讀書果陣寫過好多文章，都係為左交功課同考試，而且果陣能力唔高，好多都寫到好表面，同埋用詞簡淺，早幾日比我係櫃底搵到，我決定打上黎分享下~~
第四篇繼續係來我讀ASSO果陣應用社會科學入面既<Science, Technology and Society>
題目係: In social sciences, Marshall McLuhan and Thomas Friedman are two scholars who have been identified as technological determinists. Explain the ideas of technological determinism, illustrate the ideas with what either McLuhan or Friedman proposed, and critically examine position.
Technologies are developing very fast since last century, so people begin to study the effects for human livings and society by technologies. One theory of the study is technological determinism, which means technologies developed for human’s wants and the technologies would affect human behavior directly and cause the social change indirectly. Marshall McLuhan is a technological determinist and he has his own theory to analyze the effects from technologies.
First, McLuhan thought ‘the medium is the message’. Since technologies developed, there are many different medium, for instance, newspapers, televisions, telephones, etc. all of them are used to enlarge the abilities of human which are receiving and sending message over space time (Chan Xin Zhou, p.8). Because of that reason, people usually think the medium is just a tool to transport the message. But, McLuhan reminded people about the role and effects of the medium on society (p.11). For example, people sent message by writing letters, the letters were the medium, people always want esthetic handwriting, after the technology developed, and people use computers to send message, computers replace letters to become the medium, people would care more about the skills of input method. Thus, McLuhan thought people usually care about content but ignore the significance of the medium.
Second, McLuhan compared medium by categorize them into two groups which are hot medium and cool medium. Hot medium means that the medium is much and high definition of content, but imagination and social participation are low, like lecture. Conversely, cool medium like life experience is totally different with hot medium (Chan Xin Zhou, p.8). Moreover, people can only compare between some similar kinds of medium, like photo and cartoon. Nevertheless, some categorizations of medium may not follow the improvement of technology (p.12), for example, radio was hot medium, but people can phone to radio during the program on-air now, so, radio would be high participation, and people cannot class it into hot or cool medium. Overall, some categorizations of medium are not making sense, and it is different to group them into two categories only because technology developed.
Third, McLuhan though that all medium happen with four processes. In McLuhan’s theory, all medium would become enhancement, obsolescence, retrieve and reverse. ‘Enhancement’ means that new medium must improve something; ‘Obsolescence’ means new medium would replace old one, ‘Reverse’ means new medium will have opposite original effects if they are overused (Chan Xin Zhou, p.10). For example, radio enhances the disseminative range of spoken and obsolesces written words, it also retrieves oral skill and radio would blend with image when radio became extremity. At the same time, some medium are not completely obsolesced by new one (p.11). For example, television obsolesce radio according to tetrad of medium, in fact, radio also affect society during ‘television era’ (Yu Yang Zhou, 2004, para. 18). Therefore, tetrad of medium shows the process of medium, also he did not ignore the probability of coexistence of new and old medium.
Fourth, medium would affect human life but people can decrease the effects. Since McLuhan is a technological determinist, he believes that technologies develops based on the wants from people, at the same time, the new one would affect human. Medium is a kind of technologies, which means that medium develops caused by people want to improve the transport technologies. Also, the new one must be more useful or more convenient for people to transport information; people would choose the better one rationally, so their habit of taking or digital divide, some people may conservative or may not know how to use new medium, like internet, they would use old medium to transport information (Lee Xin Han, 2007, para. 14). Therefore, the effects of medium would decrease because of conservative mind or digital divide.
In conclusion, Marshall McLuhan is a technological determinist. His theory reminded people about the significance of medium on society although there are some defects on his theory. Also, he thought that new medium must affect human life, but old medium has their value to exist, which means new medium may not affect some people.
Reference:
- 陳信州, 李冠儀, 葉宗勳. 媒介與訊息傳遞: M. McLuhan 理論介紹.
- 余陽洲. 2004. 多重觀點下的大眾傳播媒體. 瀏覽日期: 10-04-2009, from http://www.tvcr.org.tw/life/media/media31.htm
- 李信漢, 杜綺文. 2007. 新聞學研究:web 2.0, 麥克魯漢知多少?. 瀏覽日期: 20-04-2009, from http://www.jour.nccu.edu.tw/mcr/0092/06.html
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