The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan argues in "The Medium is the Massage" that the dominant communication media of our time will shape the way humans think, act, and ultimately perceive the world around them.

Heres a few personal notes/thoughts and passages i've taken from "The Medium is the Massage".

The title is a play on McLuhan's oft-quoted saying "The medium is the message". McLuhan adopted the term "massage" to denote the effect each medium has on the human sensorium, taking inventory of the "effects" of numerous media in terms of how they "massage" the sensorium. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Medium_is_the_Massage

"They wreck our societies" - A.N. Whitehead

Electric technology is reshaping and restructing patterns of social interdependence and every day aspect of our personal life. Some can argue that there has become a loss of privacy and identity and we have become the unwitting work force for social change. We would be a more civilised society without this vexacious electrical media controlling and shaping the minds of young ones.
Today's child is growing up absurd, because he lives in two worlds, neither of them inclines him to grow up. Youth understands the present environment - the electric drama. This is the reason for alienation between generations.

"When this circuit learns your job, what are you going to do?

'Age of Anxiety' - trying to do todays job with yesterdays tools, with yesterdays concepts.

Some argue that technology has helped re-shape and make our lives easier; printing was the first assembly line in mass production. It created the portable book, which man could read in privacy and in isolation from others. Man could now inspire - and conspire. But where is the boundries of technology? Does techonogy have boundries? And how far will technology go till it becomes a threat or a danger to our lives.

"The Wheel is an extension of the foot. The book is an extension of the eye. Clothing, an extension of the skin...electric circuitry, an extension of the central nervous system."

The Alphabet is a technology that is absorbed by the very young child in a completely unconscious manner. The phonetic alphabet forced the magic world of the ear to yield to the neutral world of the eye. Man was given an eye for an ear.