From the depths of the medium!

Okay, I am willing to concede the melodramatic tinge in my urge to reference the Golem in this dialogue on the "medium" (and at some point, "media literacy") but maybe there are one or two common themes(?):

both are human creations

both can get out of control

both are fueled by human will

Well, so I can envision three...

I suppose I have a habit of relating in figurative terms and cannot always produce literal meanings or translations of things. If I acknowledge (and I do) that I exist within the parameters of the "medium" I am speaking more figuratively, but if I can acknowledge that I utilize tools of the "medium" to communicate and for self-expression, then I am speaking in more concrete terms. You can easily parse the difference between being and using in context of passive and active, but I digress...


I recently recalled the popularity of John Edward, psychic, some years back and his claim that he could communicate with your loved ones who had "passed on". He was proclaiming that he could cross over (and that was the name of his show, CROSSING OVER) from this world into the spirit world and put you in touch with the dead, essentially navigating one medium into the next. He refers to himself as the "psychic medium" and on his website there is info on how to receive "mediumship" readings. I knew someone whose family went on this show in hopes of connecting with a young family member killed in a car crash. I watched the clip where John Edward is "crossing over" to seek out this dead young man, and the one thing that emerged as true from this dog and pony show was that people have a heartrending desire to believe.


And I digress again...

To be in or not to be in the medium...

Monday Night, Medium (Rare)

In having the opportunity to talk with fellow education/library professionals on ideas instigated from Postman et al, I am glad to be able to have a sounding board for my own musings, as well as to hear others' point of views. Our dialogue encompassed everything from first time blogging to dilemmas of how much to reveal or discuss on our blogs to high school musical to cheetahs to marketing insinuating its tentacles into different aspects of our lives.

Through our verbal interchanges, we revealed just how quirky our thinking is and how most of us are still working out our theories and evolving our beliefs on the order of things. And of course we do so not in a vacuum, but in the world. We do so in the medium of our modern times.

The process of integrating Postman's themes into my own daily thinking/living takes some doing. For example, when he writes that new mediums "changes the structure of discourse", I don't disagree, but I do wonder how this impacts upon my own experience and history. Then I have to ask myself "Have I already been acted upon by the "new medium" without my knowing because I take it for granted and cannot view it with objectivity?" So is it me thinking what I think, or is it the new medium telling me what to think?

Or maybe the new medium is like the Golem. The Golem, a creature conjured by a rabbi to protect his people in a Prague ghetto, becomes increasingly uncontrollable, goes on rampages as the rabbi loses control over it.

Okay, maybe that's too melodramatic...