Marshal Mcluhan did a analysis of human history and was able divide it into four periods. In the beginning there was the tribal age where your sense of touch, taste, smell, and hearing are more important then being able to see. during this time you needed to be aware of your surroundings. With sight you can only see what is in front of you, and if a bear sneaks up from behind how will you see it? You wouldn't but you could hear it or smell it. also during this period there was a lot of spoken word which brought people together the book says "listening to someone speak in a group is a unifying act". you can even see this still in today's culture. A band today could make an album and sell it to people all over the world but they still go on tour to play the same songs live. the reason they do this is because seeing a band live is a totally different experience then just listening to there CD in your car. then came the alphabet and everything got turned around, and the Age of Literacy began.
in this time the eye is the dominant sense organ. in this time words on a page were more trust worthy then someone speaking to you. people became less involved with the tribe and more like separate individuals.it says in the book "A tribe no longer needs to come together to get information". its not all bad though the age of literacy also gave us mathematics, science, and philosophy. The Age of Print, the invention of the printing press made reproducing a book easier. in this age the mass production of books left people more alienated from others.
the final age is The Electronic Age. this age started out with the telegraph and then all the other electronic media devices that we have today. Mcluhan believes that the electronic age has taken us back to what he calls a Global Village. he says that the closed human system no longer exist. with new technology that we have discovered people are finding new mediums to connect with others. through all the different facebooks and myspaces and company's like Cisco we are able to instantly communicate with people all over the world.
i think this commercial is a good example of how is new age of electronics has ended individual communication and connected everyone on a global level.
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This is a good example of media ecology. The video depicts 2 classrooms, thousands of miles away from eachother, meeting almost face-to-face through video chat technology. This is a good example of how media ecology is affecting they way we communicate.
Nowadays, with modern technology such as camera phones and online video chat, we are starting to become less informal. We no longer have to be talking to a person within a limited proximity. You don't even have to see the person's face in order to carry a conversation with them.
In my opinion, this takes away a key component of conversation, which is face to face discussion. When you can't see the person in a physical way, you can't always catch the visual clues given by people in everyday conversation.
This is a prime example of McLuhan’s ‘global village,’ a worldwide communication network that connects everyone and everything. One factor McLuhan’s theory considers is that we, as individuals, need to examine how new technologies will benefit our world and the society we build create together. The children in this clip could very well be on opposite ends of the earth, but they are still able to reach each other face-to-face. It really is a powerful tool that can be used to create communication that otherwise wouldn’t exist. I know this very same technology can be used to communicate with my brother in Kabul; it’s proof that in McLuhan’s electronic era, all of the senses are utilized with most recent technologies.
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