Week 1

Learning more about the people who spearheaded breakthroughs on our discovering and journey towards improving the means of how humans interact with media was fascinating – big names like Vannevar Bush, J.C.R Licklider, Alan Kay etc were dropped. The one who caught my attention though, was this quote by Marshall McLuhan:

“Medium is the message”
– Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

Immediately, the communications student in me went straight to think that McLuhan was trying to say that the content itself was not as important as the way it is being communicated to the user, or that the channel of communication in itself plays such a huge role it affects or shifts the whole message of the content. Upon doing more in depth googling on this topic, I realised that many people shared the same sentiment as I had, and that our sentiment was also terribly misconstrued.

UNDERSTANDING MCLUHAN

McLuhan describes message to be “the change of scale or pace or pattern” that a new invention or innovation “introduces into human affairs.” He states medium to be an extension of ourselves (it’s in the book title), more specifically in the form of new technology.

“Any new technology, any extension or amplification of human faculties when given material embodiment, tends to create a new environment.”
– Marshall McLuhan on the term ‘medium’

I’ve got to be honest, I have had to read quite a few articles AND reread the same articles a few times to try to understand what all these meant and this is my final take on it.

MY OWN INTERPRETATION

Medium: Refers to the new environment we find ourselves in due to a change in technology, with the change in technology coming about from our (human) needs. E.g. The creation of instant messaging services to feed the need for faster and more effective communication between people

Message: The effect the medium has on the attitude and behaviour of the society towards certain issues. E.g. The decrease of face-to-face human interactions due to the new convenience to conversing through screens

This reminds me of when the concept of what was also brought up in class today, which was: Manipulation of machinery can affect/change/influence society.

I now will touch on an example that I find illustrate these ideas well.

EXAMPLE: TWITTER RETWEET BUTTON

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/how-the-retweet-ruined-the-internet

“We might have just handed a 4-year-old a loaded weapon.”
– Developer Chris Wetherell

I recently read about this article on Buzzfeed News about arguably Twitter’s most integral function: The Retweet (RT) Button.

Before the RT button, Twitter users had to manually copy and paste someone’s tweets.

Twitter wanted to create something that would incorporate this behaviour in its product and increase the efficiency of communication. Wetherell also thought it could help strengthen voices from minority communities.

 

This new function did spark more conversations on important topics online. It worked exactly as hope but also changed Twitter and the spreading of information in a way they did not foresee. By removing the need to copy and paste a tweet before reposting, the amount of thought that people put into the content that they take in and share declined. This caused the rise of spread of fake news and ended up giving hate speech and discriminatory ideals a wider platform and stronger voice.

IN CONCLUSION

At the end of the day, his message is in the title of his book: The online media environment is just a reflection of human nature. 

“It dawned on me that this was not some small subset of people acting aberrantly. This might be how people behave. And that scared me to death.”
– Wetherell

The importance in this quote lies in it being such a timely reminder for this day and age despite this quote being dated all the way back to 1964 (this quote is older than Singapore). What McLuhan tries to warn is to take importance in noticing the change or negative impacts that new machinery or technology could bring or affect upon the society and attempt to steer its development in the right direction before its effects become irreversible. I will end this week’s reflections with wise words from the man himself:

“Control over change would seem to consist in moving not with it but ahead of it. Anticipation gives the power to deflect and control force.”
– Marshall McLuhan

Week 2 & 3

Of all the topics touched on in class, what really stuck with me was Elon Musk’s Neuralink. I was not aware, until researching that the brain-computer interface was a thing that already existed and years in the making. Neuralink simply aims to make this method more convenient and move it along to make for more efficient digital communication.

The class ended with the summary that after this current AR/VR phase that we are in , bio tech is the next big step we will be taking in the advancing technological world. This reminded me of the Season 4 episode of Black Mirror, Arkangel. Black Mirror is a television series that examines modern society, particularly with regard to the unanticipated consequences of new machinery and technology.

BLACK MIRROR: ARKANGEL

 

In short, Arkangel talks about the issue of parental controls in the modern age, an issue prevalent in this current time when unfiltered content containing PG material are so easily accessible to children. This show introduces the new technology Arkangel – a neural implant that functions as a GPS tracker and transmit a live feed of a child’s optic view. The parent can not only view what their child is viewing, but also filter what they see in real life to shield them. In this episode, the parent in mind is a single mother of Sarah who decides to have Arkangel implanted in her young daughter’s mind and chooses to block out sights of fear and pain in Sarah’s life. The climax of the show is when the mother crosses the line of invading her daughter’s privacy and body and Sarah decides to hit her mother with the Arkangel tablet out of anger. She continuously hits her mother without realising how much damage she is causing due to the filter, until it finally breaks, and she sees the state her mother is in.

This episode was a very relevant example of how this technology, or any new technology to be created in the future, can easily backfire on us. What starts off seeming like a solution that we think we need, typically results in a big change of how we as human view issues or certain topics. With the new solutions, a part of what makes us who we are – in the case of Arkangel, it is the ability to understand pain and fear as human emotions and not to be scared by it – disappears or is lessened which in turn makes us less human. 

Which is my primary concern with the future leading to items like biotech. As it is, with every new technological advancement introduced to improve a part of our lives, a part of our lives is also taken away. E.g. Streaming shows on sites like Netflix and Amazon Prime allows for each individual to access and consume the show of their choice on their own device at the comfort of their own privacy. After the rise of watching shows on these sites, the need for the whole family to come together to watch a TV show in the living room at a shared timing decreases which could affect the time spent as a family.

Simple things as such would have subtle effects that we do not see affect us in the long run, although it could have an adverse effect indirectly. Which is why the future of biotech would be worrying not in the sense where it would physically harm or infiltrate our bodies, but because many social issues or problems may start arising from there especially since this is the most personal and invasive technology has ever been.