From Technology to Medium and Medium Is the Message (Essay Sample)

READING RESPONSE
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Reading Response
“Medium Is the Message” and “Video: From Technology to Medium”
Technology in the modern world is pivotal in influencing the various human societal spheres, including social interaction and associations, modulation and restructuring of integral work systems as well as a conventional adjustment to the perpetual contemporary transformation. The peculiar element of technology is that it is a medium, and this essentially makes it an entity that uniquely articulates diverse functions and their respective repercussions. In other words, the outcomes and the idiosyncrasies of technology are attributed to the specific shift from technology to medium.
Technology is a medium, which, when applied in addressing the various domains of human functions, conveys particular messages to the various realms of social organization. While appreciating that any medium is the content of another medium, it is mentioned that the change of pattern, pace and scale customarily introduced into human affairs is the message of technology or more specifically of the medium (McCluhan 1964, 1-8). This is to say that technology is a medium containing substantial message, which is transmitted humanity through the daily interaction between humans and technology.
The notion that the content of one form of medium is another medium is recognized from the fact that the broad medium called technology is the foundation upon which all other media available for fulfilling the various human quests are designed and founded. Videos, encoders and decoders, digitalised computes systems and even signal processors and transmitters are all digital and analogue media emanating notable development technology to medium (Spielmann 2006, 56-66). It is therefore clear from this perspective that one medium is the bearer of another medium in terms of content, just as the broader medium (technology) bears other media in itself.
“Control and Freedom” and “Naked in the 'Nonopticon'”
Freedom and privacy are two concepts with an ideological cohesive correlation, and they equally feature when it comes to matters of surveillance and control in the current digital world. The modern world is continually advancing in technology coupled with ever increasing digitization of almost everything, thus requiring promptness in controlling the high-tech developments in a manner that assists in curbing vices associated with this. Effectiveness in the area of mass surveillance is achieved if the task begins with the control of freedom and privacy.
The control of the freedom of using network providing facilities and internet media systems contributes significantly to the curbing of all cyberspace-related vulnerabilities and depravities. The internet and other cyberspace facilities enable freedom that emanates from user susceptibilities due to the fact that the users fail to exercise some considerable control over their actions (Chun 1969, 3). This is a clear indication that successful surveillance in relation to the internet usually commences with sufficiency in the freedom of exercising self-control within the network subscribers. This then spreads to the control of other domains of freedom, including the freedom to own the systems and the liberty to legitimate reproductions among others.
Concerning privacy, considerable self-control is essential in precluding privacy infringements, th...