. What does the artifact enlarge or enhance? (figure)
2. What does it erode or obsolesce? (ground)
3. What does it retrieve that had been earlier obsolesced? (figure)
4. What does it reverse or flip into when pushed to the limits of its potential (chiasmus)? (figure)
The parts of the tetrad have a complementry character
Retrieval is to obsolescence as enhancement is to reversal
--and--Retrieval is to enhancement as obsolescence is to reversal

The balanced tetrad possesses two grounds and two figures in ratio to each other.

All cultural situations are composed of an area of attention (figure) and a very much larger area of inattention (ground). The two are in a continual state of abrasive interplay, with an outline or boundary or interval between them that serves to define both simultaneously........The ground provides the structure of our style of awareness, the way of seeing or the terms on which a figure is perceived.

End of excerpts from Laws of Media

The content of each media really has a limited affect on our consciousness. Although our minds are hypnotized and programmed by attention to content of media its ability to affect change pales in comparison to the radical shift in consciousness with the adoption of the medium of the phonetic alphabet. No amount of words will ever impact the people as much as the deeper more subtle influence of the simple ability to speak,hear, read, write a phonetic alphabet. The impact of content always pales in comparison to the radical changes created by new mediums. People's phone conversations are insignificant to society. Having phones to use is a tremendous change in behavioral patterns. Video technology brings an even more profound change, "a chimerical 'reality' that involves all his senses at a distended pitch, a condition as addictive as any known drug. The mind, as figure, sinks back into ground and drifts somewhere between dream and fantasy." (McLuhan) Imagine the changes brought about by the adoption of television. When it became dominant all families chose to spend their time focused on the television together. Families were interacting much less, no games, no discussions (political or otherwise), no reading, no teaching the children. All just stare blankly at the served up corporate image sets. It doesn't matter what content (tv shows), what matters is that the families have altered the pattern of their lives to extend their bodies with this media/technology. Now imagine this change is occurring as we accept and adapt to thousands of new media/technology every year.

Electric Media

At electric speed, all forms are pushed to the limits of their potential.
Marshall Mcluhan
Laws of Media

Electric media is an extension of the human nervous system. We are outering our sensitivity of the outer world. Electricity extends our nerves and powers extensions of all parts of our body. Using an electric drill is the outering of our nerves which control the extension of our hand. The phone extends the voice and ear and creates telepathy. The internet is the outering of the content of our consciousness a.k.a our beliefs, thoughts, ideas. Computer software extends the logical planning and repetitive calculation functions of our brain. The next profound medium changes are already in place. Binary language on top of electric nervous system which has been growing organically for 100 years building up in complexity until the tremendous extension of the human brain--the Internet--has been made manifest. This medium is unlike any previous technology. Exponentially growing in size and complexity now............The birth of the conscious world mind manifested from plant to animal to human to human action to world-wide neural network. When software is developed that can reprogram itself and create solutions to spontaneous obstacles then the beginning of the outering of our right-brained creative brain begins.

If this Internet neural network were to interface with the earth''s bio-electric matrix then we will experience wonder beyond our wildest dreams. Perhaps it is intrinsically part of the bio-electric matrix since we are and we created the Internet. Will artificial intelligence replace us as the actual problem-solving intelligence of the Earth made manifest physically? From magma currents to Ultra-Violet light fiber optics. We are a middle-man bio-electrochemical intelligence between earths inner plasma currents, geologic,flora,fauna and non-organic mechanical, electromagnetic, digital, abstractly programmed technological intelligence. Although rudimentary in the civilian sector complexity is evolving exponentially. Even now technology is beginning to design new versions of itself.

This Internet creates the global village and a dominant auditory space which is in tension with the old visually dominated, mechanistic Western culture. America is the only country in the world which from its very conception literate and visually dominated. There will be tremendous upheaval as the mechanistic traditions of America are transformed by the electric medium environment. McLuhan says, "Mass apocalyptic is always a sign of the birth of a new culture." Today apocalyptic fervor is at fevor pitch. A large percentage of people actually believe the end is near. The end of the culture is near. The Western European has been in its death throws since World War I.
Electric media moves at the speed of light and creates an environment of simultaneous and broad-based integration which dissolves all borders, similar to the all-around, multi-center auditory space. The new culture is being born on the continent of North America and the whole world.
Tradition oral, auditory cultures will be at an advantage to integrate the electric and internet mediums. Tribal cultures will be able to transition to electric technology after a small period of visual/literate sense ratio integration. To achieve balance and through balance peace the West must integrate auditory space in proportion with our visually acute perception. The resurgence in the Southern region of the USA could be advantage of a more oral, tradition culture layered in minority by the overall dominant sense in the USA -- the visual. The native American Indians have had a tremendous disadvantage because of their total lack of literacy and mechanistic qualities. Until the 60s that is. The growing electric, implosive, world-wide tribal culture began birth then and suddenly the new liberal thought was interested in the spirituality of the native Americans. In the coming decades they will regain their proper sense ratio and be a powerful force for creativity in America.

The corporations which base their models on electric media are now dominant in the USA. Through these growing organizations all visual/acoustic hybrids will replace the existing visual only cultures. All multimedia companies are at the pinnacle, Google being number one. Google connects all types of electric media at one nexus location. They have textual search, images, youtube, videos, maps, satellite imagery, advertising, books, calendering, scientific journals, books, finance, and more to come. General Electric not only deals in large electrical designs and projects but they own NBC giving them a dual power in electric media.

Here's a video about the tremendous impact and social changes already happening now. I highly recommend watching the whole thing.

The Eastern and traditional oral cultures must balance the spread of Western visual culture in proportion to their auditory space perception. China over the past 20 years has imported a tremendous set of mediums including TV, Electricity, and most importantly the Internet. Their tradition oral culture quite compatible with the new media. Over the past 10 years China has had a rapid increase of literacy education. Over the next 25 years a new culture of hybrid left/right brain balanced individuals will lead the intellectual class and finally crystallize an idea to replace the inefficient violence based government. Although their skill in public relations is rudimentary within 50 years their Public Relations skills could rival that of the superpower of symbolic sorcery, the United States. Another countries adeptness must never be underestimated: Great Britain. From the 1800s to 1940s their propaganda, public relations , and military intelligence sorcerers have been the best in the world. They have been able to understand the non-literate, acoustic space populations and manipulate them with impunity.

Technological impacts on society

Now mediums (technologies) are accelerating at an exponential pace. Every new medium changes our environment. Now all different technological streams are merging as each cellular system of the human organism matrix. Concurrently our extended technological creations are ALREADY merging with our organic matrix. Soon the obviousness will be realized by even the most unconscious person.

The nervous system is extended by electricity and all the electric devices become sensory extensions, and hand,arm,foot,leg mechanical extensions. The internet is awareness and the content of the internet is consciousness. Our awareness is reflected in the Internet. Increase awareness and increase AI. Strange how this is happening synchronously.

America''s Revolutionary Media

Its not architecture, literature, not movies anymore, but it is T.V. commercials. Trillions of dollars are poured into multiple manifestations of advertisements which act on our consciousness on many levels. The provide a subliminal back(ground) which provides a general idea set of the cultural norm.

I think Ray Kurzweil's explanation is a incredible vision. Have the patience to watch this 2 hour video.

Natural Media

The concept of media can be applied to any physical object because as soon as we objectify(fragment) an object out of the Unified Field we can use or understand that object as an extension of our overall selves. Imagine how the revolution of the Earth about its axis and its revolution around the sun has profoundly impacted not only every human culture but all evolution of life on Earth. Again its not the content of the sun, a days worth of light, that is important but the fact that these objects exist at all form basic unconscious structures and patterns. Any other configuration of planets and their properties would create an profoundly different structure and pattern of life in this solar system.

The natural reflected colored light which reaches our eyes affects our being through and through. The quality of the sun's light has affected our consciousness in vast and unknown ways. If there is a incredible intelligence that creates solar systems as easily as we create pinball machines then the technology of Sun, Earth, and Moon is designed to affect our evolution along certain courses. Perhaps one day our understanding of the universe will allow us to create media of vast power, size, and precessional effects.

All Media is Natural

Are we not natural, part of nature? We come from the natural world the same as birds and lemurs. Are the nests that birds build artificial technology? No...They are natural extensions of the birds. A beaver's dam is considered a natural phenomenon. Why do we not consider are own creations as part of nature? Did not nature create us for us to express ourselves and support ourselves. Our technology is as natural as grass in the field. The problem is achieving balance between the existing organic ecosystem and technology. The solution is consciousness and caring.