Author: Murray Wu Lu

I found this reading particularly interesting where title, “The Medium Is the Message” focuses on the idea that the way that we send and receive information is more important that the information itself. I thought this philosophy was true in many ways and often I could see it in my everyday life as well as in the past.

For instance, Nikola Tesla, a brilliant inventor and genius, created the modern alternating current electricity supply system. At the time, the direct current electrical system was more common and marketed by Thomas Edison. However, the direct current system had many problems as it required a power plant every square mile and couldn’t transmit electricity very far. However, Tesla’s alternate current system used thinner wires, had higher voltages, and could transmit electricity over much longer distances. Even though the alternate current system was by far better than the direct current system, Edison electrocuted pets with Tesla’s alternate current electric system in public to convince people that alternate current was to dangerous to use for home use so they would be more convinced to buy from Edison’s product itself. I think this is a perfect example for “the medium is the message” because in this case, although the “information” which was Tesla’s alternate current system, despite how good it was, due to having a bad reputation by others, it failed to be as commercially successful as Edison’s direct current electric system.

Another example that I can see of this is that often in the news media, a really trivial and unimportant event will receive high coverage such as news about certain Hollywood celebrities and updates about their life. However, natural disasters that are affecting thousands of lives in what part of the world or a scientific discovery that could save thousands are often not on the front page of news sources. This is also another case of how “the medium is the message” since although the given information is incredibly important to society as a whole, due to public interests, it is marketed as being insignificant while truly insignificant things are more publicized. Or perhaps I’m being too opinionated in my blog post but I can definitely see examples that portray how “the medium is the message”.

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~mwl323/week1/

In the beginning right when it was assigned to build an About page for your portfolio webpage in HTML, I thought that I wouldn’t be able to do it and I would struggle a lot. But after diving into it, I learned a lot about HTML and found myself to be really enjoying the assignment a lot and also had a lot of fun writing the code. Above is a link to my “About” page that I created using the techniques we learned in class so far.

Throughout “Long Live the Web” by Tim Berners-Lee, Lee differentiates the difference between the web and the internet and discusses how quickly and drastically both have evolved and changed overtime and how it is our responsibility to protect the uses of the internet such as net neutrality for example and how it is incredibly important. He states that despite how old the internet was been, people can still improve upon it without changing the internet itself and provides examples such as how manufacturers can improve household appliances without changing how electricity functions. I think because the internet was built to be this way, is part of the reasons to why it has became a giant global force, and is exactly part of the reason to why it has become an international force that everyone can attribute too. It is easy and versatile to use and for tasks such as doing international trade and business, the internet would be the perfect tool to aid in that.

I then chose to read “The Room Where the Internet Was Born” by Ingrid Burrington. Throughout reading it, I kept thinking about how it felt to be one of the people who invented the ARPANET in a small room, which later became the internet, and how they probably did not expect their creation to have such a world wide influence and change human history forever. It’s also crazy to imagine that the internet hasn’t been around for a long time at all and has changed so much within a short time frame. And while throughout the majority of human history, the internet was never a part of someone’s daily lives but in our generation, it has become a crucial aspect of our everyday life now. 

In “The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster, it talks about how in the future, the surface of planet earth is no longer a sustainable environment for human life to survive. To solve the problem, people lived underground and created “the Machine”, a global and omnipotent device that controls all spiritual and bodily needs that are needed and desired from human. The short story is primarily focused on two main characters, Vashti and her son Kuno, who live on opposite sides of the world. As we learn more about their communications and Kuno’s “outrageous ideas” and how others react to it, the machine slowly deteriorates and breaks down, bringing “civilization” down with it. After the two characters realize that in reality, humanity and it’s connection with the natural world is what really matters and something that is unnatural and technological is bound to have flaws.

When I finished reading this, I realized that in many ways, the ending message was very true. With green energy, power is built from the natural environment such as wind power and solar energy. Although technology is used to the convert the power over, the root of it all is natural, as opposed to burning fossil fuels for energy. It’s also scary to think that as we continue to develop AI, many people speculate that it will get to a point where AI will destroy human civilization, which is a common theme in sci-fi novels and films. However, while reading the short story, it was interesting to me how although the machine was the main controller of the underground people, it had not developed the capability to self repair and required human activity to fix that. Perhaps that could be a tool that is used to enhance AI. That as great as it can be, as long as the AI does not have the ability to self repair, then ideas such as the “end of human civilization” would not be an issue.