Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

"Yes! I think it’s important that it was published in 1964, because it goes to show that the concept of advanced communication tools is not new. This book focuses on the platform, the medium in which the content is being distributed, instead of the content being distributed. Look at it as your voice being pushed through any sort of communication device. Study how platforms work, then leverage that in the right ways to promote your content. If you’re creating content first , you’ll get lost in the mix. You find this a lot: people get very frustrated because they’re putting out this amazing content but no one sees it. Well, study Instagram a little bit more because if you can figure out why this is happening, a lot of times you can follow money or the company’s newest release—you can start to see where to focus. So, take Facebook. And Facebook owns Instagram. What are their corporate goals? Thinking like that can really help. This book will help change the way you think about digital marketing tools or social media tools, or any sort of communication device. Really focus on what do they do and how do they work first, and then create the content. Obviously it’s a much older book, but basically the idea is that every action—online or in media—and our response to those actions, is just an extension of who we are as a society or group and what we believe in. What we’re reading as a whole is an expression of what we are interested in. What we’re ‘liking’ is an expression of what we’re interested in. So we are essentially feeding this . . . I hate to say beast, but that’s the idea, right? Instagram works like this: we put out content, people like it. If people like it, more people see it. Now they’ve learned what people like, and they’re trying to enhance the experience. So every time they make an algorithm change there’s a little bit of a bumpy road, but essentially the idea is that everything we’re reading is an extension of who we are, and everything we’re putting out is a response to what we are asking for more of. It’s an input, output system, basically."