100 years ago, nobody could have predicted the rise of the media and our new ways of communicating with one another. The media is more than just technologies people use to communicate. People don’t take the time to sit and think about the fact that the different platforms we use everyday shape who we are as people. As McLuhan and Applen explains, media influences society, along with its content. This idea flows together with Chris Gilliard’s argument in “Pedagogy and the Logic of platforms,” which is that digital platforms are built around data collected and to really think about what we are getting into once we begin to look into the web.
Both of these suggest that the media is doing more than just providing information. The different structures that platforms have influences our behavior and how we choose to learn, communicate, and interact in society. Gilliard talks about the rise in media in social and educational life with everything being user targeted. This aligns with McLuhan and Applen’s point about media shaping our lives. We truly don’t realize how weird it is to blindly trust platforms and insert personal information about ourselves. We use content as a way to express ourselves, our ideas, values, and opinions/perspectives. The media molds how those things are presented. This leads into how others will view and interpret, then share what we have put out. Each thing is calculated, nothing is neutral with the media. We have become so involved with the media, that it heavily influences how we view content and ourselves with that.
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