This weeks main concept of the 'Machinic Ecology' highlighted the importance of media and technology not only in modern society, but throughout most if not all of human history; that the human way of life now basically only involves technology and the various techniques we use to access and operate them. Through all this, two major opposing theories have emerged, with opinion swaying between Mcluhan's "the medium is the message" (technical determinism) and the more current postulation that includes the complex interplay of factors associated with cultural change (cultural materialist) focusing on a number of issues technical determinism seems to have dismissed as petty distractions.
While there a number of perfectly valid and rational assertions by those of the cultural materialist view, I personally agree with Mcluhan's view that the "message is the medium" as it creates a relatively simplistic yet rational view of a complex situation perhaps over-complicated by cultural materialists. The obvious example in supporting this is the televised era where it seemed that the T.V. was the centre of every household, with popular televised shows dictating conversation throughout society. It became habit and routine where even content faded and the act of watching t.v. was done for the sole purpose of having watched t.v. Even today parallel's can be found while looking at the countless hours spent by people of all ages (myself included) trawling through the internet just as a form of procrastination. Technology has even become part of the language we speak (which in itself can be seen as a technology), with words like "facebooked", "Wiki'd", and "googled" becoming commonplace in conversations, even substituting as a form of legitimacy with having "googled" something bringing considerable backing to its truth.
A number of other points also interested me, including Jeffries (the guardian article) example of the lightbulb which doesn't have content yet its technology allwoed us to 'colonise the dark'. McLuhan further wrote "A light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence." I found this had distinct parallels to the "invention" or discovery of the fire by cavemen, who, with this new technology, were opened to an entirely new world inaccessible beforehand. This further links to Plato's Cave which utilizes the properties of the fire to reveal the new world which was discovered, and quite similar to the techinical determinist view, seems to have dictated how the people who existed then, as well as us today, existed in our technologically ordained way of life.
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