The immediacy is the message
January 18, 2008
Marshall McLuhan famously coined the saying “the medium is the message.” The difference today is that media are truly immediate. Therefore, in 2008, the immediacy is the message.
Perhaps I’ll write more on this later, but for the time being, I SAID IT. Let the Googlebot sweep my blog and archive it for the world, for all time.
Entry Filed under: Communications, McLuhan, cultural studies, media, pop culture, web 2.0. .
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1.
Rain Watcher | March 15, 2008 at 8:41 am
Are you referring to the fact that we have now become an “instant gratification” society, mainly I am guessing, due to the media?
2.
Puck | March 15, 2008 at 10:53 am
There’s the instant gratification aspect, no doubt, but I like to take this further into considerations of psychosocial implications. I view the psychological/psychosocial immediacy of media to have been conceived only once the temporal immediacy of the Internet was paired with the physical, in-your-pocket immediacy of portable wireless devices. It’s merely knowing that we (the privileged) can access anything, anytime, and from anywhere, that has changed us. Sure, it’s great to know that walking down the street you can message your friends on Facebook (”to Facebook” is entering common usage, just as “to Google” has). On a more significant scale, however, we know that if something goes down somewhere in the world, someone is there recording it with a cell phone camera, and the grainy, shaky video will be uploaded to YouTube (and snagged by media outlets) in no time. And I’m sure governments, especially the oppressive ones, are aware of this. There is a message, therefore, in this immediacy, and it can be used as a powerful agent for political change.
3.
More on media immediacy &&hellip | March 23, 2008 at 9:07 pm
[...] 23, 2008 The comment on my January post on media immediacy (in which I rather cheekily lay claim to the phrase “the immediacy is the message”), [...]
4.
Media immediacy « P&hellip | March 24, 2008 at 2:12 pm
[...] 23, 2008 The comment on my January post on media immediacy (in which I rather cheekily lay claim to the phrase “the immediacy is the message”), [...]
5.
BossyBoots | May 14, 2008 at 5:24 pm
“Let the Googlebot sweep my blog and archive it for the world, for all time.”
Is that like: “stamped it, no erasies”?