Tetrad Pop

The 'Tetrad' is a device--a game, really--devised by Marshall McLuhan which offers "in testable and falsifiable form...observations about the structure and nature of things man makes and does." The Tetrad is a four-sided question:

1. What does the artifact enhance or intensify or make possible or accelerate? 2. What does it obsolesce or push aside? 3. What does it retrieve? 4. When pushed to its limit, what does it reverse or flip into?

Two examples from McLuhan himself: 1) The car: Enhanced privacy ("going outside to be alone"), obsolesced the horse-and-buggy, retrieved the knight-in-shining armour, and flipped into traffic jams. 2) Booze: Enhances aggressiveness or sociability, retrieves group sentiment and songs, obsolesces private inhibitions, and results in depression and hangover.

Here I offer two pop tetrads:

1) The Electric Guitar a) Via amplification, enhanced male aggression in song. Along with Elvis's Pelvis, brought the phallus out of the closet. b) Obsolesced the dominance of strings and horn sections--soothing adult music--in pop. c) Retrieved image of the swashbuckler--man and his sword. d) Flipped into feedback and musical violence (Hendrix, Velvets, etc.). 2) Phil Spector a) Pop turns into "Art" (almost), and the studio becomes an even more central figure; a "man for all seasons" (producer/songwriter/svengali/mogul/genius/weirdo). b) Obsolesced the traditional cigar-chomping, middle-aged record mogul--the "tycoon of teen" (Tom Wolfe). c) Retrieved Wagner ("little symphonies for the kids"), and concept of the self-made man. d) Flipped into: megalomania, solipsism, and bombast.

Okay, obviously, Phil Spector is not a "technology," strictly speaking, but I think you can apply just about anything you want here. And definitely, you could argue with some of the points in my examples: the 'obsolescence' category, in particular, is problematic. I'm not even sure these tetrads are all that useful. But I'm interested in seeing what anyone else can come up with.