Technological Determinism

Marshall McLuhan

This theory discusses a very important discovery in communication technology are the phonetic alphabet, printing press, and a telegram in which discoveries are radically changing the way we process the experience through sensory devices.

Marshall McLuhan divides all human history into four periods or ages, namely:

1. A tribal age: primeval.

2. A laterage Age: age in which we begin to recognize the letters are marked by the emergence of educated people.

3. A print Age: era where the printing press had begun to grow because many people have been biased writing.

4. A electronic age: the time of the emergence of electronic equipment.

Rotating from one world into the era of the next era as new developments in communication technology. According to McLuhan, the most important inventions that changed life on this planet is a phonetic alphabet, printing press, and telegrams. He is convinced that the developers at that time had the idea that their technological innovations would revolutionize society.

We shape our tools and they want in turn shape us

McLuhan saw the invention of communication as something that is very important because he considers every form of media changes some become an extension of human capabilities. The wheel is an extension of the foot shape. Clothing is from the central nervous system. The media is a tool that explain or strengthen a body organ, sense, or function. Media not only extend our reach and increase our efficiency but also acts as a filter media to organize and interpret our social life.

The medium is the message

McLuhan convinced that the way we live, widely is a function of how we process information. Phonetic Alphabet, the print engine and a telegram was the beginning of a change in the human history because the mainstream media is changing the way humans think about themselves and their world.

Message said to show a game which is illustrated further by the belief that the media work us McLuhan over. He states: "The medium is the massage." The picture he offers is a great masseur and a sturdy body hitting his client rather than give him a soothing back rub. He also described the chaos in the 1960s with another variation of that theme: "The media Is the mass-age." McLuhan Although happy with his game in words, but He is serious about the idea anyway. Make oral, written, or electronic communications media major change the way we perceive the world. The dominant medium of any age dominates people.

A media analysis of human history

McLuhan support his thesis of technological determinism by interpreting the sweep of human history from the perspective of the media.

1. The tribal Age: An Acoustic community

McLuhan states that primitive people live richer and more complex than their offspring educated because of the ear, unlike the eye, can not choose the stimulus.

2. The age of literacy: A Visual Point of view

McLuhan wrote that the alphabet is phonetic change those tribes that used in processing the information they rely on the ear and its world known as the acoustic world. After the illiteracy eradication program, these people then move from that used to rely on his ear turned to the eye. He also claimed that the phonetic alphabet is constructed as a principle in regulating life.

3. The print age: a prototype of the industrial revolution

If the phonetic alphabet is no possibility in the visual dependence on the printing press made it become widespread. McLuhan wrote repeatedly as the most important characteristic of the type that can be transported by the printing revolution of show production from the production of the same example so that McLuhan called it as the pioneer of the industrial revolution.

4. The electronic Age: The Rise of the global village

According to McLuhan heyday printing machine has ended and replaced with useful electronic tools. Samuel Morse's invention would become the only means of electronic communication that will make the corner from Radio Shack like a magic shop for previous generations. Before his death in 1980, McLuhan predicted that the event impact a cultural shock which this communication hardware will significantly compared with computer software that will come.

Television is a medium cool

McLuhan became a media classifies into two, hot or cool. Hot communications medium is a high-definition channels and usually stand in a sense that a single receptor. Television is cool for television requires the involvement and participation to fill in the picture are blurred and unclear.

Living on the edge of an area

McLuhan supports the interpretation of the story by offering many examples of media that caused the change.

• Politics

Political leaders in the electronic age can survive without a vision, but they can not make it without the charisma.

• Education

McLuhan considered a prime example of the education establishment. McLuhan argued that the children now know that going to school is an interruption to his education. Because the teacher is still considered the video an audiovisual aid instead of the main tools of learning.

• Sex and drugs

McLuhan thought that the sexual revolution that began in the 1960s, the inevitable consequences. He also felt the same about drugs. He respects the use of marijuana, cocaine, and LSD in an effort to achieve empathy with the electronic environment offers all at once, the total involvement of all senses.

A new era of digital-An techno poly?

According to Postman, the use of cultural tools do not allow the equipment to impose his belief system and values. But Postman believes we become techno poly call for a culture that thinks the world monopolize using technology. In techno poly, attack tools are the basis of culture and bids for take over.






Reference technological determinism:

Griffin, EM. 2003. A First Look At Communication Theory. Singapore : MCGraw-Hill Book Co.