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When we talk about Canadians famous for analyzing new media, we often think of Marshall McLuhan first. With his koan “the medium is the message,” McLuhan synthesized his basic idea: Our tools, from electric light to television to phones, change not just how we communicate, but what we communicate about.
Clive Thompson • Social media is keeping us stuck in the moment
“The really great privilege of the elites of the future will be to erase the computer information about them, and assume their private identities again.”
Marshall McLuhan, 1969
technical change alters not only habits of life, but patterns of thought and valuation,
Marshall McLuhan • Marshall McLuhan, W. Terrence Gordon - Understanding Media_ the Extensions of Man_ Critical Edition-Gingko Press
But McLuhan would say, try not to only think about the fact that we make the tools. Think about how much the tools make us as well.
Marshall McLuhan • Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
McLuhan’s view is that mediums matter more than content; it’s the common rules that govern all creation and consumption across a medium that change people and society. Oral culture teaches us to think one way, written culture another. Television turned everything into entertainment and social media taught us to think with the crowd.
Ezra Klein • I Didn’t Want It to Be True, but the Medium Really Is the Message
The artist picks up the message of cultural and technological challenge decades before its transforming impact occurs.
Marshall McLuhan • Marshall McLuhan, W. Terrence Gordon - Understanding Media_ the Extensions of Man_ Critical Edition-Gingko Press
That’s why McLuhan said that every time a new medium comes along—a new way for humans to communicate—it has buried in it a message. It is gently guiding us to see the world according to a new set of codes. The way information gets to you, McLuhan argued, is more important than the information itself.
Johann Hari • Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again
To behold, use or perceive any extension of ourselves in technological form is necessarily to embrace it.
Marshall McLuhan • Marshall McLuhan, W. Terrence Gordon - Understanding Media_ the Extensions of Man_ Critical Edition-Gingko Press
McLuhan argued that, pushed to its limits, a medium flips or reverses its characteristics.
Internet scale pushes information into disinformation, connection into loneliness, and desire into apathy.