media abc
english 283

The medium is the message.--Marshall McLuhan, sage of Toronto
The medium is the massage.--McLuhan, a few minutes later, as Oracle of the Electric Age

spring 2006

media abc

The medium is definitely not the message.--Bruce R. Smith, scholastically, The Acoustic World of Early Modern English

spring 2006

The message is the message.--Northrop Frye, sage of Toronto, impatiently, in his private notebooks

morris eaves

media abc
spring 2006
morris eaves
guidelines
syllabus

It helps to know first what media abc is not. It is not a traditional “media studies” course; it does not focus on modern mass media or the politics of media. Instead, Media ABC is an introduction to the very idea of medium and media--as in, for example, “the medium of photography" and "contemporary media." The goal is to come to a basic understanding of that concept. The perspective of the course is broadly historical and comparative. The guiding assumptions are four:

--that media of communication are not peculiar to the modern world

--that the “form” of communication—the human voice, the engraving, the telegram, the TV, the digital file--shapes its "content" --words, pictures, sounds, etc.

--and that the unique characteristics of any one medium are made more visible by comparison with the characteristics of other media

--media never stand alone; they participate in systems of communication

There have always been media, and there must be media, because life simply cannot be lived without them.

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3.25-4.40p
Lattimore 210
CRN 67073. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication

department of english, university of rochester