Marshall Mcluhan
Hot medium and cool medium,
A hot medium is one that extends one single sense in the "high definition". High definition is the state of being well filled with data. Hot media do not leave so much to be filled in or completed by the audience. Hot media are, therefore, low in participation by the audience. Cool media are high in participation or completion by the audience.
Hot medium: Radio, cinema, Photograph, Phonetic alphabet (拼音字母), Paper, Lecture.
Cool Medium: Telephone, TV (is it hotter with HD?), Cartoon, Hieroglyphic or ideogrammic writing (象形文字或表意文字 ), Stone, Seminar, You tube (?)
*The cool medium like hieroglyphic or ideogrammic written characters has very different effects from the hot and explosive medium of the phonetic alphabet. The alphabet, when pushed to a high degree of abstract visual intensity, become typography. *
The medium is the message
Media are extensions of man
"The wheel...is an extension of the foot. The book is an extension of the eye... Clothing, an extension of the skin...Electric circuitry,an extension of the central nervous system". Whatever predominates media will influence human beings by affecting the way they perceive the world.
New media alter the ratios of our sense perceptions, changing the way we perceive the world.
A new medium is never an addition to an old one, nor does it leave the old one in peace.
With print the eye speed up, and the voice quieted down.
