The Medium Is (Im)Material: Mcluhan’s Media Ecology and the Metaphor of Cyberplace

We often think of Internet use as something immaterial. In other words, we think that when we go online, we leave our bodies and the physical consequences of our communication acts behind to become mind-to-mind communicators. However, despite McLuhan’s (1964) claim that electronic communication is an extension of the human central nervous system, it is important to remember that online communication is more than direct brain-to-brain (or soul-to-soul) dialogue (Peters 1999); physicality is always present. Drawing first on McLuhan and then on theorists following McLuhan including Carey (1989), Castells (1996), Turkle (1995; 2011), and Haraway (1991), this paper will argue that contextualizing Internet use using the metaphor of physical place is a better way to theorize online activity. Just as global cities are “ideoscapes” (Appadurai 1996) with a very physical presence, so the network society is a cyberplace which leaves a material trace. The metaphor of cyberplaces puts technology scholars in a better position to understand both the opportunities of Internet use and their tremendous consequences