Robert Tulip wrote:Essentially, it can be expressed in the question of the relation between the medium and the message.
Yes the relationship if a close one, especially to the point that you are confusing a message with a idea.
Robert Tulip wrote:Pop media writer Marshall McLuhan
By "pop media writer" you must mean Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar — a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist. McLuhan's work is viewed as one of the cornerstones of the study of media theory.
Robert Tulip wrote:famously said 'the medium is the message'.
What an amazing distillation of his thought, you are ingenious RT.
Robert Tulip wrote:This is a contradiction, because the media is the form in which the message is conveyed, while the message is the content of information.
The message is inherently archetypal in nature and within a certain sense, only our modes or methods of accessing and communicating is relevant. McLuhan's idea (and I know this because I have actually read his work) was that all message can be distilled to thought, the nature of which is substantially little different than the information that was once transferred using telegraph. He was interested to analyze how the technology of the wheel transformed Roman culture expanding the boundaries of the city through increased speed of communication and ability to travel further easier. Not by looking at what exactly was being transferred or how fast. This is one example. He analyzed other mediums as well, studying the influence of technology on time, education, or work for example. I feel that you are wrong to suggest that a message is necessarily best described as informational in form.
Robert Tulip wrote:Information is content, while its representations are form.
Not all content is information. Simply stated, information is a message received and understood, content without context is not information it is simply content. Similarly forms are not representations until they are received and understood as such, they are forms.
Robert Tulip wrote:Now, I agree with you that where there is no form there is no content either.
What are you saying? That content is reliant on a particular form? I take a word document and print it on to a page. What is a state of no form? The thought?
Robert Tulip wrote:However, the conceptual distinction remains fundamental that the way information is conveyed (media) is not the same thing as the content of the information.
Not however, necessarily. The point of McLuhan was that the best analysis is one of medium not any particular message. Keeping in mind that he was a media theorist.
Robert Tulip wrote:Just because content needs form does not mean that form provides a sufficient explanation for content.
So content does need form! The point was to not try an examination of the content rather to examine how the medium will result in and also expresses radical changes in society.
Robert Tulip wrote:A good example is the idea of justice. The form of the legal system does not always deliver the content of ideal justice, but justice nonetheless exists in some ideal sense as a potential vision or goal which can be gradually articulated.
Yet there is a book of law (content) and there is a separate book of legal procedure (medium of legal proceeding). If your goal was to understand why the court is proceeding as such, on the level of content exchange, you would be much better off studying the entire book of procedures rather than the entire book of laws. A message about the nature of the particular legal system would arise independent of an understanding of the exact contents you are observing. How do lawyers communicate formally, not using the book of law rather the book of procedure.
Great post, I was impressed by McLuhan and enjoy discussing and thinking about his ideas.
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