Laws of media, their environments and their users: The flip of the artifact, its ground and its users

Abstract

Marshall McLuhan’s Laws of Media (LOM), which describe the evolution of artifacts in terms of enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval, and reversal (or flip) are extended to create Laws of Media Environments (LOME) and Laws of Media Users (LOMU). It is shown that the environment or ground in which the figures of the artifacts in the LOM operate and the users of those artifacts undergo, respectively, a similar evolution of enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval, and reversal paralleling McLuhan’s original LOM.