Media as Meaning

I'm surprised that chapter 7 didn't come earlier in the book, since it seems to me a fundamental principle that the means of creating a message, whether visual or verbal, affect the meaning of the message. Kress and Van Leeuwen mention three major classes of production technologies: technologies of the hand, technologies of the eye, and synthesizing technologies (p. 217). They also mention that we may be getting back to using the body. There is already technology for dictating into a computer instead of typing and using the hand instead of buttons, e.g. the iphone.

When I was in elementary school we spent several years learning to write in cursive, but I never use this medium today except when signing forms. I immediately reverted back to print once I was allowed, and now my main means of written communication involves typing. But perhaps in the future typing will become as obsolete as cursive writing as we get to the point where dictating into a computer becomes commonplace. There will probably be new production technologies that we can't even imagine today. I think it's important not to get too accustomed to one type of technology; instead we have to keep in mind that technology is constantly changing and may be cyclical (as we are using technologies of the hand in conjunction with computers.)