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Sat 23 May, 2009 08:24 am
Marshall McLuhan is a figure I've never seen discussed on these forums (since I joined, anyway). I'd like to know first of all what people here make of him and how they assess his importance and relevance.
One of McLuhan's theories is that with the advent of print we moved from a social oral/aural tradition to an individualist visual tradition. Information has not been prominently exchanged by open dialogue between two or more persons for many centuries; instead it is a private, structured and linear process. McLuhan believed that the means of communication effect the way people think, they way they relate themselves to the world, and the modes of communication they are open to. Print causes people to want information in the form of print, setting up a positive feedback loop.
With the advent of electronic means of communication, such as radio and TV, McLuhan believed that there would be a shift from print back to oral/aural traditions. He predicted correctly that information would be accessed in a network and termed the phrase 'surfing' as the activity of accessing this information, decades before the world wide web was established. Believing that media are additional or extensions of our senses, and so extensions of us, his view was that this more dynamic, less structured, more open mode of communication would connect people again and would break down our secure individualism - he called it the global village.
He also predicted the global theatre. I'm less familiar with this, but by my understanding he thought entertainment or distraction was largely the drive of modern man and so the provision of this distraction would be omnipresent - it would be the global theatre which would drive and contain the global village rather than vice versa. Again, he seems to have hit the nail on the head. There have been several media of distraction dominating our lives for some time, and they are tending to converge to a single medium. We is doubtless not far off having all of our entertainment needs met by a sinle standardised telecommunications infrastructure.
The one prediction that doesn't seem to have quite worked out yet is the transition back from print to oral/aural traditions. The web is still, largely, a source of reading material, a huge electronic library, rather than a speaking-listening medium like the telephone. But McLuhan did also predict a resistance to the loss of individualism print affords us analogous to the resistance to the increase of print in its heyday where there were plenty of moral objections to its rapid spread and rise in popularity. One manifestation of this individualism in the web is e-mail, a detached method of indirect communication whereby one may not only consider and rewrite the content but also send with a feeling of anonymity. The real object of communication is the subject, the writer. To illustrate, have you ever (or ever known someone who has...) written an e-mail with content that you would not communicate orally face-to-face, or even on the telephone? That is an aspect of the individualism that e-mail protects.
But perhaps we are already starting to see the end of this individualism. I for my part send and receive far fewer e-mails than some years back. There are obvious reasons for this. One is the advent of networking sites such as MyFace, sorry, Facebook which, by nature of being a social networking site, is much less individualistic than e-mail, blogs and Spacebook, sorry, MySpace. People are on-line, connected to you right now. Further, the communication, while still visual, is not plainly print-based but also image-based - it is a sharing site. MSN Messenger had the connectedness and instanteneity of Facebook much earlier, but was purely print and general was private. I've had Messenger conversations as no-holds-barred as e-mail conversations, but I've never had a slagging match with someone on Facebook because it is open to others - it is not private and individualistic.
Another cause of the wane of the e-mail is the text message and, to a lesser extent, free minutes. Mobile/cell phones bring connectivity in a different way. Individual messages are still private, but you are instantly reachable by and may instantly reach anyone you know. Text messages suffer still from the same anonymity as e-mail, but where an e-mail conversation is essentially a series of monologues spanning weeks, perhaps months, text messages lose their appeal for anything other than minimalist communication - where a text conversation has gone on too long, I at least tend to make the phone call. This does not happen with e-mail, or Messenger. Instant connectivity with an oral/aural default mode...
Of course, the new-ish and biggest threat to e-mail is Skype - essentially communication by live TV. The emphases here really is on the oral/aural, with the visual largely in support of verbal communication. Skype is perhaps the first true sign of the global village as McLuhan envisaged it: total connectivity by primarily oral/aural means.
And yet we hang on to our print. Most information on line is still in this form. One factor that McLuhan possibly didn't consider is the storage and transportability of information: print is cheap and easy to convey; speach is not. We've by and large overcome these technological hurdles - and yet print remains by far the most popular form of communication. I think this is a sign that McLuhan was right - we still think in terms of gathering information via this mode, so we seek it, demand it over other modes. As alternatives become more feasible and available, the next generation will grasp these with more enthusiasm than we do, and we will see a push toward expressing and explaining things orally with visual accompaniment. Wikipedia will become collection of documentaries; Philosophy Forum an arena of recorded live debate.
@Bones-O,
Oh, come on! 23 views, 1 Thanks and not a single response?!? Is it because I spelled 'speech' 'speach'? Should I make this more readable or is it just not interesting?
@Bones-O,
I actually enjoy Marshall McLuhan's work quite a bit. I took a few communication classes a few years back, and my professor had us read selections from some of his major works.
I grew up with books, and the Internet was just beginning to be ubiquitous back when I was in high school, but I would never be able to give them up for their electronic versions. A book is real, can be taken out into the organic world, and it does not require any sort of power source to use. I think this is one of the reasons why print media will never go away. It allows people to escape the electronic media to which so many people are tethered. I do see signs though of future generations ditching print media though. The more and more electronics provide media and interconnectedness, the less people feel the need to be in the solitude that a book requires. Children today have grown up in a world in which electronics dominate civilization. Thus, I wonder what this means for the future. It seems that young people have lost their sense of individualism through the abandonment of real solitude through how the connect with others through electronic media.
@Theaetetus,
Woohoo! Thanks The. You'll have to accept my written thanks because I've run out of pushbutton Thanks to give.
Theaetetus wrote:
I grew up with books, and the Internet was just beginning to be ubiquitous back when I was in high school, but I would never be able to give them up for their electronic versions. A book is real, can be taken out into the organic world, and it does not require any sort of power source to use. I think this is one of the reasons why print media will never go away.
I think McLuhan, though, would argue that print has made you love print. In his view it seems that direct oral/aural dialogue between several people is the more 'real' mode of communication. Private possession (even if not ownership) or a book or journal might be part of the individualism we covet. But, I do agree. The electronic form
of print itself is unattractive. And yet we spend so much of our time away from computers watching television, so I suppose it must have some attraction.
Theaetetus wrote:Thus, I wonder what this means for the future. It seems that young people have lost their sense of individualism through the abandonment of real solitude through how the connect with others through electronic media.
I mentioned this in the OP too. We will resist an entire shift from print to electronics, but the prevalence of electronics will eventually make it more attractive than print to future generations. But at the moment the electronic medium of the WWW is mostly of electronic print content, presumably because it was built by people like us.
I'm wondering, if McLuhan was right, what the internet will look like in, say, 25 years time. While I can see the end to the presentation of content as per Wikipedia and this forum, I can't quite see it dominated by primarily oral/aural content.
It seems to me that McLuhan was perhaps basing his vision on what television was in his time: primarily oral/aural with the visual more of an aide. But TV pushed the visual over the aural, and the sound is much more for effect than communication.
@Bones-O,
This is just common sense. You know as the new age arises that younger generations like my own are going to follow, that's just the way life works. I read a lot because i don't see the need for electronics all the time, most of the time for debate such as here it is great. In the future unless something happens with electricity, the newer generations will follow this trend, which i see likely to take place. No matter what area or region of the world you're in, you are exposed to new technologies.
@Paggos,
Paggos wrote:This is just common sense. You know as the new age arises that younger generations like my own are going to follow, that's just the way life works. I read a lot because i don't see the need for electronics all the time, most of the time for debate such as here it is great. In the future unless something happens with electricity, the newer generations will follow this trend, which i see likely to take place. No matter what area or region of the world you're in, you are exposed to new technologies.
That's part of it. McLuhan laid down a theory that you predict where it would go with cycles. A technology that opens up the possibility of one mode of discourse will give rise to technologies that promote that mode above all others, resulting in communication very focussed on, say, one sense or way of thinking. Pushing that further is to add new modes, much as the logical follow-up to radio was television. Early television was very oral/aural, which is why I think McLuhan thought the global village would ultimately be based on that mode of communication. However even within McLuhan's own method you could see that what was going to be accentuated was the visual and non-dialectic aural - i.e. it was going to go the way of cinema. And this is generally the way it went after McLuhan.
The question is, what mode does the www (re-)introduce that is likely to be focussed on? In its initial phase it's almost entirely print-based. But the web is used more and more for connecting people. Web 2.0 is, essentially, recorded free and open exchange.
@Bones-O,
Bones-O!;65109 wrote:That's part of it. McLuhan laid down a theory that you predict where it would go with cycles. A technology that opens up the possibility of one mode of discourse will give rise to technologies that promote that mode above all others, resulting in communication very focussed on, say, one sense or way of thinking. Pushing that further is to add new modes, much as the logical follow-up to radio was television. Early television was very oral/aural, which is why I think McLuhan thought the global village would ultimately be based on that mode of communication. However even within McLuhan's own method you could see that what was going to be accentuated was the visual and non-dialectic aural - i.e. it was going to go the way of cinema. And this is generally the way it went after McLuhan.
The question is, what mode does the www (re-)introduce that is likely to be focussed on? In its initial phase it's almost entirely print-based. But the web is used more and more for connecting people. Web 2.0 is, essentially, recorded free and open exchange.
It does reintroduce education for those who have not-so-good schooling. It opens doors but like anything it can be abused. To be connected isn't really a bad thing, though like i said, it can be taken negatively, and have negative criticism. The positives though, overwhelm the negative, you can speak to friends in war, stay in contact with your online friends, and learn. :a-ok:
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