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UNIV 2001 Cross Cultural Perspectives Media Theory / Professor David Simons
they must use MEDIA
how do people - transmit - culture
But what is media?
examples of media: newspapers, radio, internet, records,CDs, books, movies, early stone carvings, etc.
CATEGORIES: printed, electronic, 3 dimensional, audio,visual, live performance
● how tall? not too short not too tall, in the middle, OF MEDIUM HEIGHT ● like the median line in the middle of the road, ● the mediator in a dispute between labor and management, ● the spirit medium between the living and the dead, ● I and Thou - the church as a medium between humans and their God. ● What is between the artist's ideas and their audience - THE MEDIUM OF EXPRESSION: ● the materials and the way an artist chooses to communicate
their ideas - will it be a novel, or a screenplay, a painting or a sculpture, water colors or oil paint, wood or marble.
THE MEDIUM OF CONVEYANCE or STORAGE - tape recording, reel of film, record, disc, flash drive, digital download from “the cloud”.
define media = plural of medium, in the middle, in between
Marshall McLuhan - prophet of the media, author of the book and popular phrase "The Medium is the Message". If you read a book, and then see a film that was made of the book, it may tell a similar story but with different emphasis. If you rent the movie and see it at home, that's one experience; but if you go to the theater with a crowd of people and see it on a large screen with the public reacting, that is a completely different experience, a social one, a collective experience. How you get your information, or the manner in which it is experienced, or transmitted, is at least as important as, if not more important than the message itself. Example: if I splash water on you it could be friendly, but if I pour boiling water on you, its disfiguring. If I throw a chunk of ice at you it would hurt, but if you walk through the fog it's soft and harmless. The message or content is the same: WATER, H2O. But the medium is different: liquid, or frozen solid or gas.
Short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko6J9v1C9zE
McLuhan saw Media as extensions of the human body.
The Axe is an extension of the arm,
the Wheel is an extension of the feet,
Print or photography is an extension of the eye.
He saw the electronic media as extension of the nervous system, sending and receiving signals, from which we interpret meaning.
What is ecology? The relationship between living things and their environment. A change in one affects the other.
Media Ecology - the relationship between different senses, the ratio of seeing to hearing to touching to tasting.
Relationships between media, between people and media, media and the environment. Is sitting at a desk and staring into a computer all day or focussing on your hand held device going to have any effect on a person, on their health and eyesight, on social skills?
Does being bathed in microwaves and swimming in media overloaded with sound and images have any changeable effect on human beings?
The result of adding a new idea or new technology to a medium is that a new culture grows.
Add lactobacillus or acidophilis to warm milk to create a yogurt culture.
Add Facebook to the medium of personal computer and you get the social networking culture.
In biology, a medium is the neutral substance on a Petri dish, to which bacteria or a drop of something new is added.
New idea + = new cultureNeutral nourishing medium
The Laws of Media
Retrieve - the library is a place where you use media to retrieve knowledge, information. Books are medium for retrieval, so are photos
Obsolesce - the telephone obsolesced the telegraph. Email obsolesced writing a letter, finding an envelope and stamp, going to the post office. Vinyl replaced wire recorders, 8 tracks replaced records, cassettes replaced 8 tracks, CDs replaced cassette tapes, downloads replaced CDs, streaming replaced downloads
Amplify - an acoustic guitar sounds nice for a small group , but put a mic or a pickup on it and send it through an amplifier, and many more can hear you. Post a page on your website or on Twitter and your message is amplified potentially by a million
Reverse - an overheated medium will reverse itself. Snowblindness, seeing bright white all the time, and when you go inside you can't see anything for a while. Too much light makes the baby go blind. Spend an evening in a club with super loud music and when you leave, you can't hear. Too much hot sauce and you can't taste anything, your tongue is numb.
when we talk about "The Media" we usually refer to Mass Media: newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, internet.
The content falls into 3 categories, and often a combination of all three: News - information Entertainment - art Advertising - commerce
Who owns or controls "The Media"?
the State - China, Iran, Russia, give you only what the government wants you to see. The opposition is censored or jailed, or worse.
Corporations - big conglomerates own film, publishing, newspapers, magazines, radio stations, distribution, TV and cable networks . They can also own commodities like food products, soap. They place their goods into the news and entertainment in addition to outright commercials.
Self Publish - the solution . We have the tools. Arab Spring protests were first broadcast to the world through social media, individuals, not the State or Corporations. Snowden's NSA revelations and Assange's Wikileaks were self publishing outside of state or corporate media ownership.