Understanding Media: Chapter 4 The Gadget Lover

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I suspect the internet is a break boundary, but I'm not sure how.  I mean, I'm taking a class about it, so it must be important, right...!?!  It seems to be at least as significant as the switch from the still photo, to the motion picture, which McLuhan mentions as a break boundary.  Perhaps the "reversal of itself" will be that although we have access to vastly more information online, if old media structures go away and people stop going to books (as has been posited in our readings), we may have less access to reliable information.

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The passage on Narcissus could easily apply to social media.  Sites like MySpace or Facebook can be all about the user, and the user's friends.  Tools like blogs or Twitter can show the user his or her own reflection, by allowing him or her to associate with similar people.  The Narcissus myth can almost literally come true for some people online, as social media and other tools eat up all their free time, the way television used to.

On a tangentially related note, this is a not-so-serious look at online addiction, which is also a completely serious advertisement.  I had no idea it was an ad until the last 10 seconds, although I was marveling at how well done it was.  I have seen more and more of these kinds of videos on Youtube...  Perhaps this is the economic model of content on the internet:  Advertisers create the content, or hire an agency which does so.

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The stimulus to new invention is the stress of accelerations of pace and increase of load.  For example, in the case of the wheel as an extension of the foot, the pressure of new burdens resulting from the acceleration of exchange by written and monetary media was the immediate occasion of the extension or "amputation" of this function from our bodies.  The wheel as a counter-irritant to increased burdens, in turn, brings about a new intensity of action by its amplification of a separate or isolated function (the feet in rotation).  Such amplification is bearable by the nervous system only through numbness or blocking of perception.  This is the sense of the narcissus myth.  The young man's image is a self-amputation or extension induced by irritating pressures.  As a counter-irritant, the image produces a generalized numbness or shock hat declines recognition.  Self-amputation forbids self recognition.

Essentially, McLuhan is arguing that any significant new media causes a shock to its viewers or users, similar to falling a few feet.  He argues that the body's response it to go into shock, and become numb.  Therefore, people become like Narcissus, obsessed with whatever the new tool is that has been introduced, and unable to turn away.

This did not end well for Narcissus.  Although, I guess if you turn into a flower after you die, that's not TOO bad.

The associated myth of echo seems to have a useful warning for heavy tweeters and bloggers:  "Echo had one failing; she was fond of talking, and whether in chat or argument, would have the last word."  


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"In the electric age we wear all mankind as our skin."  This could apply to the increasing communications on the internet, and the increasing amount of information transmitted.  Perhaps the digital age will change our "strategic numbing," and make us aware of new things, as McLuhan said the electronic age made us aware of technology as an extension of our bodies, and gave us guilt associated with social consciousness.  What that new revelation might be I have no idea.