The message is medium

The medium is the massage
Marshall McLuhan (1967)

McLuhan is way ahead of his time when he speaks about the electric information environment and the impact that it has on mankind in the way we live, communicate and become extensions of ourselves, psychic or physical. When he speaks about time has ceased, space has vanished and we now live in a global village he is truly looking into the future, (read our present time). Getting in to the subject education, he predicts we more and more are moving away from instructions to our own discovery of facts and interests - he is spot on of the devlopment.

McLuhan makes an interesting observation that a common failure is the attempt to do a job demanded by the new environment with the tools of the old. Kamil points out, in his reading of the same book, that we become slaves under the new medias we create. This fear of becoming powerless under the new media is maybe why we so often hang on to the safe and familiar, which can take it's expression in using the tools of the old in the new "unsafe" environment. This will often create problems since the old tools hasn't been updated to the new environment and become unfitting. The tools are extensions of our bodies and minds and we grow fond of them, which makes it so hard getting rid of them. Getting tools updated to fit the new environment will make the adaptation smoother and our tools stronger and more accurate.

Distance collaboration

The collaboration on distance was a bit of a new experience for me. I'm used to working in groups where we have to meet in real life and where the bus ride takes longer time than the actual meeting. Creating a conference call worked out good after some chat. The chat function is a very good addition whenever some words miss out or one are about to make a connection on phone and wants to make sure everyone is logged in.

Google docs was fun to work in and see how the group members put in information at the same time. Sometimes it wasn't possible to edit and a popup alert box appeared. Had to write the same information again. We concluded that it would be best to update in an own document and cut and paste to the live doc for best work flow with less misstakes.