Media Ecology: Back in the Tribal Age

McLuhan's analysis of history places us in the electronic/digital age. He says that we are starting to revert to our original dominant sensor, which was hearing. I think that we are more in the digital age and are reverting to the "touch" sensor. People aren't necessarily talking on the phone, they are sending text messages, posting on line and using Facebook and Myspace. This is definitely the age of touch. There are some ways that hearing is still dominant, for one, listening and speaking work much better during team play on XBox live. Things that require speed are much more efficient using sound. The following clip is a history of how the cell phone is shaped. but the reason i picked this clip was to show some of the statistics is has on it.



This clip shows the transformation of the cell phone through the electronic age starting in 1985 and working its way up. This supports his claim that the hearing sense is returning and making us tribal again. However, there is this thing called text messaging. Around 1:59 in the clip one of the blurbs said "17 Billion text messages were sent worldwide in 2000. 250 billion in 2001, 500 billion in 2004, and 1.9 trillion in 2007... I think with the amount of texts flying around that we are not in the tribal age again, but we hit it briefly and are now in a completely different age using touch as our main sensor. We do it this with facebook and myspace websites, this enables us to stay in contact with people much easier. This new age is all about the words on the page.