McLuhan's article The Medium is the Message is almost eerily more relevant today than it was when he wrote it in the sixties. He argued that the way in which a message is sent affects the way it is perceived. In an age where texting, blogging (coughthiswebsitecough), instant messaging, social networking, etc. are prevalent, this has never been more evident.
Let's use texting as an example. How many times do we send/receive a message with smilies? Why the smiley? Let's say I sent a text that said "Loser". This could be perceived in a negative way, since text cannot express emotions/sarcasm/feeling. If I ad a :P or :) after Loser, it would convey to the receiver that I was joking and didn't really mean it.
Another example in which the medium is important in how the message is perceived would be something I heard about: breaking up with someone via text. How might the person receiving the break up text think of the one who sent it? That they don't care enough?
These are all examples of how the medium is changing the way we send/receive messages and it's interesting to think that such an idea was conceived over forty years ago.
~JV
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I think one of the most interesting things that came up last week was the idea of texting not just changing language and how we talk, but how we manipulate time thru communication. The idea of the never-ending text conversation, for example. I, too, after resistance have begun using emoticons as I seem to have a way of not communicating my sense of humor, often.
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