This week lecture on Interactive Media features Marshall McLuhan, the great visionary, Vannevar Bush and Hypermedia. The man who envisioned the current 21st technology that we used now back in post war period.
Medium is the message. From McLuhan, is a questionable yet agreeable quote to me, as my understanding is that the medium determines the outcome of the content. I did not understand this at first as it seems vague but after researching, I realised that it could be the type of medium, eg. watching a video of a man eating food on phone screen and home TV. The phone screen is more personal and stick closer to me which makes me feel more connected interpersonally connected to him and i will be hungry while the home TV is larger, it makes me feel more of looking at him and it seems that I am sitting in front of him and feeling his presence by my side. I guess this is what it meant?
From the idea of the current pin hole camera, usb memory stick, portable smart phone and computers. Everything were envisioned, this is an interesting and bold prediction in the 1940s and he even published an article, he was not afraid of getting shot and shunned by the public opinions considering that back in the days, a double digit computer RAM could easily be the size of a classroom in ADM.
But here’s an interesting thought, what if secretly they were a team who were funded by him or others with resources over the decades to develop his ideas, which meant that the inventors of his envisioned products were all directly or indirectly linked or related to him? Who knows?
Hypermedia, from the traditional hyperlink, its the hypermedia. As per what was shared, a letter “A” could be derived as picture “Apple” and it could result in the GIF of “adam and eve eating the apple” and essential relates to “life” showing a piture of a baby and more and more. To my understanding, it is an endless loop of assumption and meaning in mutlimedia format, like what you type in google search “Apple” and it can come up with alot of possibilities, a way that the computer is trying to predict what you want. Similar to the Bush concept, where the brain is link to the usage of tech, now computer is the brain who is trying to figure out what you want thus the hypermedia displays and mimics the brains that link the Apple to anything and everything it could do.
Picture Reference.
Unknown. (n.d.). [Picture]. Retrieved 8 September 2019. https://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/bush.html.