I was surprised to experience such a different reaction between just listening to the McLuhan video and watching and listening to it at the same time.
When I just listened to the video, I was able to understand it better. Whereas, when I watched and listened, I found the images very distracting. I also found the images dated and caught myself thinking about that, rather than the correlation between the speech and images. I think this relates to the fact that a part of phenomenology is the emotional or cognitive experience of the subject. Therefore, because of my experiences with modern technology and what I have access to, I reacted to the images accordingly. And that distracted me from taking in the speech.
I thought this was a good tool to use for learning purposes. I realized it was better just to listen to something and I retain it better. I hope I can use this tool again for studying/learning methods.
Keywords: CassarJacqueline, McLuhan, phenomonology, week5
Comments
I had the complete opposite experience! Good observation about how your experiences with modern technology influenced your reaction to the aged equipment in the video and created a visual distraction for you during McLuhan's speech. That made me wonder I wasn't struck by the archaic appearance of the video. I think if I had watched the video a second or third time then I would have started to pay attention to other details like that as well. I was too worried about not having listened to him during the first audio playing that I was extremely keen to make sense of what he was saying the second time around.