The four laws help describe the properties of each medium or technology: 1. EXTEND An individuals or organisations use of technology in a new way extends the reach of body and mind: the car can be seen as an extension of the feet; a microscope as an extension of the eye; an engine an extension of our feet and arms, a library an extension of the mind. What does the artifact enhance or intensify or make possible or accelerate?. 2. REVERSE Every innovation has within itself the seeds of its reversal. When a technology is pushed to its limit, it risks reversing the target audiences enthusiasm for its original benefits into complementary or even opposite emotions, e.g. an over-extended automobile culture that is stressed by traffic jams and smog, longs for a pedestrian lifestyle. 3. RETRIEVE Humans have a limited set of senses and motor skills. The current media stimulate and reinforce only some of them. For example, the internet enhanced the visual senses over the aural. A successful new medium will retrieve and enhance a sense or skill that the current media do not stimulate. Since the number of senses and skills is limited, an older, outdated medium had probably addressed this sense or skill. What recurrence or retrieval of earlier actions and services is brought into play simultaneously by the new form? 4. OBSOLESCE The new media subsumes older forms of media. What is pushed aside or obsolesced by the new organ. New technologies keep expanding the limited number of senses and motor skills. The content of the old technology becomes incorporated into the new, further reaching technology. Writing made speech obsolete, just as printing made writing obsolete. The old technology is not eliminated, but loses its initial reputation and effectiveness. ~Marshall Mcluhan https://youtube/watch?v=A9y-ZAIdxrE
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 22:03:29 +0000