CIE100: Common Intellectual Experience - McLuhan Writing Prompt (10 Points)

Assignment Goals

The goals of this assignment are:
  1. To reflect upon the course texts in preparation for thoughtful discussion
  2. To organize thoughts into a concise and cohesive response to a targeted question
  3. To consider multiple viewpoints about ideas

The Assignment

Please read the questions below and answer them in marginalia form, at about the length of a 1-2 paragraph response. Choose two short passages, quote each, and annotate each with an observation, a question, and a connection. Then write one aphorism of your own that distills your reading, and add a counterargument note against it, with a quote behind the objection. McLuhan wrote in aphorisms, so here’s your chance to try his own method on him. Submit your annotations and aphorism through Canvas before the start of class.

Marginalia is the default genre, and it applies to Question 1, where you may use any of the other four instead (analytic, letter, dialogue, marginalia+aphorism, or the Four A’s) as long as the quote and counterargument requirements are met. The remaining question asks for a specific artifact we use in class, so please submit that one in the form described.

For help getting through the reading, see How to Read Hard Texts in CIE.

Writing Prompt

  1. McLuhan claims that the medium is the message: that the form of a medium shapes us more deeply than any content it carries, and that the content distracts us from noticing. Restate this claim in your own words with a quotation, and discuss the strongest objection you can think of to it.

  2. Pick one medium you use daily and audit its message apart from any content, in a four-column grid we use in class. Label the columns attention, body, sense of time, and relationships, and in each one write what the medium trains that thing to do. Beneath the grid, answer in prose: where would a conversational AI fit in McLuhan’s framework, and what might its message be, independent of anything it says?

Submission

Please submit a word processed or PDF document.

Please refer to the Style Guide for code quality examples and guidelines.