"The method of our time is to use not a single but multiple models for exploration – the technique of the suspended judgment is the discovery of the twentieth century as the technique of invention was the discovery of the nineteenth" (McLuhan, 69).
As I was home today, doing work related research on my laptop, I found that this statement by McLuhan could not be any truer. During a four hour period, I referred to photocopies of an original 1873 document (print), found the full version of the document online through Google books (internet), and spoke with a coworker on my cell phone (oral communication & technology) regarding the research. And this was all done in a short, four hour period from my bedroom. As amazing and convenient this technology is, I cannot help but think about my fellow classmate, Emily, who wondered if, "people are slave to the medium or to the information that it brings them…”
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I've been getting over a cold--about three or four days ago, at the height of my illness, I was lying in bed watching a terrible movie on TV. I didn't know what movie it was (my cable information guide was busted), and was too tired/sick/lazy to get out of bed, walk three feet across my apartment to look it up on my computer. Instead, I texted my boyfriend 3,000 miles away, asking him, "What movie is Sarah Jessica Parker and Zooey Deschanel in together?" Within two minutes, he had texted me back the answer. ("Failure to Launch," for anyone who wishes to judge me.) What a world we live in, that it was easier for me to communicate with someone across the country than to get up off my (extremely sick) ass to do it myself. Talk about using multiple methods to communicate information.
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