![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Jul. 11th, 2009
Canada's--Toronto's--biggest media theorist ever, Marshall McLuhan, distinguished between hot and cold media.
(Yelle's remix is much better than the original.)
Hot versus cold, passionnate or disengaged, participatory or distanced: All these qualities matter.
The medium is the message, after all. This difference might not last, but I think it works now, at least.
Me, I'm very strongly biased towards hot media. Written language, images of all kinds, radio, most definitely the book and the Internet: These are all media that I actively embrace and make use of, as readers of this blog certainly know. They're static, they require constant engagement, constant storage, constant interpretation. Cold media? I don't own a television, I most frequently go to movies not so much on their own terms as to be with other viewers--although I do like many!--, and I discontinued my cell phone account in February 2007.
And you?
(Yelle's remix is much better than the original.)
Hot versus cold, passionnate or disengaged, participatory or distanced: All these qualities matter.
The hot media are those, which have a large influence on humans and its sensous perception. According to McLuhan these media even possess a "destructive strength" (for example "stone axes" see the point "the medium is the message"). The pioneer of the media ranks the writing, the phonetic alphabet, the book, the photography and also the radio among this kind of medium. These objects of communication place much data and detailed informations at the users disposal, which are mainly concentrate on one sense of the recipient.
It is affected by this, but remains rather passive in the behavior. The cold media have a small influence strength on humans. The reason for this is, that they offer little details and information, and are not optically delightful for humans. To use and understand these media humans must actively deal with these media. McLuhan calls the televi-sion, the telephone or the caricature as example for it. Finally we mention the fact that a medium is not only hot or cold, but must be regarded always standing in a relationship to another medium.
The medium is the message, after all. This difference might not last, but I think it works now, at least.
Me, I'm very strongly biased towards hot media. Written language, images of all kinds, radio, most definitely the book and the Internet: These are all media that I actively embrace and make use of, as readers of this blog certainly know. They're static, they require constant engagement, constant storage, constant interpretation. Cold media? I don't own a television, I most frequently go to movies not so much on their own terms as to be with other viewers--although I do like many!--, and I discontinued my cell phone account in February 2007.
And you?