These two quotes point out that the medium in which the message comes from encompasses more than what we simply see it as. By this, I mean the tools we use in our everyday lives are more than just what their initial purpose was for. Let us take a smart phone for example, the name itself, phone, indicates that the device is supposed to be used just for making calls. Smart phones, however, have several more functions than just making calls and are sometimes used for almost everything, but phone calls. I started reflecting on what I personally use my phone for and realized that I use it for texting, browsing the internet, taking pictures, going on social media, playing games and as a calculator but not very often for calling. Essentially, what was meant to be just a phone encompasses the functions of several devices into one.
The creation of the smart phone arrived out of a need to have more convenient tools for a faster, more effective job. I realized that the necessity of having more tools at our hands changed a cell phone into being used in a variety of ways. In this case, the medium is the smart phone and the message is all the functions which we use our smart phones for as a society in our daily lives. The medium from which we get the messages (functions) ends up reshaping the message within it. In this way, we are affected by the message to reshape the medium which, in turn, influences us to want to advance the technology, creating a cycle. |