According to McLuhan’s Laws of Media, every technology (in the broad sense of the word) that we use has precisely four effects on us – to extend, to retrieve, to obsolesce and to reverse. According to Federman and deKerckhove, the retrieves quadrant can be the most revealling. It can provide us with some insight on possible effect of new technologies. Jon Husband makes this observation about what weblogs retrieve:
Much in the same way that email revived the lost art of letter writing, Blogs are reviving the lost art of civilized civic dialogue – of argument, of well reasoned thought and response.
As Federman and deKerckhove state in their book, “McLuhan for Managers“:
For a manager who is considering how the next innovation will affect his or her staff or target market, studying the precedent can be particularly revealing. The RETRIEVES quadrant directly furnishes the lessons and experiences of history.
McLuhan’s laws of media can be used as a lens that can help us to make business and organisational decisions regarding new technologies.
Aha !Don’t know why or how I never caught this link before … I see you’ve read McLuhan for Managers, too.
Good book … I still don’t understand why so little focus on the interconnected interlinked world has made it into management training and development.
I wrote a piece once on The Medium Is The Meaning (a sort-of take of on McLuhan’s thing), now that we are producers as well as consumers.
Jon