In the first reading of The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, I got hung up on one point that he commented on that McLuhan made. It said "In the long run a medium's content matters less than the medium itself in influencing how we think and act." (Carr 3). I had never thought about it in this way. Does the programming really effect us or is it the technology itself? McLuhan makes the point that it is the technology rather than the program that effects us.
It kind of makes me think on the scale of what we have been talking about all year. The medium's content can blind us and the blame gets put onto the content and not the technology as a whole. An example that I think of when I read this is when I was a kid watching stupid television shows and my mother yelling at me saying how if i continued to watch this crap my brain would turn to mush. It makes me think now whether it was the crappy television programming I was watching or whether its the television in general.
This point is very interesting and I am intrigued by it. This book seems like it is less dense than other books we have read so far this semester. It is an easier read because of the lack of techy terms I feel. Looking forward to reading the rest.
This reminds me of a multimedia type of approach that is commonly argued in the journalism field. I will blog about that more in depth later on.
ReplyDeleteIn early thinking about your post, I feel that content is an idea, and the mediums used are the language. Do you think sometimes the same content can be misinterpreted or mistranslated because of the medium?
That's a tough question. I think that the medium is more important than the content. I feel that I get influenced more by television than anyone one specific content on it. If that makes sense at all? Think of it as one vs. many...one thing isn't influencing us but the mass is...right?
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