A Much Needed Massage

After trying to wade through Baudrillard, I welcome anything for my next blog post. I was assigned to read the book, The Medium is the Massage for class. Ironically named, a massage was exactly what I needed after that deep discussion on what's real and what's not real at the same time.

After reading and viewing all the unique writing and pictures in Marshall McLuhans book, I sorted through it all and selected a quote that hit me and I thought I could elaborate on and write about on here.

In relation to the Digital Media class I'm enrolled in, I chose a quote in McLuhan's book that related closely to today's digital media and media in general. The quote is:

"In the name of 'progress,' our official culture is striving to force the new media to do the work of the old."

We discussed this notion a bit in class. New media today is indeed doing the job of the old media. For example, old photographs and modern day scanning. Today, there are digital archives being made by scanning old photographs into computers in order to store and organize them better. 

This is considered progress because all the old photographs are being archived into a computer so they can not only be found easier, but they can be shared online and it even saves physical space. It is a lot of work, I know this because I've scanned old pictures  before for sake of sharing and storing important pictures. I made progress with my family's personal pictures, or old media, by doing the work with the new media, my scanner and computer.

This relationship is important. It's a form of insurance as well, both for scanning old photographs specifically and for old media in general. I'd say that's progress.