3- How are portable media devices such as smart phones, iPods, and handheld

video games altering the media environment? How are these devices shaping
sensibilities?
Technological Determinism theory explains human behavior, stating the
prominent technologies in a given era determine social tendencies and norms
of culture. The media environment is always pouring information into the
population, drawing upon people’s senses, influencing their habits and
priorities. The content of the media, as well as the media themselves, involve
historical perceptions and technologies. Although modern societies all share
one physical world, individual civilizations can occupy different realms of
awareness. Marshall McLuhan describes the contrasting hot and cold cultures
and their interactions with hot and cold medias.

Portable devices incorporate technology into human lives in new ways older
technologies never could. The invention of electricity amplified and
accelerated existing processes of human existence (McLuhan 24). Jobs, tasks,
and entertainments already present in human lives, were altered with the
advancements electricity made possible and available. Portable devices allow
a similar alteration to human processes, allowing technology to extend and
control human abilities. With media available in our hands, people feel more
connected to those media and entertainment media is unleashed into every
moment of our lives.

So what does this extension of media through mobile devices do to culture? It

alters senses, influences expression, and reshapes human thinking. Whether
these alterations are of positive or negative value is not known, however it is
known that their effects are apparent and specific to this era.

Portable devices convey the media messages they’re programmed to transmit

(McLuhan 25). These instrumental (26) media are the messengers of society,
carrying those actions prompted by modern media. These devices invite
interaction and deliver media’s messages by drawing the human senses that
they’re deigned to attract. Smart phones, PDA’s, and other cellular devices
connected to the web, attract the interests of users—appearing helpful for
entertainment, information gathering, and communication. Rather than
experiencing reality first- hand, humans are allowed to participate in
interactions with their devices to receive information and stimulation
remotely, in high definition. This is a hot culture.

Iimmediate, data-dense information and communication is appealing to a

person who is multi-tasking, uninformed, or without structured organization.
Hot mobile devices allow someone to retrieve specialized information on the
go. Without directions? Use a map App. Without someone to talk to? No
need to organize a gathering, send a mass text. Need to know what type of
light bulb for your vehicle? No need to find the appropriate sections in the
user-manual, Google it. People are not forced to maintain contact with data
sources or to plan ahead; they can use their media devices to supplement
what once required a specialist.

The media environment changes how people tackle their problems, organize
jobs, and socialize. These types of Cultural changes influence media
movements and technological evolution. In this way, the media environment
and culture work in ecology, influencing one another in interrelated patterns
and growth (27).

Media is nothing on its own without individuals and culture to utilize and
perpetuate the messages in media. Culture transmits the media, while
individuals receive it. All reality and media itself are complex, but the effects
of media and its messages received are simple on single planes (39). The
effects of devices in the media environment, not the media itself, are made
receivable to the beholder through an appeal to specific senses. The senses
targeted by mobile devices, mainly sight and touch, are isolated and
strengthened through repetitive use. A mobile device designed to target sight
and touch will alter human sense ratios (33) by escalating the use and
necessity of these senses in daily lives. This alteration of sense ratios
ultimately changes human ability to absorb sensory data through the lesser-
used senses.

In a media culture that emphasizes the senses of touch and sight, the lesser-
used senses become weakened and unpracticed. People accustomed to texting
will have quick motor movements in their fingertips from repetitive use of
the on-screen keypad, but what happens to their penmanship? How
experienced will they grow in areas of face-to-face communication or
composition? Will they be adequately prepared to deal with real-time verbal
and non-verbal communication? An individual’s senses and fluency in
various communication modes will be altered by the media environment, and
so will culture as a whole.

In a culture with specific senses emphasized and certain skills

underdeveloped, society will reinvent itself to accommodate modern comfort
levels.

McLuhan sees human comfort to rely on inviting, interactive media. A cool

medium is not dominant or overbearing (44) in contrast to high-definition,
hot media. A hot society that’s most comfortable with cool media will not
embrace mainstream, data-dense media, requiring equilibrium to be reached
in the media culture. This equilibrium may be achieved by cooling off the
media or by adjusting the acknowledgement of the discomfort all-together. In
a sense, disacknowledging the human tendency to gravitate to the natural
acquisition of cool medias, means desensitizing ourselves to genuine
learning, expression, and communication.

Changing daily methods of learning, expression, and communication are

actually altering human thinking. Hot media such as portable devices,
perpetuate human tendencies to incompletely learn, and they express and
communicate using their media rather than themselves and one another. In
the absence of learning, a person will use their portable devices to retrieve
information on the spot, which will quickly be forgotten. In the absence of
genuine expression of emotion and creativity, a person will re-share a meme,
or use an emoticon in a digital conversation. Communication itself becomes a
digital fragment, alienated from both the sender and receiver.

When people utilize their portable devices, they think they’re listening to
music, playing a game, learning, or having a conversation. The medium is
masked by the message they believe they are receiving from that medium.
When asked what someone is doing on their mobile phone, a person can
inaccurately say, “just talking with a friend,” a more accurate response being,
“Facebooking”.
Since when is Facebook a verb? This is an excellent example that the
medium is the message, and not the effect of the media once it enters the
receiver’s brain (or even the origin of the medium itself (McLuhan 31)).
Portable devices affect media culture by determining which senses people
use, what type of information is considered valuable, and how individuals
think on a daily basis. The value of these alterations is rhetorical, but
discrepancies between reality and media and the media environment as a
whole are indisputable.