4. Weegee, Their First Murder, 1941
Though photographs may seem like “transparent” records of
reality, they too exist in a specific medium.
5.
6. For example, reality moves on, while this photograph is static, freezing a single
moment in time.
For example, reality is in color, while this photograph is in back and white.
For example, we don’t see well at dusk but a flash illuminates this scene for us.
7. Definition: medium
A medium is something in the middle—in between us
and the depicted scene. As a physical presence with its
own special properties, we must consider it carefully.
8. Definition: media
The “media” is shorthand for the “mass media”—
print, radio, television, and internet as important
examples.
9. Marshall McLuhan
(1911-1980)
Prescient theorist of
the media and its
effects.
The Gutenberg Galaxy
(1962)
Understanding Media
(1964)
War and Peace in the
Global Village (1968)
Yousef Karsh, Portrait of McLuhan, 1974
10. Technology is not neutral.
Technology is transformative.
McLuhan regards each new technology developed as an
“extension of man”—a change in our human capabilities that
significantly changes our sense of what it means to be human.
12. McLuhan uses electricity as an example
of a medium.
Still from City Lights
(1931), dir. Charlie
Chaplin
13. On p. 24, McLuhan
states that: “...the
‘message’ of any
medium or technology
is the change of scale
or pace or pattern that
it introduces into
human affairs.”
14. The message of
these signs, for
McLuhan, is not
their literal
text, but the
aggregated
ways in which
electricity has
transformed our
human lives.
15. So, what is the “message” of
electricity? How has it
transformed human existence?
19. In what regions of the world is it still possible to see the night sky?
The Earth at Night, November 2000
composited satellite imagery, NASA
20. Artist Edward Hopper loved to depict
the alienating glare of the
electrified night.
Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942
oil on canvas, 33 1/8 x 60 inches, Art Institute of Chicago
23. p. 32
“…the ‘content’ of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried
by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.”
In other words, McLuhan urges us not to look through the
medium as if it were transparent, look at the medium to see what
it does and how it has changed us.
24. So, what is the “message” of
electricity?
“The message of the electric light is…totally
radical, pervasive, and decentralized.” (p. 25)
Our very way of being in the world has
changed completely.
