Research On Mcluhan's Media Views From The Perspective Of Technology Philosophy

As the most important original media theory thinker in the 20th century, Marshall McLuhan's media theories such as "Medium is the message", "Medium:the extensions of man", "Global village", etc. has become a reality in today's full development of the electronic age, and people live in a world that surrounded by the media technology. Therefore, in the age of the Internet that has grown so wildly popular, doing research on his media views from the perspective of technology philosophy has important theoretical and practical significance.The theoretical source of Marshall McLuhan's media views including that Lewis Mumford's "technology organic theory" and Harold Innis's "media bias theory". In addition, McLuhan's media views is the product of his age, the radio, television, computer and other media has become important carriers of his medium theory, his main media views including "medium is the message", "medium:the extensions of man", "global village", and "four laws of media", "theory of hot and cold media" have profoundly affected the mode of human perception, human thinking mode and way of life. The academia have different opinions on McLuhan's media views, those who speak highly of McLuhan praise him as "the prophet of electronic age", however, the positivism scholars and experience school criticize his theory as the "only technological determinism". Objectively speaking, as a media environment scholar, McLuhan's exploring human social development from the perspective of media technology aims at reminding people to establish their own immune system of media technology, while enjoying the benefits of media technology, in order to avoid becoming the second Narcissus, who was excessively immersed in his own copy and extension but knowing nothing on the surrounding environment, that is the point where the author's study different from the other scholars'.McLuhan's media technology theory also has its' difficiency. In order to make up for the defect of his medium theory's only emphasizing technology is man's biological extension, rather than man's social extension, the author point out that the media is under the control of power, and also power is affected by the supervision of media, in fact, the both are mutually beneficial, thus enriching McLuhan's media technology theories, that is the innovation of this paper.