Background information: It’s the year 2015.Marshal McLuhan, Stuart Hall, and Donna Haraway are the only people in an elevator. They know each other, but are not exactly friends. As they are descending, the elevator suddenly stops working and gets stuck. The time starts to pass and a conversation between them starts to ensue.
McLuhan: ...It’s ironic really. The elevator: invented and designed to assist handicapped people, and make travelling between floors more efficient. Instead here we are: stuck in between the 7th and 8th floors, and if we wisely took the stairs we would have already been at our destination.
Hall: Is this another rant about “technological determinism”, and how “the medium is the message” (McLuhan qtd. in Warwick, 1)?
McLuhan: …show more content…
But this ideology is as dangerous as driving while only looking in the rear-view mirror, instead of looking straight at what’s ahead of you (Warwick 2). Look at Instagram for example. It retrieves the nostalgic feeling of Polaroid cameras.
Hall: Okay. But that’s just your interpretation of the world. At least with the mass communication model the results make sense and are one of: Dominant, Negotiated, or Oppositional.(Chandler 2). Like my oppositional view of technological determinism (Bal, Warwick ).
Haraway: These media theories should not be looked at as a plateau of “X” or “Y”, but rather with a depth of “Z” (Clark 2014). With this approach we do not have to look at things through one set of lens. “Z” is the cyborg, and we are cyborgs. Our DNA is reduced to the same code fragments that is in our technology (Haraway qtd. in Ross, Penley 12).
McLuhan: Once again, we shouldn’t be looked at as the technology. But rather media extending our beings. It may seem science-fictional, but in this day and age, there’s nothing ludicrous about computers being able to carefully orchestrate programing of the sensory life of whole populations. As Ms. Haraway highlighted: cybernetics are on the rise (McLuhan qtd. in Rogwat
McLuhan: ...It’s ironic really. The elevator: invented and designed to assist handicapped people, and make travelling between floors more efficient. Instead here we are: stuck in between the 7th and 8th floors, and if we wisely took the stairs we would have already been at our destination.
Hall: Is this another rant about “technological determinism”, and how “the medium is the message” (McLuhan qtd. in Warwick, 1)?
McLuhan: …show more content…
But this ideology is as dangerous as driving while only looking in the rear-view mirror, instead of looking straight at what’s ahead of you (Warwick 2). Look at Instagram for example. It retrieves the nostalgic feeling of Polaroid cameras.
Hall: Okay. But that’s just your interpretation of the world. At least with the mass communication model the results make sense and are one of: Dominant, Negotiated, or Oppositional.(Chandler 2). Like my oppositional view of technological determinism (Bal, Warwick ).
Haraway: These media theories should not be looked at as a plateau of “X” or “Y”, but rather with a depth of “Z” (Clark 2014). With this approach we do not have to look at things through one set of lens. “Z” is the cyborg, and we are cyborgs. Our DNA is reduced to the same code fragments that is in our technology (Haraway qtd. in Ross, Penley 12).
McLuhan: Once again, we shouldn’t be looked at as the technology. But rather media extending our beings. It may seem science-fictional, but in this day and age, there’s nothing ludicrous about computers being able to carefully orchestrate programing of the sensory life of whole populations. As Ms. Haraway highlighted: cybernetics are on the rise (McLuhan qtd. in Rogwat