Visit Your Local PBS Station PBS Home PBS Home Programs A-Z TV Schedules Watch Video Support PBS Shop PBS Search PBS

Recently by Robert K. Logan

Archives

By Month

By Category

Contact Us

If you know about a story that we should be following, let us know.

Underwritten by John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

Philosophy

Converged Devices Doesn't Mean Fewer Devices

In the last blog post, I looked at the 14 messages of new media, one of which was convergence. In today's blog post, I'd like to focus on convergence and hybrid technologies, which characterize today's new media. Let's begin by exploiting a McLuhan technique known as the laws of media, in which we identify what a new medium enhances, obsolesces, retrieves and reverses into Hybrid technologies enhance convenience, obsolesce many individual devices, retrieve the Swiss Army knife, and reverse into clutter.

more »

Philosophy

The 14 Messages of New Media

New media have certainly changed the landscape of communications and education in an even more dramatic manner than electronic mass media did as was documented and analyzed by "Marshall McLuhan" in 1964. I had the good fortune to collaborate with Marshall back in the 1970s and have tried to carry on his tradition, as have others, by focusing on the impact of media independent of their content. McLuhan's pithy way of describing this approach was through the use of his one-liner "the medium is the message," which he made famous in his '64 book "Understanding Media."

more »