Thursday, March 9, 2017

World Wide Web, Medium, Message

McLuhan distinguishes a 'hot' medium, such as Radio, from a 'cool' one, such as Television. But, regardless of that distinction, each of those two examples is a passive medium.  In contrast, the World Wide Web is not only active, but interactive.  Now, the ubiquity of the WWW enables participation to be not only simultaneous, but, because transcending all particularities, e. g. race, ethnicity, gender, etc., universal and egalitarian, as well.  In other words, in McLuhan's famous formulation, the ubiquity of the medium is its message of Universality and Equality.  But, those characteristics are also attributes of the content of the WWW. For, the deepest stratum of the contents of that medium, binary code, actualizes Leibniz' concept of a Universal Language, envisioned more than three centuries ago.  So, in the case of this medium, its Language is the message, as well.

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