Please identify which option you choose in your paper’s heading. The first two options are traditional research prompts, with the first option being related to material covered in Week 2

This will be
Option 1: In this unit, we are broadly considering questions about how media technological change can both affect and be affected by our social uses. Raymond Williams provides us with a framework for how to engage influences from industry, users, and media institutions in analyzing technological change and our uses of technology. Marshall McLuhan, on the other hand, provides a method for identifying, but fetishizing, change in our current media moment by drawing parallels to previous epochs of media transformation. This prompt option asks you to think about technology like McLuhan and Williams, focusing on the histories and questions they might write about if they encountered one of the following media technologies.

Choose one of the media forms/technologies from the list below, or gain approval for an alternative proposed media technology from your TA by the end of Week 3’s discussion section session. Write about what McLuhan and Williams would say about that technology. Include analysis for both theorists, not just McLuhan, not just Williams.

You do not have to engage the following (though you may), they are presented to prompt your initial thinking:

Starting questions for McLuhan: What earlier media epoch ushered a similar level of media change that this medium does? How does this medium change our experiences of our senses?
Starting questions for Williams: How did the technology of this media form develop? What is the history of how people have used it? How were these developments, of its technology and its uses, economically influenced?