Narrative Piece - Ekin Erkan

https://vimeo.com/92791620

Performance art piece ( Redo) By Harris

Reading without knowing the language (redo) http://vimeo.com/92532944

Medium is the message reading response

Consider a physical recording medium like a CD or DVD. By itself it's an empty vessel. The "message" is the information contained within that medium, whether it be music, a film, software, or some other information. The message is what provides the value -- the actual recording medium is often inconsequential. You may pay $20 for a CD that contains music, or you may pay $300 for a CD that contains certain software. But the physical CDs are essentially identical except for the information they contain. This price difference isn't due to a difference in the medium but rather due to a difference in the message.

McLuhan defines medium for us. Right at the beginning of Understanding Media, he tells us that a medium is "any extension of ourselves." Classically, he suggests that a hammer extends our arm and that the wheel extends our legs and feet. Each enables us to do more than our bodies could do on their own. Similarly, the medium of language extends our thoughts from within our mind out to others. Indeed, since our thoughts are the result of our individual sensory experience, speech is an "outering" of our senses - we could consider it as a form of reversing senses - whereas usually our senses bring the world into our minds, speech takes our sensorially-shaped minds out to the world.

But McLuhan always thought of a medium in the sense of a growing medium, like the fertile potting soil into which a seed is planted, or the agar in a Petri dish. In other words, a medium - this extension of our body or senses or mind - is anything from which a change emerges. And since some sort of change emerges from everything we conceive or create, all of our inventions, innovations, ideas and ideals are McLuhan media.

Thus we have the meaning of "the medium is the message:" We can know the nature and characteristics of anything we conceive or create (medium) by virtue of the changes - often unnoticed and non-obvious changes - that they effect (message.) McLuhan warns us that we are often distracted by the content of a medium (which, in almost all cases, is another distinct medium in itself.) He writes, "it is only too typical that the "content" of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium." And it is the character of the medium that is its potency or effect - its message. In other words, "This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology."

Which brings us to where we are now. In a strange way, McLuhan’s insights into media seem more relevant now than they were in the 1960s. The past few years, for example, have seen a series of angry and sometimes anguished debates about what our comprehensively networked digital ecosystem is doing to our children, our politics, our economies — and our brains. We wonder whether social networking might be fueling political revolution, for example. And we ask if Google is making us stupid – or at any rate whether networked technology is reducing attention spans, devaluing memory and blurring the line between making online connections and forming real relationships. These issues have been much on our minds in the Arcadia Project at the University Library, as we try to assess how different current generations of students are from their predecessors. And over all of these contemporary debates looms the shadow of McLuhan, who now seems more relevant than ever.

In a way, his really big idea was to spot that the word “medium” has distinctly different meanings. The conventional one is that a medium is a channel for communicating information – which is why much discussion about media up to his time focused on the content that was being conveyed by print, radio and television. But there is another, equally significant, interpretation. To a biologist, a medium is an environment containing the nutrients in which tissue cultures – organisms – grow. Change the medium and you change the organisms. Our communications media likewise constitute the environment that sustains, nurtures – or constrains – our culture. And if the medium changes, then so does the culture. I other words, the medium is far, far more than the message. In fact, it’s all we’ve got.

From music streaming services to magazine mobile apps, the last few years have brought us an array of options when it comes to choosing a message’s medium. New platforms, like Vine, have even reinvented publishing categories — which, in theory, sounds great. However, with more options comes more responsibility for brands. Marketers can no longer expect a clever radio tagline to reach the highly coveted Millennial — Millennials have moved on from traditional radio. Essentially, this change has not only encouraged brands to reevaluate their medium of choice, but it has created an industry-wide discussion on the importance of tailoring each message to each medium.

Medium is the Message

In 11th grade, I read a similar passage titled, "The Medium is the Metaphor," by Neil Postman.  At the time, this piece became my nightmare because I had not idea what it meant and struggled to write a paper on it.  Yet now, after reading McLuhan's original text, I have a better grasp on what exactly this means.  Simply put, whatever medium you use to present something will directly affect how an audience views it.  People try to make a huge fuss about content when it usually doesn't matter and is somewhat irrelevant.

I find this best example in the Twilight series.  The books became popular when I was in middle school, and all of my friends and I read them.  Sure the books could never be considered "literature," but they were enjoyable and became a popular phenomenon worldwide.  Their fantasy aspect was minute compared to other books of its kind, which provided a space for readers to relate to the story.  Yet, when the movies came out, the popularity of Twilight kind of backfired.  Immediately, parodies were made and critics talked about how horrible the movies were, and couldn't believe anyone would be interested in a story about a sparkly vampire.  Most of my friends who had enjoyed the books, then turned and went along with the popular opinion to say the entire Twilight franchise was bad.  When this happened, I became quite frustrated because people who had loved the books now claimed they were the worst books of all time and didn't understand why people would read something so unsubstantial compared to everything else available.  It was only after the story was presented through a different medium that people responded to it differently.  Had the books never been released, but instead transformed into screenplays, maybe people would've thought the plot was equally terrible.  It was fascinating to witness the majority change in mindset of something accepted as beloved and interesting led to author Stephenie Meyers receiving death threats, simply because the story was displayed in a different medium.  I stand by my original love of the books, accept them for exactly what they are, and can differentiate them from the mediocre acting in the movies that people love to criticize.

"Everything Wrong With Twilight"

Medium is the Message response

In the fifty years since McLuhan penned “The Medium is the Message,” we have borne witness to countless examples of the truth of this conclusion. Particularly in news production, we have seen technological advancements change and adapt to the rise of television and internet and social media. We have seen fashion (clothing, hairstyles, etc.) become a medium for political expression.

I think there is much to be said about the intrinsic ties between consumerism and the notion of “medium as message.” A medium does not exist as an ephemeral entity, it requires a product in order to be portrayed—i.e. tweets need a product which supports internet, etc. Thus, as technology and media have advanced, so too has the market for their platforms.  Because of the importance not of what we say but how we say it (the medium), there is little option but to conform to this conflated communicative capitalist system—a cruel technological Darwinism. Moreover, medium of message has been co-opted by industry in order to capitalize on the growing trends of “slacktivism.” As Jodi Dean describes, “there is an easy coexistence with consumer capitalism insofar as choices of fashion and entertainment could be quickly read as politically significant. Antiracist? Wear a Malcolm X t-shirt. Gay-friendly? Fly a rainbow flag.” These media have mitigated the responsibility of individuals to take direct action. Instead, they can simply buy products which will purportedly say just as much as any picket or protest would. However, such notions are detrimental to impactful change because they don’t sufficiently trouble the waters. Instead, they force even many “progressive” to market themselves for their products [media] rather than their actions [message].

This is not meant to be an incredibly techno-pessimistic or Luddite post. However, I do think it is important to consider these factors and their implications on things like content. For although the medium may portray an initial message, content still has a responsibility, a purpose, an intent.

Response to the medium is the message

I really enjoyed reading this article, because I have heard of the phrase " The medium is the message" before. but I don't have a deep understanding of what this phrase actually mean. after reading this article, I have more comprehensive understanding of what the meaning of this phrase.
In this article, the author claims that the medium is not the content it carries, and medium manipulates the " scale and form of human association and action" , and later he use movie as an example, he stated that movie as a medium transform “the world of sequence and connections into the world of creative configuration and structure.” however, up to this point I still can not understand the explanation of the phrase until he used the light bulb as a clear demonstration of the concept of “the medium is the message”. A light bulb does not have content in the way that a newspaper has articles or a television has programs, yet it is a medium that has a social effect; that is, a light bulb enables people to create spaces during nighttime that would otherwise be enveloped by darkness. He describes the light bulb as a medium without any content. McLuhan states that "a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence."

Moreover, in this article, the author also touched how technology has empower the media which have tremendous influence our daily life. for example,  we have the ability to know what is happening around the world immediately, whereas before technology advancement, our knowledge is limited to what is in our region or country. In other word, the media expands our ability to perceive our world to an extant that would not be possible if we don't have media. here is video about the annual occurrence of Internet Week that made us think– have we become addicted to the internet? And if we have, what would happen if 5 digital natives were forced to go cold turkey for a week? Would it be reminiscent of a scene from Trainspotting? Or would they regress to some kind of IRL utopia?
this documentary followed these five internet addicts around for a week. This is the result.