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| Marshall McLuhan |
When watching Marshall McLuhan Speaks film collection and
looking through his different interview excerpts, your mind opens up. Before really diving into technological
mythology, I viewed technology as just something we see, for example
cellphones. I think people of my
generation can agree with me on this, is that we divide media and technology as
two separate entities. When in fact,
they are one in the same. Now what I
found compelling is that we have “hot” and “cold” media. Hot is classified as movies and newspapers,
when cold is classified as the news and when it is cold it means it evolves and
develops. I believe that is true and I
think others will agree. Films have a tendency
of just being in your face and you can guess what is coming next, it gets to
the meat of things, the same goes for newspapers because it speaks in a
different language, more APA style writing.
With the television news, you do not know what exactly is happening. You have to sit and watch and wait. However, in our day-in-age, not many people
have time to sit and watch the news. I
believe that is why many people like myself, would rather just have excerpts
sent to us and just get to the point. We
crave that “hot” media.
An example of McLuhan’s hot and cold media concept is the
film, Zero Dark Thirty. This film embodies the media, yet captures
viewers by the intensity it had. It
includes the news and people knew the end result of what was going to happen at
the end of the film because it was based on a true story, but the in between
pieces that were not emphasized on is what keeps you at the edge of your
seat. Now were the in between pieces in
the news and my generation and I did not see them? Quite possibly, yes. However is it Hollywood that made it enticing
for us to go out and see it, absolutely, which makes it a mix of hot and cold
media. McLuhan preaches, “The media is
the message” and it is true! Media is
the message in many ways. It feeds our
minds, it alerts us when things occur, it connects us as a country and even the
world. Not just by the materialistic
aspects of technology, but by us as human beings. 
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