Response to lecture 9

"The present is always invisible because it is environmental" (McLuhan, 1969)- the environment around us is invisible, unless cognitive attention is paid, you are not aware of the temperature, or the brightness of the light, it is there but unless specific attention is paid it is invisible from a sensory perspective. McLuhan's quote refers to the media in our environment. We are not aware of the media around us, unless conscious effort it is made to perceive it directly. all media within our perceptual field contributes to our environment, we belong to an ecosystem of the media, just as we belong to an ecosystem of the environment. Your experience of the media is not singular, we do not receive information from one media, we have tv, Internet, social interactions, media is intergretted into our every day lives, into our environment.
To move away from a conceptual ideal of understanding the role of the media in our environment, that the media is an invisible part of our environment, to a working application: the social, historical and technological context of media is always invisible. I think that is the message I have really taken away from this class is that media is part of our environment, and I'm only aware of the context and of the media itself now I hold it in conscious awareness.



*** Essay Update! Up and raring along on the essay front now! I am using second Life as my example and found a bunch of great articles (E.g. Walbot, 2009; Boellstorff, 2008; Varvello et al, 2008)
In my search to see if Reingolds concept of 'virtual community' is useful im comparing and contrasting it with the concept that internet interactions are 'participatory genre'