We have all finished Understanding Media now and will explore together once more. This we will use Lawrence’s audio summary and his questions as our guide. There should be a lot of discussion, so make sure the microphone of your computer is working. Go here if you think you need help with Adobe Connect.
See you there!
P.S. Can somebody please remind me at the beginning of the session to press the record button? Thanks!
This week Terry Gordon will give a guest lecture about McLuhan. There should be a lot of discussion (don’t forget to look at Will Monroe’s questions), so make sure the microphone of your computer is working. Go here if you think you need help with Adobe Connect.
See you there!
P.S. Can somebody please remind me at the beginning of the session to press the record button? Thanks!
This week we will look at the chapters about the typewriter, the telephone, the phonograph and the movies. Dennie and Ñusta have created summaries with questions that we will try and answer together. There should be a lot of discussion, so make sure the microphone of your computer is working. Go here if you think you need help with Adobe Connect.
See you there!
P.S. Can somebody please remind me at the beginning of the session to press the record button? Thanks!
This week we will have a guest: game designer Kars Alfrink from Hubbub. Rhonda Jessen has written a summary and asks us two questions, while I have also asked a few questions about games on the basis of some McLuhan quotes. There should be a lot of discussion, so make sure the microphone of your computer is working. Go here if you think you need help with Adobe Connect.
See you there!
P.S. Can somebody please remind me at the beginning of the session to press the record button? Thanks!
This week we will be reading chapters 23-25 of Understanding Media. Chapter 24 is titled: “Games – The Extensions of Man”. So I have asked Kars Alfrink, founder, partner and principal designer at Hubbub to give a short talk about games and McLuhan and engage with us in a further exploration of the the topic.
Logistics
The conversation will be on Monday, May 6th at 16:00 CET (click here for your own timezone).
We will use Adobe Connect for the session. You can launch Adobe Connect using the following URL:
Hubbub is an international design studio that researches, designs and develops new games and forms of play, to spark social change. They have an incredibly diverse portfolio of game projects that is well worth exploring. Many people in the Netherlands have seen the Playing with Pigs project in the media:
But his other games deserve at least as much attention. Check out the game he designed for the Dutch tax office as a way to engender organization change:
Kars will talk about play and games and how non-institutionalized play is different from institutionalized games. As preparation, it would be good to read a blog post that he wrote after delivering a lecture at the Hide & Seek Weekender last year. It is titled:
We have read chapters 20, 21 and 22, but will likely not have the time to discuss these as we have a special guest: the McLuhan specialist Mark Federman.
See you in a bit!
P.S. Can somebody please remind me at the beginning of the session to press the record button? Thanks!
This week we had a little lull in the discussion around McLuhan’s Understanding Media. I moved the time slot for our weekly call and made it very hard for people to attend. Next week we will be coming back with a vengeance though with a short guest talk by Mark Federman with a good discussion following his talk.
What will Mark talk about?
Mark describes what he will talk about as follows:
What I intend to do is tie together McLuhan’s work from “the medium is the message” through Laws of Media, to demonstrate: (a) how Laws of Media (tetrads) were embedded (although not intentionally) in Understanding Media; (b) how to understand Media Temperature (Hot and Cool) in a way that is useful (which McLuhan himself could not see, which to me illustrates his genius that he created such a useful concept without cognitively or explicitly fully understanding its implications or application); (c) an extension of McLuhan’s work which I call “Media Equivalency” that is invaluable for contemporary analysis.
This would be a mash-up of several seminars I would do in a graduate course called “Applied McLuhanistics” that I used to teach at the McLuhan Program at U of T, plus several places around the world as a visiting professor.
Who is Mark Federman?
Mark Federman
You can read more about Mark at his blog which has a nice split between “The Medium” on the left and “The Messages” on the right. I first learned about Mark through his excellent book McLuhan for Managers: New Tools for New Thinking.
The Logistics
The talk will be on our regular spot: Monday 29th of April at 16:00 CET. Click here for your local timezone. We will use the following Adobe Connect URL:
On Monday, April 22th, at 15:00 CET we will have our next virtual meeting for #UMRG. Click this link to see the meeting in your own timezone. Please note that (for once) this is an hour earlier than our regular time.
We will use Adobe Connect. Click on the following link to join the meeting:
Once again we will discuss the chapters in a “Socratic” manner. It is therefore important that you have a headset and a microphone (or use the built-in functionality of your laptop). Please test your connection and audio first using these instructions. I have not received any summaries (so far), so please bring a few questions about the chapters into the call.
See you Monday!
P.S. Can somebody please remind me at the beginning of the session to press the record button? Thanks!
Once again we will discuss the chapter in a “Socratic” manner using the thoughts and questions of Tatiana and Stephen’s summary as a starting point. It is therefore important that you have a headset and a microphone (or use the built-in functionality of your laptop). Please test your connection and audio first using these instructions.
See you Monday!
P.S. Can somebody please remind me at the beginning of the session to press the record button? Thanks!
Understanding Media 