About Laws of Media Probes

This site is about involving you in probing how "the operation and effects of human artifacts on man and society" UMe p 283. Artifacts are media, technology, innovations, or any other "extensions of the physical human body- or the mind." In other words, what new technologies doing to us, our society and our culture.

After Marshall McLuhan's death, two books were released with co-authors: "Laws of Media: The New Science" and "Global Village." These books introduced the tetrad as the model for the laws of media. The tetrad and its questions provide a useful means of looking at how any artifact works on our culture. This site hopes to advance that understanding.

Why this site?

Now, suppose that we put questions to that mass [audience] through electronic media concerning the problems of our time.... Out in the mass audience, ever single possible mode of perception exists unawares. But how do we tap that resource? I suggest that one possiblity would be to take these highly specialist problems to the mass of untutored, non-specialist people. There is one man in a million for whom any problem is not a problem at all. For a long time mathematicians use to pose an unanswerable problem, "How far can you go into a forest?" One day a child simply said, "Halfway."
UMe p 292

As John Robb as pointed out a few times one of the great benefits of the internet is that it brings problems to many. As such your comments and contributions are welcomed and encouraged. Enjoy exploring the probes of the laws of media.

There are several ways you can get involved.

• Read about the tetrad and laws of media.
• Browse (surf) through connected and alternative tetrads.
• Make comments or rate any tetrad.
• Contribute your own probe (tetrad).
• Link to probes that strike you.
• Make suggestions on how to improve the site.

Who are we?

I'm Ray Daly. Marshall McLuhan and Edmund Carpenter have been my primary influence since high school in the 60s. In a way this is my payback or thanks for their work making sense of the world (reality) for me. His concepts have made it possibe for me to open the first software (video game) store in the world in 1979 and that is just a tip of the iceberg.

So this is my site. No funding by anybody else. No coding by anyone else, yet. But I certainly want your ideas, your probes, your help in creating a community that can build and enjoy this site and learn from McLuhan's Laws of Media Tetrad.

Thanks. Thanks for browsing your site and any involvement that you may decide to make. And thanks to those that encouraged me to pursue this.