Mediology (Part II)

Mediology tries to view history by hybridizing technology and culture. It focuses on the intersections between technology and intellectual life. Mediology proposes three historical ages of transmission technologies: the logosphere (the age of writing, theology, the kingdom, and faith), then the graphosphere (the age of print, political ideologies, nations, and laws) and now the recently opened videosphere (audio/video broadcasting, models, individuals, and opinions).

This sounds like Marshall McLuhan. But Debray feels that McLuhan blurred over some fairly complex issues in his famous "the medium is the message" sound bite. The term "medium" can be unpacked into a channel (i.e., a technology such as film), or a code (such as music or a natural language), or a message (the semantic content of an act of communication such as a promise). By reducing medium to a channel-eye view, McLuhan overemphasizes the technology behind cultural change at the expense of the usage that the messages and codes make of that technology. Semioticians do the opposite - they glorify the code at the expense of what it is really used for in a specific milieu.