Blogs

What I find fascinating in McLuhan theories is the discourse strictly related to the nature and development of medium. He says something that might sound pretty obvious after having heard it, yet in most of cases this thing passes unnoticed: ‘the new medium always presents old functions’, see for instance the typewriter and the keyboard, different interface but same function.

Title: Dandella
Contents: Hand-held robotic GPS companion
Producers: Tan Yong Kai / Priscilla Lui Sik Peng
Implementability of proposal: Lost is a common global issue, especially for socially vulnerable people like young children and elderly in today's growing urban jungles.

Notes on the first class:

disembodied media - telephone/radio/tv - depersonalization
what gets old first, you or your computer? Seduction as part of the game.

the ground is never noticed - the conceptual function attached to a certain object beyond it's obvious function. the media

In 1962 the author Arthur C. Clarke proposed the following three "laws" (MA students might like to bear this in mind):

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

A while ago I wrote about how updating my ipod (4g clickwheel) to itunes 7 had killed my ipod (itunes killed my ipod!), falling victim to the sad ipod symbol which has become all too common occurrence for ipod users worldwide. If your ipod is out of warranty there is not a lot that can be done about it, unless you want to spend £166.29 having it repaired (quoted from apple site) or ebay-ing it for its spare parts (or taking a hammer and smashing it to pieces!)…or so I thought…

…such drastic action is probably not necessary. There is every chance you may be able to fix it, as I did, by taking some some rather bizarre actions….