Wednesday, December 11, 2013

How Many Mediums Does it Take to Screw in a Lightbulb?


Marshall McLuhan's well-known aphorism, "The medium is the message," doesn't mean that content doesn't matter. (Even when it's digital, which isn't really matter in the atomic sense of the word.) His point is that the overall impact of the environment created by a new medium eclipses any particular content. So no particular tweet is as consequential as the medium of Twitter. He also wrote about new mediums consuming old mediums as content, like a movie shown on television. These days, it's a two way street. In this example, the older medium of the Blog is displaying the newer medium of Vine. Interesting stuff. To me, anyway. Does an inside joke require more than a single person on the inside?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I tell myself jokes all of the time, and sometimes those "inside jokes" are the funniest ones I hear all day. ;-)

But on your main point...I have been especially delighted to see how the once-thought-nearly-dead print media (newspapers, magazines, books) is finding new life through new the medium e-book readers (Kindle, Nook, Glo, etc.).

Botgirl Questi said...

Ha. I guess the problem is when you start telling those jokes that only you find funny. :)

Unknown said...

Good point. I've been wondering why everyone around here keeps saying "we need to use our inside voices." I assumed they meant that as a group we were getting too loud, but maybe they were just gently reminding me that I'm using the voice everyone can hear! :-)