Hot and Cold

The Medium Is The Message/ Media Hot And Cold

Marshall McLuhan made really good points throughout his article on stating that “the machine”, or technology as we can call it today, was fragmentary and superficial in its patterning of human relationships. His awareness of social interference and consequence with such an accelerated process is not too far off.
He uses as examples certain intellectuals that would say that “modern science us not in itself good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value.” This seems like a careful political answer. McLuhan does not agree with a statement that doesn’t really say anything. This is a statement we hear frequently to avoid conflict which avoids productive dialogue, which he says in his second article is a very useful mode of “ cold media”. This dialogue and trying to understand this new science and technology is a misfortunate task that we can’t exercise quick enough to keep up with it thus leaving us with little resistance according to McLuhan.
In “The Medium Is The Message”, I think one of his most important points was acknowledging that, “technological media are staples or natural resources, exactly as are coal and cotton and oil.” Having this awareness at that time was advanced for his period and he had a very good grasp of where technology was going. The main point on that the content of any medium is always another medium was something that was not too well explained and only made sense parallel to a concept of remediation.
His “Media Hot and Cold” article was interesting at differentiating what was considered a low participatory media, well filled with data, with high definition. Cold media, was media that was the complete opposite as far as being something that you are more active in and the audience is more involved. I can see the importance of separating these differences and he made a point on saying that a society used to a certain type of media being introduced to another can be problematic. He used native people as an example and I can see this as a social issue. Does this mean that the more under developed countries should not be introduced to such media and technology. He is approaching indigenous, tribal, people but when it comes to approaching lower socio-economic societies this approach could be problematic. The most enlightening statement in this article which I agree with greatly but probably too idealistic was his reference to Margaret Mead where she said, “ There is great advantage in moving fast if you move completely, if social, educational, and recreational changes keep pace.” It is exactly this that I think McLuhan has a problem with saying that we have not been able to do this and this is what he’s arguing for.