This chapter takes a distinctly theoretical approach to new communication technologies by pulling on the works of McLuhan, Ong, and Landow to familiarize students with the concepts of the information age. According to McLuhan, our communication is influenced by the media through which we communicate. Hot media focus on a single sense, e.g. radio.
Cool media focus on more than one sense, e.g. television.
According to Ong, a new medium affects a whole culture. The invention of writing freed memory. Printing from movable type made books cheaper and so available to more people. Books meant individual rather than collective communication and thus encouraged individualism rather than community. The telegraph made possible nearly instantaneous communication.