Marshall McLuhan Assignment 1

As I was reading McLuhan's "The Medium is the message", the phrase at the very beginning that states, " This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium- that is, of any extension of ourselves- result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by new technology" (page 203). In essence, any form of technology now, as advanced as it is, has become an extension of ourselves. I do not know how many times I have seen people glued to their phones, or social networking sites, or laptops, etc, instead of actual human interaction. This phrase denotes that now we need these things to almost feel as though we exist. Making sure that our presence is felt somehow through these technologies. When McLuhan however states, " The serious artist is the only person able to encounter technology with impurity just because he is an expert aware of the changes in sense perception" (page 208), I do not know how I feel about it because even with the rise of technology, I feel that artists are being able to find different ways to improve their art form, or even derive inspiration from it.