In reading and discussing the different topics that both Meyrowitz and McLuhan , there were many aspects of different media that are present but rarely noticed.
I carry my cell phone around with me everywhere I go. I wouldn’t say that I feel naked without it but at some points I definitely do feel disconnected or even stranded without it. It has become such a vital part of communication in our generation that we often would not be able to function without one. When McLuhan describes us having different media as “sensory extensions”, I completely agree.
It is like a third arm for us. Twenty years ago, two people spoke on the phone in their home, agreed on a place and time to meet and stuck to it. I now sometimes leave to go somewhere without any clue where it is but know that I can rely on the GPS system in my phone to get there. When I hit traffic on the way, I pull out my cellphone and call the person to let them know I’m going to be a little bit late. Before the existence of cell phones, if I got lost on the way, I would have to pull over, pull out my address book and find a payphone in which to call the coffee shop where this person is waiting for me.
The “environments/mediums” that we now interact with one another in are completely mobile and bring us to live in very different ways then people did twenty, ten, or even five years ago. The social shaping of technology and our modern lives has been due in fact to the ever expanding digital world that we are now a part of. The only thing I can see that would make a phone more of a sensory extension would be to build these items into our bodies, literally giving us new body parts.