McLuhan was a media theorist who believed that media are extensions of human senses and faculties. His most famous work explored how the characteristics of different media shape society. Technological determinism asserts that a society's technology drives cultural and social changes. The movie Inception depicts dreams as extensions of the subconscious mind. Advanced technology allows people to share and explore dreams on deeper levels. Totems help distinguish reality from dreams, while projections are extensions of the subconscious that respond violently if threatened. The film shows how technology can be used to overcome limitations like death but may also risk becoming trapped in endless dreams.

1. Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication, Pune
Communication Theories
-Prof. Ruchi Jaggi
Technological Determinism
Inception
Submitted By:
Yasmin Hussain
144
MBA
2011-2013

2. Marshall McLuhan
Herbert Marshall McLuhan, (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian
educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a
rhetorician, and a communication theorist. McLuhan's work is viewed as one of the
cornerstones of the study of media theory, as well as having practical applications in the
advertising and television industries.
McLuhan's most widely known work, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
(1964), is a pioneering study in media theory. McLuhan's insight was that a medium
affects the society in which it plays a role not by the content delivered over the medium,
but by the characteristics of the medium itself.
McLuhan believes that the media is so realistic, that it becomes a tool that "intensifies"
our senses and our bodily organs. "
All media are extensions of some human faculty. For example, clothes is an extension
of the skin, wheel is an extension of the foot, and computer circuitry is an extension of
the human central nervous system.
An extension of our body and/or of our senses occurs when we extend the reach of our
embodied mind beyond our natural limited means.
Technological Determinism
Technological determinism is a reductionist theory that presumes that a society's
technology drives the development of its social structure and cultural values.
Most interpretations of technological determinism share two general ideas:
• the development of technology itself follows a predictable, traceable path largely
beyond cultural or political influence, and
• technology in turn has "effects" on societies that are inherent, rather than socially
conditioned or produced because that society organizes itself to support and further
develop a technology once it has been introduced.
Inception

3. Our dreams are an extension of our subconscious mind. The movie Inception takes
this concept to further level by showing deeper levels of dreams, like, a dream within a
dream and so on. The movie is about pushing a dream within a dream, and each time it
is a different person’s dream.
The machine is the technology that is used to achieve this concept of shared dreaming
and going to different levels of dreaming. It is a facilitator; an intermediary between the
reality and the dreams to ensure the technological determinism.
To come back to the real world, a kick is used. By upsetting the equilibrium of a
dreamer, you can wake them from a dream and return them to reality. If you’re
dreaming a dream within a dream, each level of the dream has to have its own kick in
order for the one on the higher level to work. Like in the movie, Arthur blew up the
elevator to wake them up from the snow fortress dream so that the car hitting the water
could then wake them up. The music was also used as the kick which was an extension
for the ears.
People in their dreams are blinded by such technology and begin to lose a sense of the
real world. To differentiate dreams from reality, the totem comes into play. It is an
object constructed by someone who plans to invade a dream, whose exact weight and
composition only they know. This totem can be used to help verify whether you’re in
the real world, or the dream world. Cobb uses a top which, when spun inside a dream
never stops spinning. Ariadne constructs a chess piece, which she plans to use as her
totem.
Then comes the concept of inception, the art of entering dreams and planting an idea in
someone’s head. Like, Cobb planted an idea in Mal’s head that their world is not real,
which eventually led to her suicide.

4. This can happen at very deep level of dreaming. When they went deeper, they used the
machine, music, kick and the totem repeatedly. These can be seen as further extensions
of humans.
Through the power of technology, people could build up their own world in their
dreams as if they were God. For instance, Cobb and Mal build up their own dream
world and lived there for 50 years. And the architect, Ariadne constructs all the dreams
later in the movie.
Also, through this power, Cobb could be with his dead wife Mal, in his dreams as she
was a projection of his subconscious. A projection is a person created by the
subconscious mind of the subject. Projections are not real. They function like white
blood cells and should the subject begin to realize that the dream he's in, isn't his.
Projections respond violently and attempt to seek out the dreamer and destroy him. A
projection can be seen as an extension of the subconscious mind again.
Also, technology can serve as a means of overcoming death. In the movie, dying in a
dream was just waking up from a dream and not actually dying. Technology allowed
them to overcome death.
Dreamers could stay longer in a dream and go deeper by the use of sedatives. But when
they go deeper through sedatives; they may end up in a limbo. It’s a place where time
runs quickly and people seem to forget reality. In the starting scene of the movie, Satio
and Cobb are in the limbo.
Conclusion
This film has used the concept/ idea that there is a special kind of relationship between
humans and technology, that goes far beyond that of simply “a person” who uses “a
thing” for his/ her own purposes and desires. Inception, exemplified such a concept by
depicting dreams as an extension of our subconscious mind.
A human utilizing a technology for his/her own purposes and desires is only but the
beginning of it all. A time comes when the technology overpowers the man.