Imagine a world without signs > CHAOS

        Imagine when you are in a restaurant, and suddenly you feel of an emergency to go to the bathroom, you stop at the two bathroom doors and found there isn’t a sign to indicate which door leads to your gender’s bathroom. What will you do now? You can either go ask a waiter for help, or take a 50/50 chance. This example shows us that we heavily depend on sign around us; and without them, it might lead to embarrassment, or even danger. Therefore, signs around us are media that guide us to awareness, construct orders and provide directions.

        If there are no signs around us, imagine all the danger that we might face. Traffic signs are clearly one of the good examples. If traffic lights, and all the speed sign, stop sign, one way sign and caution sign were never invented, the consequence would be a terrible chaos on the road. Everyone would be driving the way they want, which will definitely causes a sky high driving accident rate, not to mention the accident rate that United States is already having. These signs that seem to annoy you while you are driving are actually creating orders to keep us safe and sound. Sign does not only guide you to awareness, it also provides directions so that you can arrive to your destination.

        McLuhan would describe this as a “hot” medium because sign does not require a person to put a lot of effort in order to understand the content that the medium is transferring. When we see a no smoking sign, we immediately understand that this place does not allow smoking, creating awareness for the people who are not familiar with the environment that he or she is in. Although sign seems to be such an unnoticeable object, it has a tremendous impact on our society.