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…for learners  to be able to describe at least one of the three key concepts or debate that I present in my lecture.

1. What are times in your life or in our world where we might have missed that “the medium is the message”? McLuhan says that we often tend to be distracted by the “content” of the message—what the authors intended to say with the medium. Where has there been a time in which we missed the medium for the content, and what were the implications, if any? McLuhan discusses print at length in his work, as long with a range of other elements we wouldn’t have thought of as media before (clothing, numbers etc.). What do you think of the medium of print, in which massive amount of written material can be produced and distributed in a uniform way? Theorize and speculate, using what you know from McLuhan, about how different scopes and proportions are introduced into our lives through print and how this shapes humans’ actions and behaviors. (After you answer this question, you could check out McLuhan’s chapter “The Print” in Understanding Media to get some of his views)
2. Simply share your thoughts on Ong’s somewhat startling implication that it is the presence of a primarily oral environment, or lack of it, that has deeply shaped so much of human history. Where do you think this might be accurate and why? Where do you think this might be inaccurate and why?
3. There are numerous media that Native Americans have used, historically and today; however, one scholar I have quoted, Warkentin, discusses wampum extensively. Read and learn a little about wampum in this discussion on the web (presented by the Onondaga Nation, a member of the Haudenosaunee confederacy); then, discuss how you think wampum might shape our understanding of the term “book” and its use (mentioning the idea of at least 1 critic in this lecture in your discussion).  

Respond to these discussion questions (or other topics of your choosing, relating to the lectures) here: