Version 1
: Received: 16 April 2021 / Approved: 20 April 2021 / Online: 20 April 2021 (11:03:35 CEST)
How to cite:
Logan, R.K. Marshall McLuhan’s General Theory of Media (GToM), His Laws of Media; Comparing Three Kinds of Law. Preprints2021, 2021040526. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202104.0526.v1
Logan, R.K. Marshall McLuhan’s General Theory of Media (GToM), His Laws of Media; Comparing Three Kinds of Law. Preprints 2021, 2021040526. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202104.0526.v1
Logan, R.K. Marshall McLuhan’s General Theory of Media (GToM), His Laws of Media; Comparing Three Kinds of Law. Preprints2021, 2021040526. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202104.0526.v1
APA Style
Logan, R.K. (2021). Marshall McLuhan’s General Theory of Media (GToM), His Laws of Media; Comparing Three Kinds of Law. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202104.0526.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Logan, R.K. 2021 "Marshall McLuhan’s General Theory of Media (GToM), His Laws of Media; Comparing Three Kinds of Law" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202104.0526.v1
Abstract
We suggest that despite McLuhan’s claim not to have a theory of communication that in fact the body of his work does indeed constitute a theory of media and their effects which I have called his General Theory of Media (GToM) that also includes his Laws of Media (LoM). Both McLuhan’s GToM and his LoM are described. A comparison is made of three notions of law: i. McLuhan’s notion of law as used in his Laws of Media; ii. the notions of the Law in the legal sense and iii. the notion of law as formulated in scientific laws. McLuhan’s understanding of media is used to analyze some of the negative effects of social media suggesting that laws need to be formulated to prevent the misuse of social media that are antithetical to democracy and the invasion of the privacy of the individual users of these apps. McLuhan’s Laws of Media are then used to provide insights into the nature of scientific laws, the Law in the legal sense and his own Laws of Media.
Keywords
Marshall McLuhan; General Theory of Media; Laws of Media; scientific laws, the Law, enhance, obsolesce, retrieve; reverse; media; technology
Subject
Social Sciences, Psychology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
