"The electric light escapes attention as a communication medium just because it has no 'content.' And it makes it invaluable instance of how people fail to study media at all." This quote comes from Marshall McLuhan's book - Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Although his focus was on 'old' media, his idea can be easily translated to new media too.
Is there any medium without the content? Focusing on this question for quite some time I started to think that such thing is impossible in new media. However, at one point I realized that I was thinking only about the Internet and things that are accessible thanks to it (blogs, online games, social networks, etc.). But we need a device to be able to use the Internet... And then the idea of computer having no content of its own came to my mind.
Nowadays, when our PC isn't connected to the Internet it seems to be useless. There are not many activities one can do without the precious cyperspace. Checking e-mail? Not possible. Reading news? No. Maybe at least talking to friends online? Not a chance. There are also games, right? Computer doesn't really provide them. They aren't present on your hard drive on the spot, you need to put them there. And often the case is that despite the fact one has their game on a CD, the Internet connection is necessary for playing. And if not necessary, there are some extras available online or after registering the game. Even working with the use of the computer involves installing a software. Of course there are some text editors provided but their quality is poor in comparision to the professional ones.
This example may be not as obvious and as clear as McLuhan's but there is definitely something to it. Let everybody ask themselves a question : "Don't I feel powerless without the Internet on my computer?" I'm sure that in most cases the answer is positive.
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