Week 3

After sitting through the first couple lecture sessions of our Seminar in Media Studies class and hearing the name, “Marshall McLuhan” repetitively, I became very aggravated because I had no idea who he was. To answer the first assignment question, all the facts in the Playboy article that was assigned to us are new things I have learned about Marshall McLuhan. I personally believe that he is a brilliant individual, and it is definitely not only because his dialect is incredibly difficult to understand. (At least it was to me.) The phonetic alphabet, the moveable type, and the telegraph are the three main factors to changes in society according to McLuhan. I would not have thought that these factors were extensions of our bodies if it were not for him.

“The phonetic alphabet did not change or extend man so drastically just because it enabled him to read…Phonetic writing, which uses semantically meaningless letters to correspond to semantically meaningless sounds and is able, with only a handful of letters, to encompass all meanings and all languages.” (pg 6) McLuhan does have an excellent point there. The question is, would we be just as intelligent as we are today if we did not have the phonetic alphabet? I mean yes, we would be more interactive with people, places, and things surrounding us, but I personally think that new technology makes us even more intelligent even though it controls us in some way. I think that even though we use new technology as an extension to our bodies, we still use our senses.

“The printing press was the ultimate extension of phonetic literacy…Type, the prototype of all machines, ensured the primacy of the visual bias and finally sealed the doom of tribal man.” (pg 8) In McLuhan’s interview, he states that if it were not for the phonetic alphabet and the printing press, industrialism would not exist as of today. (pg 8) What is our purpose of existence then? I feel it is possible to live without technology because it has obviously been done before and is still being done especially in third world countries. We are so caught up in new technology that it is becoming a part of our daily routines, so what do we do now? Again, if we do not continue to use our newer technology, then what is our purpose of existence? I believe that technology gives us all opportunities.

“Today, television is the most significant of the electric media because it permeates nearly every home in the country, extending the central nervous system of every viewer as it works over and molds the entire sensorium with the ultimate message.” (pg 9) “TV generation separate book from the eye.” (pg 13) This time I completely agree with him. His statement on television is also a big new thing I learned. We do not just see things on TV, we form them into things we should see. (Hopefully I am making sense.)

McLuhan is a brilliant man, but a response to his theories to me is like responding to Anti-War and Pro-War. I definitely think it’s good that we are learning about McLuhan because we are now aware of what could be happening maybe ten years later. Maybe we should not rely on technology so much and let it control us? I really don’t know. I feel like even though it appears that technology is control of us, I am in actually in control of it.