It Speaks And Yet Says Nothing.

This weeks readings delved into the world of ‘communication’ in the words broadest sense. While Levy and McLuan discussed vastly different topics, from infections ipod culture to theoretical musings of message channels, both shared the themes of communication and perception.

Levy’s fear of having your musical diary scrutinized was something I could relate to as, like he states, Playlist is essentially character (Levey 2006, 29). The need for public validation and ‘one up-manship’(Levey 2006, 23) is foreign to me, yet is inescapable in a culture where competition takes a continuously evolving form. Levy spoke of the culture which has quickly built itself around the Ipod. He exposed a market which thrives on peoples obsession of knowing what others have, the desire to get it for themselves and the compulsive need to broadcast what they have to anyone, by any means possible. I question whether the ‘social connectedness’ (Levy 2006, 34) that David Li speaks of is just another phrase for public gloating? Methods of connection over shared attitudes already exist in many forms, providing the link to new friends Levy speaks of.

McLuhan presented a convoluted and at times arbitrary discussion on various communication channels. He spoke of their ability to alter how we associate with technology and in doing so, suggested how we should consider and validate the worth of new media. He believes 'The message of any medium... is the change...that it introduces into human affairs' (McLuhan 1965, 9). His notions of acceleration and social consequences are also something I found interesting and mirrored within todays obsession with social networking sites.

References

Levy, S. (2006). The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture and Coolness, New York: Simon & Schuster, pp. 21-41.

Lee, J-y. (2009). Contesting the Digital Economy and Culture: Digital Technologies and the Transformation of Popular Music in Korea.Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, volume 10, number 4: 489-506.

McLuhan, M. (1965). 'The Medium is the Message'm in Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw Hill, pp. 7-20.