This article explores McLuhan?s famous slogan ?the medium is the
message? as a point of departure for examining current views of the nature
of the new electronic media understood as a revolutionary form,
associated with a new (?post-modern?) stage of society. It argues that this
slogan packs into itself more layers of meaning than he was able to
articulate in a complex and nuanced theory of the media. It suggests that
McLuhan?s work constructs a productive idea of a media unconscious. It
shows in detail how ?messages? are encoded in new visual forms
associated with the new electronic media, using the logo of ?America
Online? (AOL), an internet provider, as exemplary text. This logo carries
implicit messages about the nature of these media, in a kind of dialogue
with McLuhan. Messages and dialogue alike need a new space in which
they can occur: a theory of unconscious dimensions of media. |