Describe how the multimodal design of “The Medium is the Massage” expresses the ideas in McLuhan’s text. What is McLuhan saying about the difference between print culture and the new electric culture of television and mass media? In what ways do Manovich’s 5 principles of “new media” extend McLuhan ideas about how media shapes us? What about these principles have an effect on social interaction and/or cultural production? In what ways are media and culture being reshaped and transformed by the logic of the computer?
“The Medium is the Massage” is a graphical representation of McLuhan’s “medium is the message” thesis. It is done in an experimental mosaic style, combining text with visuals. His argument is that technologies (or the medium) are in themselves the message and that the actual content of conversation is not as important.
According to McLuhan, print media culture is more of a “hot media” meaning there is less engagement, favoring one sense, and has a single, linear point of view. The new electric culture of mass/social media falls into the “cool media” category, which has a more social aspect with multiple points of view in play, and relies on more using more senses to digest and process information. It’s more expansive, open to interpretation, less singularly directed.
Manovich’s 5 principles of “new media” extends on McLuhan’s ideas:
- Numerical representation
New media is digitized by mathematical equations done by computers. Numerical sequences are manipulated to create sounds, color, text, video, etc. A physical painting is transferred into the digital realm through these complex equations and is seen in a new way through a makeup of pixels/light emissions. - Modularity
New media is highly adaptable, alterable, scalable, easily remixed, etc. Being broken down into pixels allows things to be easily arranged in a seemingly infinite amount of ways. - Automation
Much of the creative process is now streamlined by computed perfection. Mess up on a mechanical typewriter and canvas painting and you must start over. Mess up on a digital format and you can easily undo the action or change it into something else non-destructively. Different techniques can be applied, unapplied, reapplied through a computer’s help, which takes a lot of the grunt work away from the creative and allows for higher variety, output, and creative possibilities. - Variability
New media is never really fixed. It can be chopped and screwed into many different forms. Its modular-ness allows for infinite possibility and different ways perceive. - Transcoding
One of McLuhan’s points: the medium is (part of) the message. New media is created on, distributed by, stored through computers. The computer’s handling of the media can affect its cultural understanding. Networks of highly varied information are being built. Billions of user’s computers connect to this network and shape it over time. Different meanings are being attributed and interconnected all the time.