Marshall McLuhan could be considered prophetic for his ideas and concepts about the digital age. He is well known today as the man who coined many one-lined phrases, but more importantly changed the way people thought about technology and the digital medium. The idea of postmodernism is closely connected to many of McLuhan's original ideas, even though he was 20 years before the invention of the modern computer. Jim Andrews explains, "Marshall McLuhan's lasting contribution is his vision of the ways in which history and culture and individuals are modified and, to some extent, determined by technology." His idea of people being just extensions of technology, their own creation, is a very strong concept which is still
continually used the field and studies of digital art, as well as most advertisements that postmodern society is bombarded with today. Many of McLuhan's concepts caused the postmodern generation to think before they use a digital medium and to consider some of the effect of the messages that technology can hold.
Works Cited
Marshall McLuhan: "The Medium is the Message": http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/mcluhhan.html
McLuhan Reconsidered: http://vispo.com/writing/essays/mcluhana.htm#A_techno
Karen Borden
1 comment:
I agree that technology allows individuals to think. And with McLuhan doing such a portion of seeing how people react comes to show that people can act differently, or the same, depending on technology itself. I think about how today people use computers. It is so much easier to research, visit, chat, watch movies, download, and do so much on one computer. To notice a man that was able to think about this before his time came up with computers is something that still shocks me to this moment. And how he was able to discover some behaviors in this was quite fascinating.
-William Waitman
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