McLuhan suggests that any new technology we embrace creates an extension of ourselves that affects our sense of scale, which in turn creates new personal and social consequences. This assertion is not too far off from Ong’s ideas regarding the deep influence of literacy on contemporary culture.

McLuhan’s distinction between hot and cool media, particularly his description of hot media as extending “one single sense in ‘high definition’,” connects to some of the material we’ve been reading lately in Physical Computing. We’ve been talking a lot about how focus works (based on Bandwidth of Consciousness), and several of our readings have encouraged us to pay close attention to the ways we use our individual senses. I’ve had a hard time reconciling the ‘high definition’ aspect of hot media with the idea that it necessarily affords less interaction than cool media. Some of his assignations of hot and cool seem almost arbitrary.