Blog #2

Hi everyone! This past week it has been interesting to get into the McLuhan readings, to learn about his educational past, his work and how it continues to hold an impact on communication studies. In the introduction to Essential McLuhan, the familiarity of the mentioned ‘global village’ and ‘medium over the message’, acted as a refresher as well as his key values revolving around media and how underlying social structure and meaning are seemingly concealed by its processes. Additionally, in the “Letter to Harold Adams Innis,” the concept of ‘collective consciousness’ was brought up. My attention was drawn to this because we have been discussing this in both my Internet Studies and Advertising Studies class in the way that media encourages and anticipates a shared understanding of certain societal norms by a wide range of people. McLuhan says “the whole tendency of modern communication…is towards participation in a process, rather than apprehension of concepts” (73), which I think speaks on our ability to examine the meaning of something past a surface level if we only want to be a part of it rather than understanding its qualities and associated values. Overall, I look forward to going over more parts of the book and making more connections, thanks all!

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