= The Laws of Media = Towards the end of his life, McLuhan and his son Eric embarked on a project to update the 1964 ''Understanding Media;'' the unexpected result was ''Laws of Media: The New Science'' (1988), published after McLuhan’s death (in 1980) by his son. ''Laws of Media'' seeks to answer the following questions: * What statements can we make about media that anyone can test--prove or disprove? * What do all media have in common? * What do they do? These questions resulted in the formulation of the following four laws of media: # '''<no>Extension/Enhancement</no>:''' Every technology extends or amplifies some organ or faculty of the user. What does the medium enhance or intensify?<p> # '''<no>Closure/Obsolescence</no>:''' Because there is equilibrium in sensibility, when one area of experience is heightened or intensified, another is diminished or numbed. What is pushed aside or obsolesced by the new medium?<p> # '''Reversal:''' Every form, pushed to the limit of its potential, reverses its characteristics.<p> # '''Retrieval:''' The content of any medium is an older medium.<p> This tetrad of the effects of technologies is not sequential, but rather simultaneous. All four aspects are inherent from the start, and all four aspects are complementary. ]]] ~~--[http://web.archive.org/web/20010219062605/http://www.mala.bc.ca/~soules/media212/mcluhan.htm McLuhan Light and Dark]~~ ]]] ,, ,, ,, Examples from the "Tetradic Glossary" of '''[Local:McLuhan/GlobalVillage The Global Village]''': == Printed Word == # Amplifies private ownership, the competitive goal-oriented individual. # Obsolesces slang, dialects, and group identity, separates composition and performance, divorce of eye and ear. # Retrieves tribal elitism, charmed circle # With flip from manuscript into mass production via print comes the corporate reading public and the "historical sense" == Electric Media == # Amplification of scope of simultaneity and service environment as information. # Obsolesces the segmented visual, connected, and logical. # Retrieves the subliminal, audile-tactile dialogue # Etherialization: the sender gets sent. == Telephone == # Enlarges the impact and speed of the private voice. # Erodes the body as hardware; creates the disembodied consciousness. # Retrieves sense of telepathy. # Reverses into the party-line; omnipresence, like the conference call or teleconferencing. == Radio-Television == # Improves simultaneous access to entire planet--everybody: "On the air you're everywhere" # Obsolesces wires, cables and physical bodies # Retrieves tribal ecological environments: echo, trauma, paranoia, and also brings back primacy of the spatial, musical, and acoustic. # Reverses into global village theater (Orson Welles's Invasion From Mars: no spectators, only actors). == Cable TV == # Amplifies quality and diversity of signal pickup. # Obsoleces diffusion broadcasting. # Retrieves early transmission broadcast pattern point-to-point (ship to shore). # Reversal is flip to home broadcasting. == Teletext == # Printed radio; enhances headline service, like early radio. # Obsolesces prolonged TV watching; viewer uses service selectively for short intervals. # Retrieves silent film dialogue card, pictograph or pun style; teletype format. # Reverses into interactive video-text; qualitative data filter, via data bank. == Computer == # Accelerates logical sequential calculations to speed of light. # Erodes or bypasses mechanical processes and human logic in all sequential operations. # Highlights "numbers is all" philosophy, and reduces numbering to body count by touch. # Flips into the simultaneous from the sequential; accentuates acoustic over visual space to produce pattern recognition. == Global Media Networking == # Instantaneous diverse media transmission on global basis; simultaneous planetary feed and counter-feed. # [Deoxy:videx/stupid Erodes human ability to code and decode in real time.] # Brings back the [Find:babel Tower of Babel]: group voice in the ether. # Reverses into loss of specialism; [Deoxy:audio/mcluhan_natureisover.m3u programmed earth]. <html><a href="http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/innis-mcluhan/002033-2030-e.html"><img src="http://deoxy.org/img/mmtv.jpg" style="width:100%" border="0"></a></html>