Conceptual developments in the digital environment

How much do media matter?

Media Determinism-----Social Shaping-----Social Determinism

1. Medium Effects
The Medium is the Message (McLuhan): Technological environment is the Key. Media content is not very important, in fact, it is not much more than a distraction from that which really matters: The technological infrastructure (and its potentials) and the change in sense ratios thereby produced.
Jim Andrews on McLuhan
Regent University on McLuhan

*Scientists Create Biomolecular Computing Device with Bacterial Phenotype Output

Mediums Shape the Message (Postman): Mediums transform content. Not every message is translatable across mediums. Contemporary mass media tend to trivialize content: "Success" in the current media is advertiser/ratings driven so relies on entertainment value.
Postman on Technology
Other Postman Links

*Function Follows Form

The Medium Embodies the Message (Negroponte): Mediums give life, form, substance to messages. Messages are made of/by mediums. Opposing medium with message is an error as, in the new digital media, both medium and message are constituted by the same things: Code, networks,
Negroponte on digital emergence

*The machine is using us

Study Question

Identify a specific new media event. Briefly describe it. What would each of the three approaches to the concept "say" about the event? Which seems a more accurate approach for that example?

Read more about it:
Marshall McLuhan (esp. Understanding Media)
Neal Postman (Amusing ourselves to death)
Nicholas Negroponte (Being Digital)