Assignment #1: Here we go

In reading McLuhan's article I almost had to laugh. If my parents were sitting behind me watching me do homework they would loudly be debating the fact that their daughter is reading the information for class online from a wireless connection in her apartment and blogging her response (such a foreign concept for them) instead of sitting with a text book and a pencil. I almost find it amusing myself. They used to stand in line for hours to register for classes only to find that it was full while I sit at my computer instantly finding out if that political science class I need to graduate is not only available but on what campus and at what time. It amazes me that I am a part of such a new generation. One that is quickening the communication process from snail mail to email to instant messaging. Anything that we need to find out or buy or learn or change is all at our finger tips with the help of an Internet connection and a computer.
The part I found the most interesting about McLuhan's article was the idea of speed. At one point, trains were the fastest way to travel but with the invention of the airplane my commute home to Minneapolis was cut from nine hours to one. It seems to me that these inventions are not only quickening most processes but also severely limiting human contact. I was talking to my roommate the other day about when we were in grade school. Our parents usually didn't know where we were, our friends would call around to different houses until they found who they were looking for and when we were picked up by friends at our house they had to come knock on our front door. Now with cell phones everyone always knows where you are (and if you don't answer it, you must be dead) and neither of us could remember the last time we knocked on the door of our friends parents' houses, or any house for that matter, to say hello and hurry up. We realized that because of that, most of us didn't even know the names of our friends parents or roommates. In one sense, we are closing the extensions of people but at the same time broadening them. We are not "reinventing the wheel" just altering it to the point that at some point, it may not be recognizable anymore.
The idea of "hot and cold mediums" is an interesting one although I find it somewhat difficult to thoroughly grasp. Hot mediums are ones of high definition but low interaction; a concept that seems to be more popular these days resonating with the idea of exclusion. I found the idea of the Australian natives the most interesting; when everyone was given the ax it not only reduced the idea of manhood but also made daily tasks either. It boils down to the idea of the tool verse the machine; tools create beautiful handmade objects that are one of a kind while machines make the same thing in mass quantities that are sold at Target. While the first is an individual craft and responsibility (much like the men's tasks with the ax), the other provides for necessity. The cold medium seems to be the tool and the hot the machine.
As I finish this assignment, I will spell-check instead of getting out the dictionary and understand the media is the message but sometimes I do miss the good old days: birthday cards in the mail, no cell phone and dvds instead of tapes. But then I think again.