Understanding media: The extensions of man

Cold Media

Cold media is an extension of the sense organs. They are media with a low-resolution and high-involvement, such as manuscripts, telephone, television, and spoken language. Because of its low resolution, it provides audience a chance to fill the missing information, and mobilize the audience re-creation capabilities. McLuhan believed that the audience should be positive recipients in the process of information transmission. There are some examples of cold media: Cartoon is a cold medium with a low-resolution, because several of the broad-brush pens provided little information. It requires the viewer to fill their own meaning or to complete the image in their mind. Phone calls with very little information provide to the ear, so it is cold medium. In cold media circumstances, the audience is in fact an active and integral part of the audio-visual experience.

I think the cold and hot media defined by McLuhan are ambiguous. It is inaccurate to distinguish the cold and media according to the clarity of pictures. McLuhan probably ignored the characteristics of the diversity of media content. So Mcluhan’s analysis lack of a standard. If the film is a hot medium, television is a cold medium, how to interpret the television film (with film production method, release through the medium of television) this form can not be simply divided using McLuhan’s definition of cold or hot media. In addition, there are many television programs with a clarity picture and sense of three-dimensional, these kinds of characteristics of television have completely ridded away the scope of cold media. Apart from some television programs focus on the audience participation, I think basically television is hot medium. Similarly, film is usually considered as hot medium coz the general feature films, science films can be understood as the high-definition form. However, the audience has been deeply engaged in some art films that belong to the cold medium.