Thursday, March 14, 2019

Your second essay Spring 2019

save any questions for class 

Hi everybody

Essay No.2 !


Your second essay, is due during April, the paper is on the Telegraph, Telephone and the Television.  
 
Your paper is short history of the social context, and technical development of the 3 inventions, then on your final page, a conclusion of sorts - a statement which considers both the immediate, and also, the long term impact of the inventions on culture and behaviour, and finally, a brief speculative consideration, on our future's, communications technologies.

Remember Innis's notion of "technological determinism", technological cause and effect, reciprocity etc.

save any questions for class 
 
(for total of 5 pages only, 4 pages for the essay, 1 page for the bibliography! ) no exceptions, edit and refine.

Don't ramble or repeat yourself, really look at what you are trying to say, I'ver given you lots of notice, so plan ahead .... reduce rather than obtuse.
 
 
see below 3 visual timeline images to assist you in better appreciating the historical context, and parallel developments made during the periods that your essays cover. Research, planning ....
 
Good luck and save any questions for class 




Friday, March 01, 2019

Quiz 2 2019

- SAVE ALL QUESTIONS FOR CLASS ONLY !!



- SAVE ALL QUESTIONS FOR CLASS ONLY !!

Thursday, February 21, 2019

your first essay 2019

Your first essay 2019

 
Note that your essay has two major sections.
 
The FIRST SECTION considers the work and central themes of 
Harold Innis's lecture series - Empire and Communications
 
a.
 
What now might seem as common sense, was, when Innis first articulated it - a novel or innovative notion. Do you agree with his ideas regarding what we described in our in-class discussion, as non-military cultural "invasion" ? 
 
 Explain this notion and give some examples if you can think of any. 
 
Remember that Innis maintained that the dominant technology of a civilization is its cause, and shaping force.  
 
Pinpointing the major technological achievements of a culture - makes it possible to identify what the physical and social pattern of that culture had to be.  
 
He noted that this dominant form and all its causal powers are hidden from the attention of people living in that culture".  
 
He warned of a blindness to the bias or distorting power of the prevailing technology of communication and cautioned, "We are perhaps too much a part of the civilization which followed the printing industry to be able to detect its characteristics." 
 
This overall phenomenon of technology defining culture, is often referred to as - "Technological Determinism"
 
b. 

discuss Innis's concept " Monopolies of Knowledge" 
 
"Monopolies of knowledge had developed and declined partly in relation to the medium of communication on which they were built, and tended to alternate as they emphasized religion, decentralization and time; or force, centralization, and space. "
 
c.

discuss Innis's concept of Time and Space Bias - ( please no references to Darth Vader :-} )

------------------------ then
 
The SECOND SECTION of your essay should examine, analyze and comment upon, the now famous concepts/dictums of Marshall McLuhan
 
Specifically  

a. Hot and Cool Media 
b. the Medium is the Message 
c. the Global Village 
 
Do these concepts seem accurate or applicable  ? How are they evidenced today ? Give examples of these theories in practice ? What are the social implications of his theories ?
 
" McLuhan understood "medium" in a very, very broad sense. 

For example, he identified the light bulb as a clear demonstration of the concept of "the medium is the message". 

A light bulb does not have content in the way that a newspaper has articles or a television has programs, yet it is a medium that has a social effect; that is, a light bulb enables people to create spaces during nighttime that would otherwise be enveloped by darkness. He describes the light bulb as a medium without any content. McLuhan states that "a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence." So, do other media ? like Snapchat or Tinder ? Does their mere presence explain their notoriety ? or do they offer something worthwhile ? 
 
 
remember around 4 pages, double spaced and handed in on time ! Quote all your sources !, research, read, and consider, make a plan ...

Friday, July 21, 2017

Herbert Marshall McLuhan is famed for having one of the most poignant predictions of the 20th century. The philosopher and intellectual foresaw the birth of the internet 35 years before it happened. 
On the day that would have been McLuhan's 106th birthday he is being honoured with a Google Doodle. 

Who was Marshall McLuhan?

Born in Canada in 1911, McLuhan studied at the University of Manitoba and University of Cambridge before becoming a lecturer at the University of Toronto. He rose to prominence in the 1960s for his work as a media theorist and for coining the term "global village", which was a prescient vision of the internet age. 
His theories were met with controversy in academic circles throughout the 1970s and after his death in 1980. Then in 1989, the internet was born, and McLuhan was looked upon with renewed interest.   
Marshall McLuhan 
Marshall McLuhan 

How did McLuhan predict the internet age?

McLuhan's preeminent theory was his idea that human history could be divided into four eras: the acoustic age, the literary age, the print age and the electronic age. He outlined the concept in a 1962 book called The Gutenberg Galaxy, which was released just as the television was starting to become popular. 
He predicted the world was entering the fourth, electronic age, which would be characterised by a community of people brought together by technology.
He called it the "global village" and said it would be an age when everyone had access to the same information through technology. The "global village" could be understood to be the internet.
In his follow-up book, Understanding Media, he expanded the theory to show the method of communication rather than the information itself would come to be the most influential fact of the electronic age. 
He soon became a TV personality, making regular appearances to explain his theory of why "the medium is the message".
He became the most publicised English teacher of the 20th century, a prestige that only grew with the realisation of his vision of the "computer as a research and communication instrument". 
In the 21st century people have a world of information at their finger tips on smartphones, tablets and laptops. The internet has facilitated a breaking down of global barriers and the democratisation of knowledge.
McLuhan's predictions caused a frenzy in the US, with high profile magazines and authors rallying around him. He was the subject of a Tom Wolfe article titled "What if he is right?" that was published in New York Magazine. 
His theory influenced the likes of French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister's father, and artist Andy Warhol. 

Wednesday, May 06, 2015

a 2015 student paper

here's another example......  



The study of communications “is the study of techniques to allow for the reliable transmission of information.” In order to understand the study of communications, it is essential to consider two well-known Canadian communication theorists, Harold Adams Innis and Herbert Marshall McLuhan. First, Harold Innis was a Canadian professor of political economy, he has written several books on media and communication theories (Empire and Communications). However, he is well-known for the thesis he proposes in his book Empire and Communications; in order to preserve time and occupy space empires had to have a balance between both time-biased media and space-biased media. In a nutshell his thesis was how media influences the rise and fall of empires.
Herbert Marshall McLuhan was another communication theorist and philosopher. He is the author of many influential books such as Medium is the Message, The Mechanical Bride, The Guttenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media. McLuhan is well-known for the idea of this “global village” which he described as an “electronic nervous system (the media) was rapidly integrating the planet.” In this paper an analysis on Innis’ thesis, on the use of media and the influence it has on empires such as the Egyptians and Babylonians and how McLuhan’s idea of the global village can reflect Innis’ work.
In order to understand Innis’ thesis it is essential to go over certain terms such as space and time biased media. Space-biased media is defined as the diffusion of knowledge throughout great distance. Examples of space-biased media are paper and writing. The positive characteristics of space-biased media are that they are light and can be spread over the world with ease. Therefore, this is why space-biased media is associated with the idea expansion of an empire, the growth of states’ authorities and decentralization institutions -distribution of the administrative functions of (a central authority) among several local authorities. Certain negative characteristics are that space-biased media does not last long because paper degrades which evidently means that it is not reliable in preserving past events in the world’s history. On the other hand time-biased media is meant to be a source which will last throughout to future generations. Examples of time-biased media are clay, stone and oral culture which Innis associates to religion and education. The positive characteristics of time-biased media is that they are durable meaning that they will last a long time unlike space-biased media. These terms will form the basis for Innis’ thesis – in order to preserve time and occupy space; empires had to juggle both of them in order to strive for success. Therefore, in order to demonstrate if Innis’ thesis is in fact correct it is essential to go over some of the past empires which he discusses in Empire and Communications.
The first empire in question is one on the Nile, Egypt. The Nile was the heart of Egypt; the Egyptians depended on it for their economic income. The Nile was seen as “the principle of order and centralization” (Innis, p. 12). The invention of a writing system called hieroglyphs (pictorial) in Egypt came about by the social situations of the time. Innis states the fact that for a long time Egypt was an absolute monarchy. Therefore, there was always one ruler in this type of monarchy. During the reign of absolute monarchy in Egypt pyramids played an important religious role. Examining the hieroglyphs in these pyramids points to their true function as a funerary ritual in order to aid the pharaoh or key Egyptian figure makes his way to the afterlife. All of this history has transcended itself by time-biased media because hieroglyphs were carved into stone tablets which have been preserved to this very day. Therefore, this means that their civilization has survived until this very day. However, after the abolition of absolute monarchy a democratic system had been put in place (Innes, p.15). As a result of this political shift, Egypt went from being a time-biased media by using stone as the medium of communication to a more space-biased media with the use of papyrus sheets as being the new medium. When papyrus made its way to being the dominant medium of communication it “expanded its control over space but also required the priestly class to share power with an emerging administrative bureaucracy.” The perfect balance in creating an empire was to fuse both “religion and political organizations” (Innis, p. 25). This balance which Innis discusses is called the monopolies of knowledge.
After Innis introduced his time and space-biased medias he came up with the monopolies of knowledge concept. This concept was created from the hostility between both time and space-biased medias, where one of these medias dominated the other in one civilization which lead to the creation of monopolies of knowledge. Innis refers to knowledge as being literature and sciences like important information such as economic records and census data. He basically stated that those who had total “control of knowledge through dominant media of a given civilization had total control of reality.” Therefore, those who are in control of knowledge are able tell the people of a given civilization what knowledge actually is. A good example of people in control of knowledge is the Nazi party propaganda master Joseph Goebbels. The reason why the Nazis had the power over the people was because they were the ones defining knowledge. With the use of propaganda the Nazi party fed lies to the German people. To illustrate their use of propaganda they used poster, radio messages and books in order to show the evil of the Jewish population.
Herbert Marshall McLuhan –“a technological determinist”- (Sharon Zechowski) can be seen as one of Harold Innis’ disciples. McLuhan has introduced many famous concepts such as hot and cold media, the “Medium is the Message” and the notion of the global village. In order to understand his famous dictum, the global village it is essential to shed light on his hot and cool media theory.
Hot media is exclusive meaning that there is “low participation from the viewer because of their high resolution” (Regent University). Therefore, what this means is that there is not much information needed to be filled in by the user. An example of hot media can be the radio because it does not require a lot of participation by its listeners. Whereas cool media is inclusive, this means that there is the need for high participation because of their low resolution. The reason why cool media is “highly participatory” is because the viewer must focus in order to “fill in the blanks” that the medium is portraying. The best example of cool media is the television because it requires the viewers to participate in order to understand the message which is being sent over the medium in question which is the television.
Marshall McLuhan put his theory of hot and cool media into practice by analyzing one of the most important political events in American history, the 1960 Kennedy and Nixon debates. John F. Kennedy used cool media, the television in order to attract the audience. Therefore, the television was not a medium that used one of the senses but two of them, seeing and hearing. Kennedy was known for his good looks hence it was a good idea to portray him on the television. On the other hand, Richard Nixon’s’ electoral campaign thought that Nixon would be better fit for the radio which is a hot medium. Nixon was known for his debates as being one of his key methods in getting the listeners attention.
Another key concept introduced by McLuhan is one of his favourite and most used expressions, “The Medium is the Message.” This concept is hard to define but in the simplest form it can be defined as “the medium being the greatest impact upon the socio-cultural environment rather than the information that is being transmitted.” Examples of different mediums include the radio, newspapers, computers, television, books, movies and much more. A good example that best illustrates “The Medium is the Message” can be observed between both comic books and films. McLuhan explains that both these mediums are interpreted by our vision. While watching movies, viewers require minimal amount of effort in order to understand what they are watching – hence the visual message is clear. Contrary, in comic books, the reader must focus their vision more in order to pick out the visual message. The reason why comic books require the reader to pay closer attention is because they do not show as much detail as movies do. Comic books are made up of still pictures whereas movies are made up of movement and expression. In both the cases, the focus is on the medium and the message it sends as opposed to the content of the film or comic.
An analysis of McLuhan’s key theories comes all down to this, the global village. The global village can be defined as “an electronic nervous system (media) that was shaping the planet.” For example, any event that was occurring in one part of the world could be shared with the world in seconds. Therefore, what McLuhan is trying to demonstrate is how small our world has become because of our technology ruled world. It has become the size of a village, where everyone knows everything about everyone. In McLuhan’s book The Guttenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man sheds light on the effects media had on European culture. He talks about how Guttenberg and how the invention of the printing presses shaped both European culture and people. Guttenberg can be seen as one of the key innovators who created a medium that enabled people to communicate throughout the world. There is so much information in the world, both trivial and historical. The global village concept is proof of that. A real life example of the global village put in practice can be seen when the FIFA World Cup plays on television, radio and the internet. People from all across the world will know who won the tournament regardless if they have the necessary communications or not. Information travels fast and as a result has defined our world as the global village.
In my opinion, some of McLuhan’s concepts are applicable to our world. The three concepts analyzed above (hot and cool media, “Medium is the Message” and the global village) are all terms that can be seen in both present and past societies. First off, the whole notion of “the Medium is the Message” can be applied to todays with the use of a good example, the iPod. In this example, we see that the iPod message is neither through the music it plays nor the videos but is the way that the iPod (medium) has revolutionized the world. The iPod has changed our society and how we live our lives. Therefore, the iPod can be seen as the “extension of ourselves”. What this extension means is that the iPod demonstrates people’s individuality. The hot and cool media concepts can be applied to our lives. The example given above about the radio being a hot media and the television being cool media can be applied to our generation. The radio fills our minds with information without having the listener participate, all they do is listening and the message sinks in. On the other hand, we have cool media such as the television which requires a lot of attention from the viewer in order for them to fill in the blanks that this medium is conveying. When watching the television a lot of our senses are being used such as hearing and sight. His last concept, the global village can be seen all across the world today. A good example that illustrates the negative connotations of the evolution of a global village might lead to “cultural domination by more developed countries.” One of the main problems with the possible effects associated with the global village is that powerful countries like the United States of America’s media will “eventually have control the cultural standards by which the rest of the world will have to live.”
After analyzing both Innis and McLuhan it is essential to have gathered the key concepts which they explore and elaborate. It is also important to see these concepts in practice and how they have affected and will keep affecting the way we live in our global village.




Works Cited
"Innis, Harold Adams (1894-1952) Summary | BookRags.com." BookRags.com | Study Guides, Lesson Plans, Book Summaries and more. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. .

Innis, Harold A.. Empire and Communications. 2r.e. ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972. Print.
"Marshall McLuhan, The Global Village." The Internet. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. .
Puno, Ryan. "COM105: The Medium is the Message by Marshall McLuhan." Beginning to See the Light - A Shining Brainless Beacon. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2010. mcluhan>.
"Medium is the Message." Wikipedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2010. .

"Monopolies of Knowledge - Innis - Old Messengers, New Media: The Legacy of Innis and McLuhan Library and Archives Canada." Welcome to the LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA website | Bienvenue au site Web BIBLIOTHÈQUE ET ARCHIVES CANADA. N.p., 3 July 2007. Web. 1 Nov. 2010. .
Zechowski, Sharon. "MCLUHAN, MARSHALL - The Museum of Broadcast Communications." The Museum of Broadcast Communications. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2010. .

"Marshall McLuhan." Regent University - A Leading Global Christian University. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2010. .

"Time- and Space-Bias - Innis - Old Messengers, New Media: The Legacy of Innis and McLuhan – Library and Archives Canada." Welcome to the LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA website | Bienvenue au site Web
"Understanding the Implications of a Global Village | Student Pulse." Academic Articles by Students. Get Published. | Student Pulse. N.p., 20 Nov. 2009. Web. 23 Oct. 2010. .

"What Is Communications." Communications Group at the University of Toronto. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. =50&temid=62>.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

another excellent example of a student essay on the Innis and McLuhan topic

by Tricia Lapointe 

Theories of Communications - the work of Innis and McLuhan

To understand cultures more effectively, we should consider the renowned Canadian Media Theorists - Harold Adams Innis and Herbert Marshall McLuhan. 

Their studies and publications, analyzed the impact of technological Communications and Media upon cultures.

At the time, Innis’s and McLuhan’s theories were rather revolutionary, and they are, remarkably, still enthusiastically studied today, largely because they both acutely predicted how our current electronic technologies have come to play a central, in fact, deterministic role in how our culture is formed.

Innis was a Canadian political economy professor who had notably written Empire and Communications, now one of the major works in Communication Theory. Innis` central thesis, argues that society is shaped by the influence of primary media technologies within its culture. He developed the concept, in which mediums - have either : a time or space bias. 

Media which emphasizes space, promotes an Empire`s expansion of its culture beyond its own borders. Those mediums have to be light in order to travel great distances, such as paper or papyrus, which allowed printed or written communication to dominate. Those mediums centralized the information, but it`s not a particularly sustainable system, because of its medias fragility. On the other hand, time bias, favours the longevity of a culture, by utilizing mediums which are much more durable and therefore will more likely persist over time. For instance, Imperial buildings or even spoken oral traditions, are mediums which are more durable and therefore much more long lasting.  Also, buildings and sculptures are an important medium to a society, because they can accurately expresses the cultures values or aspirations, and the context within which they were created. As an example, even ancient, fallen classical civilizations, such as the Egyptian, Greek or Roman Empires, have indelibly left the fingerprints of their culture - through the monuments or values that still are expressed and studied even today. Innis emphasizes that the key of a successful Empire - was to maintain a balance between both the time and space biases.

Also, the climate of animosity between time bias and space bias mediums cause what he called, “a monopolies of knowledge”.  

Innis explains this concept, by claiming that a “knowledge elite” forms, and centralizes power through media within a society - one which is likely ignorant of the controlling mechanism, and of this form of centralized knowledge.

In history, centralized knowledge has typically been used to dominate. A modern example would be, Joseph Stalin`s totalitarian communist regime in Russia (c 1941 to 1953). Stalin actively used propaganda and fear throughout the community to maintain his absolute power. The propaganda was widely broadcast through mediums such as radio, posters, newspapers or cinema. so as to maintain his regime, and because society had no other resource of knowledge, or effective recourse they could not meaningfully contradict, or even avoid Stalin’s politically pervasive and dominant view, people were thus controlled, co-opted and imprisoned.

In this relatively simple way, he monopolized information in Russia ( Google ? ) Therefore, it seems rather clear that the ones who command knowledge, ultimately have the power to define reality.

This monopoly contributes to a deep instability in the culture because the ones who are deprived of this power “will search for new competing media to undercut existing power structures, and create new patterns of association and form of knowledge” (Beale) In other words, they will establish a new media to compete with the one already in place to gain more knowledge and more power by restructuring the culture. 
   
Moreover, in Innis`s work, he mentions the notion of non-military cultural invasion - and notes his concern about Canadian`s culture, which is profoundly influenced and even eclipsed by larger empires, such as United States or Great Britain, a dominant, over-reaching "Pax Britannica or Pax Americana". 

This non-military cultural invasion occurs in a society, when there is an incursion or imposition of another larger culture which didn`t use military force per se to situate itself within the host culture. It`s through the technological communications or media products which most often facilitates this expansionism - of the dominant empire as well as the ensuing cultural control it affords.

For instance, in our own Canadian culture, we are greatly influenced by the United States "culture" whether it's music, TV shows or movies. The American world view play a defining role in the way Canadian`s culture is shaped.  However, today with the Internet and the world wide web, it`s an obvious concept that a culture might more readily influence another because information is shared much more rapidly throughout the world.

During the Innis era, (1930 -5o's), a broad, world wide, invasive communication technology was not developed. The principal technology used at this time was the radio, and to a lesser degree newspapers. Therefore, it was quite an innovative notion, that a culture could be invaded by a greater empire without the use of physical force, through the agency of media.Today, such an observation might be labeled as rather obvious, and the invasion itself, might be seen as benign, like Quarter Pounders in the Forbidden City.

Interestingly, the dominant effects of media on a society - generally aren't perceived by those people who actually live in the culture. The main cause is seemingly - because they are submerged in it, and thus too close to see its actual impact. Therefore, they lack perspective, or an objective view to identify the consequences of media technologies on their lives. 

Take as an obvious example, the longer term effects of Social Media like Facebook and Twitter's impact on our ability to interpersonally communicate. Social change is clearly influenced by the communication technologies and the media of choice in a society.

Herbert Marshall McLuhan was deeply influenced by Innis`s works, but he developed other, now renowned concepts, independently. The famous dictum "the Medium is the Message" is one of them. 

In order to understand this particular concept, we have to understand how McLuhan defines the words medium and message. For McLuhan, a medium is an extension of ourselves. It`s how we perceive, how we know the world with our senses, the media is in fact, the information.

McLuhan went further, noting that the technology creates an imbalance between the individual`s senses and this influences the fragility of the society. He criticized electronic media because they didn't simulate only one sense, but all the five human senses. Also, he characterizes the message as a change which a new invention has on the individual. Therefore, the mechanism of the medium is the message - is the change which emerges from our sensory experiences; everything we create, and therefore all our ideas and innovations shape this "medium".

Our perceptions of the shifting shape of society - due to a presence of emerging products and mediums, and the recognition of their effects by constantly re-shaping culture. The anticipation these new "devices", should allow increased access to information/power. The upside, at least theoretically, is that the public will be more prepared, more informed, the down side is that there will be a rise of what is called the "digerati", those who control the means of communication, who will, as Karl Marx warned 100 years ago, control the means of production. As a result, they will influence the evolution of the medium, one hopes to serve societies broader interests, rather than their own.
        
Furthermore, the extension thesis leads to another concept, " hot and cool media "which qualified the sensorial participation of the audience. The qualification depends on the amount of information the media, which expands to one sense, expresses. It also influences the level of the viewer`s participation. The hot media such as radio, print, photography, film and painting is characterized as high definition because it requires a lot of information. As a result, the audience don`t need to get involve. Whereas, cool media like the telephone or the television gives less information to enable the viewer to complete the experience. Due to this low participation, it allows them to be distracted by other mediums.
The phrase, "the Global Village" introduces a new way to see the wider effects of technology in people`s lives. The village, represents people living in a shared community who communicate their village concerns and affairs electronically. The global village theory suggests that the 19th century model of Nation States and territorial borders, has been dramatically diminished because the communication of information is now spread instantaneously throughout the world. This communication is disclosed rapidly though electronic technology in a similar speed of our own senses. This suggests that information is spread in the same amount of time globally than in a same village. As a result there are is no more limitations of physical space or location. 

Everyone, is everywhere, simultaneously. 

The global village concept, proposes that global issues and concerns can and now does include everyone in human affairs, as were all linked together in our global village. 

It sounds like the ideal to include everyone in this whole community. As human beings, we can`t all have the same feeling of belonging to this global community. The inclusion of every human is impossible, at least at this time.We have all different way to experiment with our senses and therefore distinct interpretations of the world. There will be exclusion of those who don`t share the same values and those who participate differently to the movement of this global connectivity. 

Those communication theories allow us to better examine how our culture is shaped and influenced by technology. Is our culture balanced between the space and time bias? With the rise of the Internet and Social Media the way we communicate has completely changed. 

Gradually, the human contact in communications are compromised by these technologies. People communicate with their surroundings virtually, through computers, cell phones or tablets. Those technologies mostly favour space bias, and the consequence, is there is less oral tradition and human contact in communication and, instead of reading books and literature that encourage imagination which enriches knowledge and intellectual growth, people rely on social media to know the world.  People seldom realize that communicating solely through devices degrades human interaction and that virtual mediums diminish our ability to empathize, because we become enamoured by the devices, and are too close to see the effects.

Bibliography

Beale, Nigel. Harold Innis: Empire and Communications. http://literarytourist.com/2006/03/innis%E2%80%99-empire-and-communications-reviewed/ Web (October 2, 2013) 
Federman, Mark. What is the Meaning of The Medium is the Message?. http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthemessage.htm Web (October 9, 2013) 
Harold Adams Innis: The Bias of Communications & Monopolies of power. http://www.media-studies.ca/articles/innis.htm Web (October 2, 2013) 
Mullen, Megan.Space Bias/Time Bias: Harold Innis, Empire and Communications. http://classmaterials.blogspot.ca/  Web (October 2, 2013) 
Munday, Roderick. Marshall McLuhan declared that “the medium is the message.” What did he mean and does this notion have any value?   http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/ram0202.html  Web (October 9, 2013) 
Symes, Benjamin. Marshall McLuhan`s 'Global Village'. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/bas9401.html   Web (October 9, 2013) 

Friday, February 18, 2011

NOTE. these links may no longer work, alas.
here are the links for our class lectures notes circa 2011, the files are massive, the downloads can take hours as there are thousands of images and hundreds of pages of text. They are all working as of Feb. 2011, but there is no guarantee that they'll work forever. 

They're intended to be an adjunct to, but not a substitute for, our actual lectures. 

I hope they help, my great thanks to Anthony P, for fetching them all up.