In “The Media is the Message,” McLuhan implies that we should be wary of how we are interpreting new media.  It is not a new technology itself that makes our lives any better or any worse…it is what humans do with this new technology- how they choose to implement it that that has an effect.  I found the statement “We are too prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for the sins of those who wield them” very interesting.  The idea that even things such as smallpox or firearms could theoretically be “good” if used in the “right” way.  Whether there is a “right” way to use certain things might be more of a moral question.  What is good and right for one individual might be the complete opposite for another. A more neutral example might be mobile phones.  The author might say that cell phone themselves are neither good nor bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value.

The concept of “aura”- who/what has aura I found very interesting?  Can an aura be taken away, added, or altered?  Who determines these states of aura? Which forms of media allow for an aura and which do not?  Benjamin suggests that when an actor performs for a camera, the aura of the actor and the character he plays is lost to the audience.  If this is true (I’m not sure it is), then maybe another aura is created- that of the camera and the director behind it.  There is an art in capturing the performance of the actor – one form of art capturing another.