|
Presentation
text :
|
Forty
years ago (1964) was published The comprehension of
media as extensions of men, one of the most important
books in Mashall McLuhan’s creation.
In
this book McLuhan affirmed, in the first place, that
the media is the message; on the second place, that
technologies have to be considered as prolongations
of our body and our senses; and, that it is possible
to distinguish among cold media and hot media. Moreover,
McLuhan anticipated the development of a global village.
Few
academics and researchers in Latin America have repaired
in the importance of McLuhan’s thesis, who was
stigmatized as functionalist and gringo. Carlos Monsivais,
who in Días de Guardar included an essay in
which he criticized the principal ideas of McLuhan,
made one of the first critics.
McLuhan
was a Canadian and he must not be considered in functionalism.
Today he is recognized as the creator of one of the
most important schools in communication: the Media
Ecology School, term that was proposed by Neil Postman,
Susan Sontag, Joshua Meyrowitz, Edumnd Carpenter, Elizabeth
Eisenstein, Carey, Walter Ong, Harold Innis, Paul Levinson,
Lance Strate, and Eric McLuhan.
McLuhan
not only announced the growth of the global village
in The comprehension of media as extensions of men
(1977:26-27), but he also anticipated with clarity
the arrival of the Internet. After three hundred years
of explosion with fragmentary and mechanical techniques,
the Western world entries in an implosion. During the
mechanical era, we extend our bodies in the outer space.
Nowadays, after more than one century in the electric
era, we have prolonged our own neurotic system in a
total reach, omitting space and time in our planet
We are reaching rapidly the final stage of the prolongations,
in other words, in the technical simulation of consciousness,
when the creative development of men is extended collectively
towards the total of human society, in the same way
that we have amplified and prolonged our senses and
our nerves based on other kind o media.
According
to McLuhan, the level of participation in users determines
if the media have to be considered as cold or hot media.
Hot media consent less participation. Therefore Internet
has to be considered a cold media, because the interactivity
of its users represents one of the main distinctive
elements of this media, a media that has to be considered
as intelligent.
In
recent years, academics, researches and Internet’s
sensible community have noted the importance of McLuhan.
McLuhan has to be considered as an authentic visionary
of the digital communications. Effectively it is possible
to understand the media as prolongations of men. New
technologies of information and communication are introducing
us into a successive conformation of cultural environment.
Each new media transforms the way we create and communicate,
modifying also the current system of the media in a
cultural environment (remediation process).
Latin
America researchers have conceded too much weight to
the Mediation Theory, which is in many ways useless
to carry out investigation of communicative actions
in the imaginary cyberspace. It is important to start
the construction of a Theory of Interspaces in the
cyberspace and naturally the starting point is McLuhan.
McLuhan,
M. (1977). La comprensión de los medios
como extensiones del hombre. México, Diana.
|
