july

“The medium is the message” - I think about this Marshall McLuhan quote

When a new technology offers new ways to distribute content - we first often take what we know map it directly to it

E.g. the TV was first introduced - TV show a picture of a radio playing radio

It takes time to understand the medium

creating and destroying; flying cars, roc.camera, july.rocks

Ofc this quote is fairly famous - but what is often missed is - innovation in content distribution technologies offer new ways of distributing content - is what people think this is about 

What I think it’s really about is that people don’t really know the weirdness of the new medium when they encounter it

This hidden aspect of the medium becoming the message - the unanticipated consequences of any technology really is the key driver - and we become the new world that we start to use

If you really think about it, every time we take on new content distribution channels - we become inherently more different and more weird

When this new innovation in content distribution arrives, we often think we have a grasp on how to use the it - or at least the obvious ways to use the technology are obvious. 

What’s not obvious are often the real and substantial ways to really use the technology- it hides secrets that only become evident over time

I think this is what’s interesting about it, of course we can anticipate most of the weirdness upfront. 

But a substantial amount of weirdness – only comes into existence as we become farcaster through our use