2.1 Ong & McLuhan

I feel it's necessary to state that while I've been told that Playboy articles are excellent, I've never really considered there to be a good opportunity to read one. That said, this article is one of the most gripping interviews I've ever read. Starting with background information is a good idea for an interview, but the personal touch describing McLuhan's attire and assuring him that he'd have time to answer at his leisure made him feel less like just a mouth spewing words and more like an actual person.

The disregard of new media by society is nothing new, which is something just as prevalent now as it was in the dark ages. When Gutenberg tweaked the bugs with ink and movable type, the church rejected this technology since they had a monastic monopoly thanks to an army of monks delicately painting bibles. And since the church disapproved, this was passed on to society at large. Now there's Twitter, what was first a laughing matter when a news anchor announced to his associates that he could be sent 'tweets' and quickly became a matter for national interest when information about a Middle Eastern crisis was being transmitted largely through Twitter. And all it takes is one big push or one big hit to get new media rolling.

While I'm not a particularly brilliant thinker, a little light went off in my head after reading about the medium as the message, indicating this just might be something worth pondering. And perhaps that is the case; take the Iranian elections. While it was important news at the time, the thought wasn't just "Wow, this is terrible," but also "Why am I getting this news from Twitter instead of a typical news organization?" That was the message, in a way; a new social media roaring and exclaiming dominance in a media jungle.

The instantaneous transfer of information isn't exactly new since technology has allowed for information to travel instantly over great distances for some time, but individuals are more connected to networks that provide the information. Take the death of Michael Jackson, for example. This news reached individuals through newspapers, radio, television, websites, and Twitter. The peculiar thing wasn't that people had this information so quickly, it was how quickly they got bored with it and were desensitized. Within 24 hours most of the world knew he had died, and in less than a week everyone I knew was tired of hearing about him. But the news went on and on, from conspiracy theories to unnecessary reports. People can get the basic information they need from a social media site, and they don't get the overkill reports from news sources, which could indicate why these sites are so popular for information.

I particularly enjoyed Ong's irony when describing criticism of new media; the best way to do it is to use the highest level of technology available, which typically is that new media you are in fact trying to reject. This combined well with the discussion of Phaedrus in class about how 'truth' was 'written on the heart'.

While Ong presents many interesting points, it seems that a fair portion of it is a recap from the material discussed in the previous class, including some mention of the Phaedrus and description of speech and writing that, while not as scientific as Saussure, gets the same point across.

Ong describes the new alien technology at the time as computers. Today, we've moved past the technology of computers and are tackling social media that is accessible every moment of our lives and can keep us up to date with the world at any instant in any location from any source. It is strange to think that the technology, while new in a sense, is more an extension of computers than any real 'new' technology. Perhaps it is more the combination of all the technological elements that is making current developments so interesting. Short of the kitchen sink, we've tacked on everything we can to our phones/PDAs/iPhones/Blackberries/computers, and now we're seeing just how far we can push the envelope with such integrated technology.