“I don’t necessarily agree with everything I say. “ October 9, 2009

Is a blog an extension of a journal?  Is text messaging the extension of a phone call?  Is microblogging the hybrid of the blog and a text message?  If so, what do these mediums amputate and what do they extend?

The forms of communication mentioned above are ways in which we tell narratives in our electronic global village.  W. Terrance Gordon notes that McLuhan starting point in media analysis “is always the individual, because media are defined as technological extensions of the body.”  The human body is a social animal and we feel the need to relate to others and by telling our narratives, we can connect and build communities.  The introduction of digital communication has proved many ramifications on culture and society, though not necessarily all good or bad.  Through a blog, we can read an unknown person’s intimate thoughts, we can instantly tell someone we are thinking of them without saying a word, or let a whole group of people know what’s on our mind.  These mediums are our message – we are telling the world we have something to say, we can say in instantaneously, and we can say it so the whole world hears it – we are digitally enhanced.

With all the immediacy in which we can – and do – tell narratives, there is something that may be detaching us (or amputating as McLuhan would say) from realistically connecting with each other.  These brief moments in which we share narratives are a cool medium; that is to say there is much we can fill in and sometime that we need to fill in to understand what is being said.  Sitting down at the computer to read a blog, as insightful as it may be, provides little information about the author or the subject.  Yet this medium can instantly become a hot medium when we read the ‘about me’ section, click on a link, view a picture, or leave a note.  The line between virtually and actually communicating in the digital age is blurred.  I don’t know if this is good or bad or nondescript.

It remains, though, that the way we communicate has changed drastically in the last 20, let alone 200 years.  John Carey has stated that we can look the culture of communication is just as much through the ritual model as a transmission model.  Communication is just as interesting when we think about the technology that we use – packets, sound waves, cyberspace – but the routines and procedures and what becomes of storytelling and traditions is what is behind the sociology of communication – and what makes the history of how we got to this point so damn interesting. As McLuhan notes, it is “what drives home the message.”

The Tetrad Questions

McLuhan October 8, 2009

I first read McLuhan back in the late 60′s.  I didn’t understand him them and I don’t know.  I do get the idea of extensions as that is easy to visualize, but the amputation is much harder for me to see.  I both agree and  disagree with some of his ideas.  For instance, the concept of the world as a global village is inescapably on its way into being here – but there are plenty of third world countries where there is no electricity – hence no connection to the rest of the world in a digital way, no way to charge a mobile phone or a laptop.  On page 8, he states that “Examination of man . . . beginning with the never-explained numbness that each extension brings about in the individual and society.”  It is this statement that I agree the most with.  Society’s numbness (blindness) to the well-being and/or suffering of others is obvious in the recent headlines.  The greed of the Enron executives, Bernie Madoff and others; the blindness of the world to the genocide being carried on in places like Rwanda; and the gang violence in out schools are all examples of this numbness or lack of caring.  This gets to the point where I disagree with him or at least the editor of the first edition. The editor’s quote on page 4 (“the aspiration of out time for wholeness, empathy, and depth of awareness,” ) indicates that McLuhan believes we are headed for a social utopia when nothing is further from the truth as past events have shown.

McLuhan’s analysis of De Tocqueville actually made sense to me, as he says that the print media made all Frenchmen feel equal, while the English had no such uniformity or continuity.  English aristocracy had everything to do with genealogy and nothing to do with education.  The French Revolution “was carried out by the new literati and lawyers.” (page 27)  This is a great example of extension, but I still fail to see how the amputation (pun intended) by the new media occurred.  Of course, this example speaks to the historian in me, but I still fail to understand the second concept.  At the end of the Chapter 1, he uses the examples of Pope Pious XII words about the stability of man’s inner life and his capacity of his reaction to the techniques of communication and ., G. Jung’s comments on how slavery in Rome unconsciously infected all the citizens with slave psychology.  It is this last example that helps me understand the two way street of societal influences, but I do not see the use of any media in the sociology of Roman culture.   I do not think the point of the media is the message has been made.

How the Medium Invents Our World October 7, 2009

I was reading this text from 1964, where its contents are just as relevant almost fifty years later, even the usage of “hot” and “cool,” large sunglasses are popular, and the Beatles are still on the charts (wait, is it still 1964, because I am so not giving up  my cellphone and i-Pod), where ‘message is the medium’ means a “totally new environment has been created.”  IBM, who is still apologizing for their role in World War II, stated, “in the electronic age, data classification yields to pattern recognition.” In other words, the content is the same throughout the century, it is just how we are subjected to it, be it via play, a Revolutionary pamphlet, a novel that helps incite a Civil War (Uncle Tom’s Cabin) misinterpreted Halloween radio broadcast about aliens, 24-hour cable news, or having advertising beamed directly into sleeping heads (not available just yet, but tests are being done).  It is what we use to view the message, whether it is posted on a parchment attached by arrow on a tree or a holographic billboard (again, they are working on it, tests have been done),  the content of the  message doesn’t change all that much. The medium just builds upon itself, improving what will come next.

Ever-Changing Mediums and Messages October 7, 2009

Well, hooray for me, I actually understood McLuhan’s text a lot better than I did the Watts/Wacker text from last week.  It’s either because all four chapters (Editor’s Intro, Intro to the First Edition/Second Edition, and Chapter 1) helped break the context down without losing any of the text’s essence, or I’m not as lost and helpless as I think I am (the jury may still be out, though).

I found one point interesting as it relates to prior discussions.  In the Editor’s Introduction, W. Terrence Gordon stated:

“McLuhan teaches that a new medium typically does not displace or replace another as much as it complicates its operation.” (xv)

As we’ve talked about in class, as digital technology has progressed, so have the mediums in which such technology is accessible.  The accessibility of music has gone from records (LPs) and 8-tracks (both of which my mother still has) to cassette tapes, to CDs, to digital .mp3s on a computer program.  In the past, with Napster and Limewire, the availability of music for free download caused bands (looking at you, Metallica) and their record labels to pitch a fit and claim that these programs and the people supplying the content would deal a crushing blow to the music industry and that the offenders should have to answer for their copyright infringement with outrageous fines and even jail time.  A little extreme?  Maybe, but I’m not looking to spark a raging debate on the matter.  I would argue that such programs as iTunes and Rhapsody, which are pay-for-music programs, still haven’t replaced CDs, because artists and record labels still produce them for mass consumption.  But they do offer alternatives that are more appealing to today’s technogeeks.  For one, a consumer doesn’t have to leave the comfort of his or her own home in order to purchase a CD, and most (if not all) don’t have to pay sales tax on it either.  And for two, if a consumer only likes a couple songs off a particular album, they can download those select songs and only spend a few dollars instead of spending $10+ on the entire CD.

The artists who choose to make their catalogs accessible on these programs still get a royalty percentage for each sale.  But they also bank on there being consumers who reject the digital mediums that provide music and who would prefer to have an actual, tangible CD in their possession.  From personal experience, I can say that I’m not that way when it comes to CDs.  But for me, DVDs are a different story.  More and more movie companies and TV broadcasting companies are now making their products available for download and purchase through the same vehicles that the record companies are.  So one can download Season 1 of Mad Men and see “Medium in the Message” come to life on the “small screen.”

As long as there are indie record stores, I don’t foresee LP records completely going out of style, even with the new technology that keeps being produced.  Sure, no record label makes LPs anymore, but there are ways of procuring them.  Even if one has to go on the Internet instead of using word of mouth or print advertisements in newspapers or magazines to communicate need.

The Medium is the Message October 7, 2009

The form of digital narrative as participatory, interactive, and multisensory, dates back to ancient times.  Storytelling through other media we are familiar with—television, radio, print, video—involves a limited number of senses and limited involvement.  Digital narratives impart a level of participation and interaction that we have not encountered in some time, and it is engaging us in fascinating new ways.  McLuhan states, “the new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of the global village.”  Digital storytelling engages  participation and involvement among people of very different cultures and backgrounds.

It seems we are naturally moving towards a dependence on the digital form.  We, as a culture, are favoring a more active form of entertainment, information sharing, reading, and storytelling.  We are active participants in these activities, instead of just experiencing them.  McLuhan asserted “the aspiration of our time for wholeness, empathy and depth of awareness is a natural adjunct of electrical technology.”  Because digital narrative creates interaction and involvement that is different from what we are used to, it is hard for us to fully embrace it.  However, there must have been a need for greater connection and interaction—or wholeness and depth of awareness—that served as motivation for these advancements.  Technology just evolved to fill that need we  had developed.

We are aware that technology is changing the way we interact, the way that we share our stories with others.  This new interaction moves us closer towards the concept of a “global village.”  Neither geography nor language serves as a barrier among us.  New technology enables storytelling to become more widespread and mutisensory—affecting us in more passionate and active ways.  McLuhan stated, “any technology gradually creates a totally new human environment” and “environments are not passive wrappings but active processes.”  It does feel as though a new environment is forming, and we are actively engaging in it through our day-to-day activities and interactions that seem to centered around these new, digital technologies.

The Human Medium October 7, 2009

What I found most interesting in this week’s reading is the idea that the medium through which one encounters a piece of content, not the content itself, is what has an effect on one’s understanding of that piece of content (i.e. the medium is the message). To my understanding, this would mean that if the news of President Kennedy’s assassination was presented to one person via the telephone and another via the radio, the information would have different effects on those two people. According to McLuhan, the response of one’s physical senses to the telephone versus the radio would be different. This is because the telephone provides little information, making the user work to fill in what is missing. And the radio, conversely, provides a lot of information and requires little of the user.

To me, this idea makes sense. However, I think this view is lacking the aspect of human interaction. If you received a telephone call about President Kennedy’s assassination, it would most likely be from a friend, relative, or colleague. You would probably have some sort of relationship with the person on the other end of the phone. However, if you received the information over the radio, you are most likey hearing the news from a reporter or radio personality—you’re probably receiving it from someone you don’t know on a personal level. Although the telephone and the radio are both mediums, they inevitably involve some sort of human interaction besides that of the user.  (Yes, a phone call can come from someone you don’t know and you might know the person on the radio, but in most instances this probably wouldn’t be the case.) It seems that humans play a significant role in all mediums—whether they’re hot or cold, low-definition or high-definition, new or old—and therefore have an effect on the message. If a fellow student wrote a comment on this blog, I would have one reaction to the message. If a perfect stranger wrote the exact same message, I would have a different reaction to the message. The technological medium hasn’t changed, but the human medium has, and that is precisely what would change my reaction.

Although McLuhan seems to disregard the human medium, I think he hits on some great points about the evolution of mediums. For instance, the idea that “each new technology creates an environment that is itself regarded as corrupt and degrading,” seems to be pretty accurate. Many new mediums are not fully embraced when they first come out. They often seem strange and raise concerns among people. However, once they are accepted by the masses we seem to not know how we lived without them. I think the trepidation and concern associated with new mediums is starting to dissolve. Now that we are living in the age of Web 2.0, we all seem to be interested and intrigued by new devices and applications—we seem to seek out new mediums. However, I don’t think that the new mediums turn the old ones into art forms anymore. Instead, the old forms just seem outdated.

McLuhan’s Message October 7, 2009

“The American stake in literacy as a technology or uniformity applied to every level of education, government, industry, and social life is totally threatened by the electric technology.”

He wrote this five decades ago? Eerie.

In my current line of work, I read work of and electronically converse with many members of (my own) adolescent generation.  And, to be clear, the term adolescent technically covers anyone from the age of 12 to 24 but these next few statements can and do apply to people outside of the latter age limit.  But I partially digress… Common interactions I have with people include statements such as:

what ur address is.

thx u!

Someone once said; “in life their is joy and pain.”

(And these people are applying to graduate school.) My point is McLuhan was frighteningly accurate in his prediction of electronic technology threatening literacy in various forms.  If only he were around still so that he might be able to advise Congress on improving the education system (our 15-year-olds are, waaay at the bottom of industrialized nations).  While the evolution of language and communication is natural and not necessarily a bad thing, the destruction of an entire generation’s ability to communicate clearly and in the proper context is a problem.  ”C U soon” in a space-limited text message = not a big deal.  Confusing “there, their,” and “they’re” in an academic paper, application letter, or anything in line to be judged?  Problem.

On a more positive note… I am curious to see what web 2.0 will be the content of one day.  How will digital mediums – blogs, online news, video – be grouped together as a part of a larger conversation?

Extensions and Amputations October 7, 2009

I found McLuhan’s discussion of  humans “extending” themselves in various manners to be the most thought-provoking part of the reading.  It’s an interesting way to look at something that most of us take for granted.  We get in a car and it’s an extension of our feet.  We use the snow-scraper to dig out our cars (as early as Monday, says Mr. Skilling!  Ridiculous!) and we’ve extended our hands.  For those already familiar with the concept of extension, most probably fail to consider the next step; what McLuhan dubs “amputations,” the counterpart to extensions.  This applies very handily to our discussion of web 2.0 and all that business.

Every extension in technology in turn amputates some other extension. Take Chicago for instance:  The extension of a technology like buses, cars, and even bikes, “amputated” the need to walk from Bridgeport to work in the Loop, which caused the city to develop far differently than it would have if we were left to our own feet.  In this light, then, I venture to suggest that the progression of digital storytelling, similarly, has amputated our social skills!

As McLuhan suggested was the case with other amputations, we have chosen to ignore the adverse effects they create.  Here’s an example:  Some of my girlfriends swear their Match.com profiles (an irresistible personal story they create to snare the boys) have saved them from an eternity of date-less Friday nights.  They refuse, however, to acknowledge that this technology has turned men clueless and lazy when it comes to courting them the old-fashioned way.  And it’s impaired they’re ability (or will) to flirt in public – it’s much easier to give a virtual “wink.”  

Obviously this is a light-hearted example of something that can be seen as quite the societal calamity.  We regularly praise all extensions (hooray, a new way to avoid human interaction!) and minimize all amputations (it’s not weird that I didn’t speak to anyone all weekend, is it?). McLuhan, nearly a half-century ago, knew that we do so at our own peril.

21st-century medium, 19th-century brains October 7, 2009

I thoroughly enjoy Marshall McLuhan, so I’m always nervous that when I write about him or even read one of his books on a train platform, his visage will suddenly step out from behind the “unplanned pregnancy” billboard and berate me: “you know nothing of my work.”

I liked that Terrance Gordon underlined McLuhan’s point at how evolving mechanized technology in the industrial revolution caused people to specialize and separate a relationship to mechanical technology into several small specialized tasks (Ex. the manufacturing line) However in the twenty-first century, information is increasingly synthesized and hybridized into one remarkable image rather than the nineteenth century pastiche of being fragmented and split into different specialties, but we’re making the mistake of approaching the new technologies with the same mindset.

In the (subjectively) new 24/7-coverage journalism field, there’s an increasing pressure for journalists to be able to do everything: to take information down correctly, to write the story, to self-edit and fact check, to be able to hold the camera and capture the needed footage or image and to be both articulate and artful in their execution of said tasks. Editors too are expected to know about online content and design or at least know how to access the appropriate information to work from and make the news not only orderly and informative but also aesthetic and accessible for the online user. Publishers have always needed to know about how to attract and handle advertisers. But now they need to negotiate with the same advertisers on how news content is appropriately split between the printed page and the online page. These consolidations are arguably time-efficient and monetarily efficient as they preclude the need for hiring separate help (Ex: web designer, web editor, advertising editor, five staff photographers instead of two..etc.) in a cash-strapped recession and allow news medium to break stories ahead of the competition. But we are still approaching these fields with nineteenth century brains and expectations and psyches are perhaps more easily strained under such exertion. It does not help that many universities and instructors of the old technology have not caught up with the new trends. They’re not telling students they need to know these things or make these key adjustments in their way of thinking and approaching technology and subject. They’re saying “it might help.”

Fiction writers seem to have fared better in utilizing the new medium. As writers, they are often expected to take a firm hand in both self-promotion and promotion of their creative product. In 1966, Jacqueline Susann’s eight-month, nationwide book tour for Valley of the Dolls, including self-marketing directly to regional sellers, was an anomaly in the publishing world. It also helped make her trashy little book one of the all-time bestsellers in North America. Today, authors are encouraged to create an official page, start a blog in conjunction with that page, maybe start an official forum for fans of their work to interact, make sure the page had video links and podcasts of all the author’s most recently appearances and interviews (One author who’s particularly mastered this art is Chuck Palahniuk). The purpose is to create an electronic presence (or extension) that is accessible to consumers and encourage repeat purchases of old and new products.

McLuhan laments — for half a second — that the emergence of new technologies in the electronic age eliminate the specialized professions. The addition of sound to film eliminated the industry of the movie theater orchestras. The evolution of news and entertainment presented on the internet coupled with the trend of corporate consolidation (five or six companies owning virtually all of the major newspapers in North America, as well as large-scale investments in real estate and commercial properties) and the downturn of both the stock and real estate markets has led to the death of several newspapers and uncertain futures for the rest. But the failure to adapt doesn’t lie in just our one or two specialized skills, it’s in our way of thinking and approaching the medium — coming to the table with just this one skill, ignoring all of the other tools we have and not taking time to imagine or form a proper strategy on how we can use them.

The Medium is the Message October 6, 2009

I guess I found this article a bit inaccessible: it seemed to have many conclusions without the underlying foundations, and, stretching myself, I came to only a superficial understanding.

What goes unnoticed when a new medium appears is the underlying work that goes into it. Before messages can even be sent, technology must be created, the appropriate hardware made, and an internal structure that connects transmitters and receivers. Just putting these components in place requires a radical redistribution of resources and effort, on both sides of communication. Once messages can finally be sent, there has already been a shift in media in general, that skews all proceeding communication.

If “technologies create new environments,” and the wheel “amplifies” and “amputates” the foot, what do modern technologies like the telephone and Internet amplify and amputate? The Internet creates a cyber-environment, which amplifies our voice and social selves; in turn, it must amputate something–but what?

There is current controversy over whether radiation from cell phones cause brain cancer. Perhaps, instead of looking for a radioactive cause, brain cancer stems from the “amputation” of the brain, caused by the complementary “amplification.” Cell phones account for limited face-to-face interaction, and, by keeping people constantly connected, stunt the brain’s activity in areas of spontaneous socialization and un-wired being alone. These skills, no longer necessary in a mobile world, are dying from inactivity, as the brain shuts off such dead end pathways. The real brain cancer isn’t caused by radio waves, but the dumbing down of society.

Furthermore, the contention that “the products of science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value,” is ridiculous. Even before a product is put to use, tremendous work and energy must be appropriated for its production, marketing, and implementation. A product’s intended use precedes its production, and to use it in any other way would be absurd. If the product in itself has no value, then the people who invented, designed, created, and sold the product would be good or bad, for making it available for sinister purposes.

In conclusion, the medium truly is the message, for no other reason than an elaborate network must be created to transmit a message, and the medium will not be launched unless there is significant support, both socially and materially. A medium’s strength lies in the aggregation of dollars and man-hours that its supporters donate in return for the ability to even produce messages.