What Is A Medium: JS, Morgan, Nicolas, Peter

The Medium is the Message, by Marshall McLuhan, addresses issues such as the extension of senses by technology and sensory perceptions bias (ex.: narcissism in relation with media). He also talks about linearity an continuity in literature versus new media. Ultimately, the text serves to demonstrate that the properties of media themselves are more important than the content that they disseminate. The second reading, Encoding/Decoding, by Stewart Hall, looks at the dynamics of broadcast television; how broadcasters cannot ensure uniform interpretation (decoding), so encode content, defining only a parameter-space in which the audience can decode. The distinction between the terms ‘denotation’ and ‘connotation’ is reduced to its analytic aspect, and the idea of transformable connotations is applied to the different positions that codes can be operated from. These positions of interpretation can be taken during decoding ‘moments’ and classified into three different modes: ‘domination’, ‘negotiation’ and ‘opposition’.

As both texts relate to ‘the medium’, it is correct to point out that the second text (Encoding/Decoding) exists inside McLuhan’s idea that the ‘medium is the message’, the common agreement being that the content is unimportant in the analysis of media. Hall specifically address the structure of the processes used to circulate content (the medium), and how communication is assured by particular ‘moments’, which all together create a medium. In Hall's context, the content does not matter as much as the medium itself, and can shift in meaning depending on the point of view (code) adopted. Viewpoints (codes), of a limited number, have been defined in literature or by hegemonic structures, but from a private look at media, when everything can be criticized, analyzed and interpreted without the need of a common agreement, the truth is variable. However, aside from Hall's implicit agreement with McLuhan's central argument, we were unable to draw any parallels between the texts. We concluded that "Encoding/Decoding" was like a microscope taken to "The Medium is the Message", explicating the media-dynamics that McLuhan glosses over.

On page 15, McLuhan writes, "'Rational,' of course, has for the West long meant 'uniform and continuous and sequential.' In other words, we have confused reason with literacy, and rationalism with a single technology." Does this imply that new-media is bringing the West closer to a "total inclusive field of resonance"?
"In [Western] philosophy, rationality and reason are the key methods used to analyse the data gathered through systematically gathered observations. In economics, sociology, and political science, a decision or situation is often called rational if it is in some sense optimal, and individuals or organizations are often called rational if they tend to act somehow optimally in pursuit of their goals." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationality)
Will the 'philosophical' definition of "rational" phase out to be replaced by its (social sciences [and also artificial intelligence]) alternative, paving the way for the acceptance of (post-modern) modes of self-contradictory thought?