The tetrad is a framework for analyzing the effects of any medium or technology. It proposes that every medium enhances something, retrieves something from the past, reverses into something opposite, and obsoletes something. The document provides examples of how to apply the tetrad to analyze the effects of technologies like the VCR, personal digital music devices, blogs, eBay, customer service, and gamification in education. It examines what each technology enhances, retrieves, reverses into, and makes obsolete based on McLuhan's laws of media.

1. Decision Making
with McLuhan’s Tetrad

3. McLuhan’s Tetrad (or “laws of media”)
The tetrad is a heuristic (thinking/learning) device that can be very useful in
analyzing, and ultimately graphically representing the four laws (or law-like effects)
of any medium or technology. According to the tetrad, every medium:
-Enhances (extends or intensifies) something/s;
-Reverses (or transcends itself), “flips into” something new;
-Retrieves (or brings something back from the past); and
-Obsolesces (or renders something less useful).

4. RETRIEVES
Calls back experiences,
patterns and media
from the past.
See McLuhan and McLuhan (1988) Laws of Media
OBSOLESCES
Makes an older
medium, process
or pattern obsolete
REVERSES
When pushed to
extremes, flips into
opposite intention.
Long-Term, global
consequence.
ENHANCES
Extends, amplifies,
focuses some human
capacity or proclivity –
body part, previous
medium, emotion…

5. "What does the artifact ENHANCE or
intensify or make possible or
accelerate? This can be asked
concerning a wastebasket, a
painting, a steamroller, or a zipper, as
well as about a proposition in Euclid
or a law of physics. It can be asked
about any word or phrase in any
language."
"When pushed to the limits of its
potential (another complementary
action), the new form will tend to
reverse what had been its original
characteristics. What is the REVERSAL
potential of the new form?"
"What recurrence or RETRIEVAL of
earlier actions and services is
brought into play simultaneously by
the new form? What older,
previously obsolesced ground is
brought back and inheres in the new
form?"
"If some aspect of a situation is
enlarged or enhanced,
simultaneously the old condition
or unenhanced situation is
displaced thereby. What is
pushed aside or OBSOLESCED by
the new 'organ'?"
(from McLuhan's Laws of Media: The New Science, 1988)

10. VCR

12. ENH
RET
REV
OBS
The PersonalDigitalMusicDevice
privacy
autonomy, libertarianism,
and ego
solipsism
Privacy reverses into civic
“free rider” scenario. Individual
becomes “social minimizer.”
the “Agora”
civic sphere dissolves
out of public space
world reverses into virtual reality:
“toy domain”
The physical space the PDMD user moves through
reverses into a kind of “toy domain” or custom-
made un-reality (ego-centrism).
aesthetic experience
“All art [life], aspires toward the
condition of music”
the citizen
Feelings of privacy, individual autonomy and control
(over: sound, space, emotion, time, etc) enhanced
by near instantaneous programmability of soundscape.
Life can now have context-specific theme songs
(began with Walkman, enhanced with discman).
“ planned spontanteity: ”
social displacement: “all alone together” but
nowhere in particular. People disappear as
interacting subjects. “I am not „there‟.”
random/shuffle feature and massive memory
capacities in PDMDs allow for controlled
de-control of the emotions.
part of tribal ecological sense
(spontaneous emotional response):
elation, anger, calm, trauma, paranoia
“it really makes me feel alive”
social interaction
Autonomy reverses into
Automatony. “I‟m an
emotional mannequin”)
anthropomorphism:
“my iPod proved that it is the smartest person
I know, and that it has a sick sense of humor
and impeccable taste in women.”
… the album
hearing, listening to, talking with strangers
polity collapses
democracy

13. ENH
RET
REV
OBS
access to entire planet:
everybody,
everywhere*
via hotlinks:
„diffusion‟ broadcasting:
the multilocational
tribal ecological sensibility:
trauma, paranoia*
text-based information
(the rational, the lineal):
Euclidean space,
Western time-space*
Global Village Story-Time~*:
World reverses into script: audience as
story-tellers participating in their own audience participation
perfect memory,
intellect:
always accessible,
in full
control anarchy and fundamentalism via the
overlay of hidden bureaucracy**
precision,
editing, grammar, spelling,
accountability,
formal vetting process
The News Blog
(technological level)
via permalinks,
reverse-time
sequence:
“the latest is
the greatest”
History is what We make it.
Blog as tribal memory
bank***
Top-down, corporate, centralized news
hierarchy (and its apparatus‟) may implode,
invert, and ultimately scatter.
“Orality” (secondary):
pamphleteers:
not pamphlets themselves,
but the people and the act
of pamphleteering
Anarchism (since the Net is non-hierarchical) and
Fundamentalism (as counter-reactions against the
chaotic surplus of information on the Net), flips into
anarchy/decentralized democracy or a surveillance/
police state: the technology itself provides the
possibility for both options.
textual information reverses into imagery:
Internet tends toward representations that exploit the
widest-bandwidth capacity (i.e. audio-visual, motion,
interactive multi-media).
Network News

14. ENH
RET
REV
OBS
old modernist theory
(new myth) of stable
Identities/Selves
(consistent, coherent behavior)
Oral-tribal awareness
(“nosey neighbor”?) communal
awareness as “point of view”
self-consciousness,
individualism (feeling of), the ego:
“this is about me,” rigid distinction between
private, inner life and public persona;
reifies Cartesian split.
Community (via Feedback mechanism) flips into
“Panoptic Prison” individual users become security nodes
eBay
modernity, rationality
Fluid Identity (of the “Post-Modern”)
(being human)
“Machiavellian machinations” S.O.P.
(formalizes [im]morality of the marketplace)
Primacy of Word
language as
aesthetic
object
“They”
detachment,
objectivity*
Community/Small Town Civility
“We believe people are basically good”
role of text:
self-representation
“legible body”
task-orientation in
communication (from I-thou
to I-it; other as means to end).
sincerity (connection between thought and action).
Happy Hegemony (“escape from freedom”)
Hyper-pseudo-civility via
patronizing double-speak
(“can be liberal on condition though”)
Holistic or ”Analogic” interaction
dickering
virtual “third place”
civility
digital dissimulation
reputation management as
socio-pathy
subjectivity
customer Service
practical function of Niceties
( “social lubricant” becomes Content)
a reputation
“We”
“campaign mode”

15. ENH
RET
REV
OBS
the Village*
playing/working in groups
“Sesame Street” (school is fun)
Small Town Rep., “Publicy”
(achievements, leader boards, badges)
Positive Affect&Effect of
Knowledge Differential
(from Geeks to Gods)
Tribal sense,* emotional response
knowin’ what’s goin’ on,
gossip, paranoia*
“Tom Sawyer Effect”
“an eye for an ear”
Skinner Beasts
Happy Hour *See McLuhan and McLuhan (1988) tetrads for:
radio, computer, credit card, etc…
privacy, security
attention spans (lectures)
The Word: books, libraries, bookstores,
traditional literacy (Left Hemisphere)
“Mid-terms” & “Finals” (importance of)
Point of View,
sense of place,
schools and universities
Process Orientation
Gamification
(in education)
Computer
Work:
carpal tunnel,
eye strain,
back trouble…
Transactions… Business:
Gold Mining (extrinsic motive)
Cheat Codes, Cheats (means to end)
Military-Industrial Recruitment Mechanism,
Content for The Commodity Complex
Control via hidden bureaucracy embedded in interface
(Skinner Beasts)
Multi-media …Imagery (limited Pattern Recog. -Right Hemi)
Learning as Game (Infantilization of the Academy)
FLOW,
Interest,
Incentive,
Intrinsic motive,
End in itself
“school is cool”
Education (access to)
Practical Effectiveness (output)
of the Academy
Intentionality*
Self-expression, fun
Learning as Game
Multi-modality,
role of computers, Feedback