To Extend or Not to Extend…
Concepts: artifacts, human extensions, organ extensions, wild body, first nature, second nature, language, etymology, social media, adaptation, surfing, drowning, diving, digital, analog
Summary: In this week’s readings we encounter McLuhan’s work on the laws of media tetrads. We also get three very useful and interesting on the development of digital culture and how it effects culture at large or is informed and shaped by culture more broadly. In McLuhan’s readings we encounter the notion of the first nature (wild body) and second nature (extensions). First nature to illustrate human limitations to our physical bodies capability. Second nature to expose the way technological development is an extension of the human body and aims to have us surpass by any means those limitations. McLuhan interestingly provides this notion to help explain how the origin of technology and our relationship to it has an etymological point to which many are unaware. Further, McLuhan allows us to become aware of the ontological force of these extensions by using the concept of tetrads. Moving over to the articles by Walker, Sorgats, and Buffer outline the way digital culture is influenced by culture at large and more specifically the articles by Sorgats and Buffer allow us to get a firmer sense of the history of both media in phases and a timeline of social media. However, the article by Walker allows us to examine how going back to our wildbody’s limitation is not a sort of luxury it was previously not. Thus, exposing that no media dies but its relationship to culture changes.
Quotations:
“All human artefacts are extensions of man, outerings and utterings, of the human body or psyche, private or corporate.” (McLuhan, 116)
“Aristotle first noted that the Greek invention of nature was made possible when they had left behind a savage or barbaric state (first nature) by putting on an individualized and civilized on (second nature). A.T.W Simeons has discussed how disruptive the second nature has been to the first.” (McLuhan, 116)
“Language always preserves a play or figure / ground relation between experience, and perception and its replay in expression.” (McLuhan, 116)
Question
If our wild body is being extended at what point are we over extending our capabilities? Think about the dystopia society view where in a plot twist technology rears its ugly heads and the obsolescence occurs on the first nature. What if we code our ways into extinction? Is this possible? Is this dystopian view meant to teach us something about returning to our first nature/wild body? What is the purpose of so many dystopian narratives in the context of this conversation about extensions of the body?
