tool and medium

[anechoic <kim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>From: anechoic <kim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>the tool is [not] 100% of the message ...
>Ok, why not just "the tool *is* the medium" ..., which is, in effect,
>quite often the case ... ; i.e., at once the one *and* the other, e.g.,
>a guitar, or a radio, are both a means of communication (a medium) *and*
>a tool/instrument for tone production/transmission ... A software
>application might perhaps not be a "medium" in the actual sense -- it is
>an aid -- but the computer itself, in contrast, is both tool and medium
>(even storage medium, but this is yet another story, though ...).
>However, neither the tool, nor the medium being the message should be
>true at hundred percent, where btw both the actual meaning of the terms
>"medium" (transmission / communication / storage ...) and "tool"
>(instrument / aid / artificial limb ...) are to be defined, insofar as
>(for a given case) they will differ in essence at all ...

a tool cannot be a medium...the medium is sound becasue that's one of the 5
stimuli that our human perceptual apparatus (at this point in evolution)
can decode...below is the classical model (Shannon) of a communication
system:

information src --------> transmitter--------> |
|-------->receiver--------> destination
                 [message]                           [signal]        ^
[received_signal]    [message]
				               |
				               |
        			      	          noise_src

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as you can see from the diagram above (if the formatting of the text didn't
get mangled from the injection of noise) the medium is what carries the
message/signal...the tool can be seen as the transmitter (the info src
being the human brain) which creates the message/signal but remains
separate from the medium itself...the medium is just the conduit and can be
part of the message but the transmitter is not the medium...the tool does
become embedded in the message because there are many sub and meta levels
of information and many ways of encoding that info...I suggest reading
"Mathematical Theory of Communication" by Claude Shannon for more info on
information theory...
Cheers!
KIM

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