topic 6 - critical reflection 1 (Part 1)

Taken from the WEEK 9 lecture notes.

Marshall McLuhan - the tetrad

Marshall McLuhan summarized his ideas about

media in a concise tetrad of media effects.

The tetrad is a means of examining the effects

on society of any technology/mdium and

explaining the social processes underlying the

adoption of a technology/medium by dividing

its effects into four categories.

Extract from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

McLuhan developed a basis for his thought around what he termed the

tetrad. The tetrad allowed McLuhan to apply four laws, framed as

questions, to a wide spectrum of mankind's endeavors, and thereby give

us a new tool for looking at our culture.

•The first of these questions or laws is

"What does it (the medium or technology) extend?"

In the case of a car it would be the foot, in the case a phone it would be the voice.

•The second question is

"What does it make obsolete?"

Again, one might answer that the car makes walking obsolete, and the phone makes smoke signals and carrier pigeons unnecessary.

•The third question asks,

"What is retrieved?"

The sense of adventure or quest is retrieved with the car, and the sense of community returns with the spread of telephone service. One might consider the rise of the cross-country vacation that accompanied the spread of automobile ownership.

•The fourth question asks,

"What does the technology reverse into if it is over extended?"

An over-extended automobile culture longs for the pedestrian lifestyle, and the over-extension of phone culture engenders a need for solitude.

the tetrad.

•An Example of McLuhan’s Technological determinism

•With the radio and television we have simultaneous access to events on the entire planet. However, television culture diminishes, or amputates, many of the close ties of family life based on oral communication. The simple act of turning on a television can reduce a room of people to silence.