Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher and was praised for his work and research in media theory. McLuhan used his tetrad of media effects as a means of examining the effects a media device would have on a society. His tetrad of media effects would would divide the medium into four effects and display them simultaneously. McLuhan claimed that each medium simultaneously enhanced something, made something else obsolete, reversed when pushed to extreme, and retrieved something from the past that was once lost. For example:
Photography:
Enhances: memories, sharing of memories and news.
Obsoletes: painting and drawing
Retrieves: Hieroglyphs
Reverse: a society too dependent on visual stimuli. Loss of interest in the written word.
A photograph captures a moment in time, freezing a real world experience in a two-dimensional static image for people to see at a later time. A photograph enhances your memory of a moment by being able to actually look back at that time. Makes painting and drawing obsolete because it is much more accurate and life-like not to mention much easier and functional. Retrieves Hieroglyphs. Pictures are images used to tell a story or report news and document moments much like the hieroglyphs of ancient time. A society using pictures to report news may become too dependent on visual stimuli and lose interest in written words, much like reverting back to picture books with less words.
No comments:
Post a Comment