Kwami Chambers
Media Studies
Prof. Xinghua Li
Media Deprivation Experience
When it comes to “defining” media I honestly did not know where to start. I always assumed media was just the simple answer that most have pounded into their head, the daily news stories. But it turns out media are so much more than that. It is everything that we use in our everyday lives to communicate, in other words media is communication. I know that sounds like a very vast definition but if you think about it media are everything from the simplest tool we use to communicate like a pencil and the power of speech to the most advance technology we have, take email or the newest Iphone. It comes off simple but my definition of medium resides somewhere between some of the ideas of Croteau & Hoynes and McLuhan. Where “Media [are] the extensions of Man” (21) and from what I understand media are the middle ground between the sender and receiver of information (7). In a sense these two quotes gel together for me because as media are what we humans use to connect so therefore extending ourselves into the world to bridge a gap between us another person i.e. creating the middle. I also think media are in other words a problem. According to my ASM professor, John R. Thomas, ‘A problem is a gap between where you are and where you want to be.” So therefore media being the “middle” and the gap it is to me seen as a problem but yet a solution. Due to the fact that it is the gap but also the actual communication means that man has created in order to solve this problem. So, media takes on a double meaning in order for it to make sense. As you said in the email, for us to understand and spate a definition from a metaphor we must not only show what media are but in addition what media is not. McLuhan states that media are railways, airplanes and mechanization. When he brought this definition up as a form of media, I was instantly confused. Media are as I stated earlier, means of communication and a problem as well as a solution not transportation. Maybe I am reading into to it too much but it seems as McLuhan in addition to media being extensions of ourselves also believe that anything that has made out live automated as well as anything that is operated by a human is media and this is where I draw the line. I can see how media is the “middle” but the wrong type of middle. Media is the middle that helps us communicates over not a way for us to actually travel over this space. It seems like McLuhan contradicts himself with this other definition of media but it does not coincide with my definition. I see media as technology because it is also the advancement of the “old” or simpler forms of communications or extensions of man that we have created. I would not consider media to be this “electric light” which I take to believe is the light emitted from a light bulb. McLuhan does state that “The electric light escapes the attention as a communication medium…” (9). In this I disagree and agree at the fact that electric light should escape attention because it is not an extension of man to reach one another. Yet the only type of medium is different types of specific communication i.e. a texting device is a medium and speech and TV are media not medium being more than communication. All in all, I believe I have a rough understanding of media as a whole and some of McLuhan’s views. In addition what I have read in Media Society has agreed with the communication aspect of what I view media as. The blend of McLuhan and Croteau & Hoynes suits my ideas of media being the middle ground between people helping them extend ideas and thoughts to one another. At the same time being the gap as well as solving and bridging the gap between us is what Media essential is to me.
“I pledge my honor that I have neither received nor provided unauthorized assistance during the completion of this work.”
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