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Doug Brent's McLuhan Web

 The catastrophic changes outlined here create a numbness which protects our nervous system but also prevents our understanding media, and perhaps controlling its effects.
Age:
Tribal Age
Mechanical Age
Electrical Age
Technologies:
 Interpersonal Speech  
Story-telling; seminar  		Phonetic Alphabet 
Lecture  Light Media: 
Wheel,Paper		 Radio
Coolness/Hotness:
Cool
Hot             Hotter
Cool
Social Characteristics:
 Participatory 
Integrating 
Tribal 
Decentralized 
Mythic		 Individualistic 
Fragmented 
National 
Centralized 
Specialist		 Participatory  
Integrating  
Retribalized 
Decentralized 
Mythic 
"Global Village"
Boundaries
Break
 Boundary               Break Boundary

Notes:

This web is not intended to be a thorough exploration of McLuhan.  (Could such even be possible?)  It is intended to support Communications Studies 380 by offering a diagrammatic reading of some of the key concepts in Understanding Media Chapters 1, 2, 3 & 10, especially Mcluhan's ideas on media nad history.  It is no substitute for a thorough reading, re-reading and re-re-reading of those chapters.

See the synopsis of the first lecture for more on transformation theory and pattern watching.

Within the cells I have tried to indicate that some media are hotter or cooler than others by placing them further to the right as they heat up and approach the transitional boundary.  There is no particular significance to the arrangement top-to-bottom.