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The Laws of Media
Towards the end of his life, McLuhan and his son Eric embarked on a project to update the 1964 Understanding Media; the unexpected
result was Laws of Media: The New Science (1988), published after McLuhanâs death (in 1980) by his son. Laws
of Media seeks to answer the following questions:
- What statements can we make about media that anyone can test--prove or disprove?
- What do all media have in common?
- What do they do?
These questions resulted in the formulation of the following four laws of media:
- Extension/Enhancement: Every technology extends or amplifies some organ or faculty of the user. What does
the medium enhance or intensify?
- Closure/Obsolescence: Because there is equilibrium in sensibility, when one area of experience is heightened
or intensified, another is diminished or numbed. What is pushed aside or obsolesced by the new medium?
- Reversal: Every form, pushed to the limit of its potential, reverses its characteristics.
- Retrieval: The content of any medium is an older medium.
This tetrad of the effects of technologies is not sequential, but rather simultaneous. All four aspects are inherent from
the start, and all four aspects are complementary.
The following table illustrates how the laws of media might be applied to the impact of the internet on culture:
Laws of Media: The Internet
Enhances decentralization
associative searches
speed of access
electronic communications
access to
information
self-publishing
media convergence
networking
immediacy
virtual community
e-trade |
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Obsoletes travel
distance
national borders
face-to-face interaction
single-source propaganda
centralized
censorship
print monopolies
retail outlets
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Reverses (Into)obsession with data
isolation
loss of affect (feeling)
information overload
loss of
private time
nervous disorders |
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Retrieves writing and correspondence
tribes and villages
anarchy
chaos
rendezvous
direct representation
local
activism |
The Will To Technology & The Culture of Nihilism
Switching Flesh (The essence of technology directly related to the question of being)
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Out of breach
Techne is the bringing forth of truth into beauty
Poeisis(art) is techne
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Between Vampire Metaphysics & The Opening To Freedom
Enframing by
'challenged-forth' through technology 'to order the real into the standing reserve'
I might describe my job in a little more detail here. I'll write about what I do, what I like best about it, and even some
of the frustrations. (A job with frustrations? Hard to believe, huh?)
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