McLuhan

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=**Figure & Ground**= • **Explains** how technology brings different social elements into focus, and allows others to recede in importance. • figure is the area of "attention," and ground is the area of "inattention." the relationship between these elements is not static; and they are liable to "flip" if pushed too far. • **Example**: the technology of industrialization has human industry and commerce as its "figure," and the natural environment/resources as its "ground." However, when pushed to its limits, the model flips: pollution and ecological disaster is the "figure," while the culture of factory work (consumerism) recedes into the "ground." • Figure • Technology; hardware; quantifiable benefits; physical, financial processes & systems. • Figure, taken to an extreme degree, reverses and becomes ground (Reversal). • Ground • Situation that gives rise to technology; the environment of services, disservices and effects; nature, society, culture. • Old ground becomes new figure through nostalgia (Retrieval).

• **Figure and ground:** McLuhan's statement that the content of any medium is another medium leads the concept of a figure and a ground. • Here McLuhan claims that when a new medium is created, it will eventually overtake those media from which its content is derived as an innovation. • The older medium becomes a //ground// upon which the new medium stands as a more noticed //figure//.
 * NOTE: (info below is from wikipedia- the concepts of figure and ground are the same as in the article, just these ones are a lot easier to understand)***

=**Tetrads**= • tetrad: means of examining the effects of any technology on society by dividing its effects into four categories and displaying them simultaneously. 1. **Enhancement** (figure): What the medium amplifies or intensifies. //For example, radio amplifies news and music via sound.// 2. **Obsolescence** (ground): What the medium drives out of prominence. //Radio reduces the importance of print and the visual.// 3. **Retrieval** (figure): What the medium recovers which was previously lost. //Radio returns the spoken word to the forefront.// 4. **Reversal** (ground): What the medium does when pushed to its limits. //Acoustic radio flips into audio-visual tv.// • Enhancement and Retrieval: Figure qualities • Obsolescence and Reversal: Ground qualities.
 * • *NOTE: (info below is from wikipedia- the definitions are the same as in the article, just these ones are a lot easier to understand)***