My Media Matrix

Going off of the media matrix that I created in class a few weeks ago, I would say that media (if defined as a technology) is an integral part of my life. When creating my matrix, I remember being unsure what exactly what I was supposed to do and what my branches would look like. However, after getting started (and looking around at what everyone else was doing) it was hard to stop making branches. Once I started seeing things like my planner (which is not digital) as a medium, I realized that McLuhan's famous phrase "the medium is the message" could be applied to much more than songs on the radio and commercials on TV. Since then, I have been more conscious of the technologies in my life that make things easier for me as being a type of media. (For example, I now see my car as a medium...)
This way of looking at things has also made me think about how these diverse types of media shape my life. Like Jennie mentioned in her blog post, sometimes I feel like my email account rules my life; I will have to go out of my way to turn off my computer and not check my email for an evening (but only for an evening...my OCD won't let me not check it for longer than that). Now that I have a laptop (that weighs under 15 pounds), the physical act of carrying around the center of everything I do also works to remind me of just how integral technology is in my life.