Digital Media: Class One

Prior to attending my first BDC 192 lecture, I always imagined digital media to include any designs that were digitally created, however I never quite realized just how versatile digital media could be. I was particularly impressed by the unique example of digital media shown to us in class on Tuesday in which designs were created on the side of a high-rise building using some kind of light projector. This was a new and innovative form of digital media that I had never seen before and it really opened my eyes to the versatility of forms that digital media could take on.

During the class discussion about digital media I continued to be surprised by the vast amount of forms in which digital media could be found. Not only was digital media present in advertisements, animation, and websites, but it could also be found on t-shirts, billboards, album covers, and in video games just to name a few. I soon realized how immersed our culture is in digital media, and just how much it surrounds us in our everyday lives.

I feel that digital media is particularly important for a student of Radio and Television because it is such a crucial component to so many aspects of the industry. Advertisement is a key example of where digital media plays a crucial role. From billboards, poster designs and logos, to online ads and animation for a TV commercials digital media allows advertisements to take on countless forms and to be visually pleasing, which catches the viewers eye.

When McLuhan said: “The medium is the message,” he was making a statement about how it is not the content of a medium that is important, but rather the change that results from the way this content is put forth. This is an interesting perspective that I have never given thought to before. I’ll admit that I had never even heard of Marshall McLuhan before Tuesday’s class, and that when I first heard his statement: “The medium is the message,” I misinterpreted it to mean that the content of a message is determined by the way in which the message is put forth. After thinking about the statement from this perspective I decided that the medium was not solely the message because the content of a message could be communicated in many different ways, through many different mediums, and although the medium through which a message is communicated does influence the overall effect of the message, it does not determine the content of the message.

After looking more into what McLuhan meant by “The medium is the message,” I realized that he was looking at a much bigger picture then the one I initially saw. The content of a message is irrelevant to McLuhan’s statement because he was more concerned with the social impacts that resulted from the kind of media that was being used. To apply this to everyday life, it is not the messages that we are texting back and fourth to each other about how our days went or how cute a boy is that are important, but rather the fact that we as a society are communicating instantly with one another with such ease, and the way this technology has and will continue to impact our day to day lives. In this sense I feel that McLuhan was right in saying that “the medium is the message,” because overall, the way we communicate with one another has a much greater impact on society then the content within a medium.