The Medium Is.

“Each form of transport not only carries, but translates and transforms the sender, the receiver, and the message. The use of any kind of medium or extension of man alters the patterns of interdependence among people, as it alters the ratios among our senses.” - Marshall McLuhan.

Being aboard a new web tech company firstly requires that you take a minute to smoke a bowl and read some ‘cluhan. That dead man still lays down the science.

Then you have to watch some porn.

Now, why do folks blog? Why do folks post vids of themselves dancing in badly on you tube? Why do people IM links all day to each other? It is not because they need a forum to do something they can’t do in their real lives. It’s because as soon as a man with a plastic mind uses a new medium the world is changed. The word is changed for that man.

But what happens when a man with a plastic mind meets a plastic medium?

Ubiquitous bandwidth and a clumsy set of tools is actually empowering people to invent new ways of talking. And the invention rate is redoubling. Two novel forms of communication imply a third… we’re living in a golden era where children are developing totally new means to talk. The world is a steamy petri dish filled with new life.

We can agree that most of these mechanisms are not likely to survive this rapidly evolving ecology. But it’s important to understand that people don’t embrace a new medium because of an articulated deficit in their lives. They embrace a new medium because the medium extends them.

Further, it’s important to digest that few people live a “second life” via forums, blogs, Flickr, YouTube, etc. Most people assimilate a new medium into their natural life. It is their first life. Some of my closest and oldest friends are those I met on computer Bulletin Board Systems that I accessed via dial-up modem in 1991. A totally new medium 1.5 decades ago… now a totally antiquated medium, but a grand parent to blogs, vlogs, textmessaging, social networks, social browsing, and social attention based relevance.

But still that’s my first life… my real life… my real friends.