Media Evolution
-
Innis (1972) explores roles of media as used by different
civilizations. Main point: Media use and forms (bias and emphasis)
contribute to civilization and political structures of societies.
-
Harnad (1991) asserts that the fourth cognitive revolution is
electronic communication.
-
Havelock (1986) traces how writing transformed Greek culture from
orality to literacy.
-
Levinson (1990) sees CMC as an ongoing evolution of media: speech,
writing, printing, telecommunications.
-
McLuhan and Powers (1989) describes the idea of the global village
transforming life and media.
-
McLuhan (1964) explores the extensions of people through media.
Main point: Media's characteristics create and operate in a social
and historical context; electric technologies create an emphasis on
effect and total involvement.
-
McLuhan (1965) Technology revises the linearism of print. Main
point: "The Gutenberg Galaxy is intended to trace the ways in which
the forms of experience and of mental outlook and expression have
been modified, first by the phonetic alphabet and then by
printing."
-
McLuhan and Fiore (1967) asserts that media extends consciousness.
Main point: [p. 26] "All media work us over completely. They are so
pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic,
psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they
leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is
the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is
impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as
environments."
-
Vallee (1982) presents perspectives on the network revolution.