An
egg shouldn’t make you feel anxious and uncomfortable, but I can’t help but
feel overwhelmed by the printed egg shown on the first page of Marshall McLuhan’s
“The Message is the Massage.” During the lecture on the first ten pages, we were
led to the back of the book in order to read this statement: “Page 1: A
trademark is printed on a raw egg yolk by a no-contact, no-pressure printing
technique. Imagine the possibilities to which this device will give birth!”
(McLuhan 158).
At first, the egg seemed like a
novelty item placed under an auspicious “Good Morning!” designed to entice the
reader into the graphically interesting book. However, when I read the quote on
page one hundred and fifty eight, I began imagining the possibilities. Could
Pepsi start putting their ads inside of eggs, too? Would presidential
candidates start investing in farms so that all of our dairy and egg products
could come pre-stamped with a logo? It’s disturbing to think of all the
possibilities for advertisement once a technique like this is invented.
However, I don’t think it’s something in the future to worry about- I think
it’s here now.
It struck me that while my eggs do
not have conspicuous trademarks on them I am still assaulted by advertisements,
campaigns, and logos much like the man in the wind tunnel on page three of
McLuhan’s book. When I wake up in the morning, my phone is usually close to my
head, and I have checked my Facebook, Yik Yak, email, messages, and Instagram
all before I climb out of bed. I feel disorganized if I don’t, but McLuhan’s
book has created an uneasy sense of awareness inside of me that I didn’t have
before. The advertisements on the side of my Facebook newsfeed show college
textbooks at discounted prices and pretty vintage engagement rings- reflections
of my search patterns for my near and far future. My email is hounded by
various companies and retail stores that I’ve foolishly given my account information
to in order to score a discount at one time or another.
Ninety percent of this information I
could live without. They have no bearing on my life, and usually end up unread,
discarded, or scrolled through without a second thought. However, I religiously
come back to their medium. Michael Wesch’s video “The Machine is Us/ing Us FinalVersion” shows the interconnectedness of society and the Internet. From 3:15 to
3:45 he makes this point: “Think of the 100 billion times per day humans click
on a Web page” (Wesch). Wesch makes several good points that support McLuhan’s
claim that “[S]ocieties have always been shaped ore by the nature of the
media…than by the content of the communication” (McLuhan 8). I don’t click on
various websites or apps hundred of times during the day because their content
is so riveting, but because their medium has shaped the way I interact
electronically. I would argue that the case is similar for humans all over the
world. As Wesch has put it, the machine (my iPhone) is using me and in turn, I
am inevitably a part of the machine.
I
think that Aristotle was on to something when he said, as quoted in our
lecture, that rhetoric is “the art of discovering the available means of
persuasion in the given case” (Walter). Companies, conglomerates, and
networking sites have discovered that their rhetoric lies in the whirling
vortex of cyberspace. By flooding our inboxes, newsfeeds, and timelines with
logos, trademarks, and information, we are consuming enormous amounts of data
without realizing it. Through our addiction to the medium (Facebook, Instagram,
email, the Internet) we are paying the companies who keep our plate of digital
information overflowing to continue to feed us.
An egg should not make me feel
anxious or uncomfortable, but the striking similarities between the
not-so-subliminal message on the yolk and on my iPhone screen has left me
without any appetite.
Works Cited:
McLuhan,
Marshall, Quentin Fiore, and Jerome Agel. The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. San Francisco,
CA: HardWired, 1996. Print.
Walter, John.
(2014, September 1). Introductory lecture. Lecture retrieved from http://www.othinn.com/cyber-rhetoric/?page_id=61.
Wesch, Michael. “The Machine is
Us/ing Us Final Version.” Digital Ethnography. 8 March 2007.
Excellent post. I really enjoyed reading this.
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