I have been teaching a class called Technology and Society for many years now. It's weird to think I've been teaching anything for many years, but nonetheless I have. And if you come from my world teaching a technology class means that everyone will read both Heidegger and Marshall McLuhan among many others - others who have recently included people as diverse as Paul Virilio, Matt Taibbi, Hubert Dreyfus and Ray Kurzweil. I love them all.
Marshall McLuhan is famous for claiming that the "medium is the message," meaning that form dictates content. The television is not built for subtlety; however, the book-length form is built for this exact quality. McLuhan's simple example was the light bulb - it has no content, i.e., one doesn't tune a light bulb to a particular show. However, the light bulb creates what is thought of as "night life." Similarly the car creates the suburbs and probably raises the rate of teenage pregnancy - I can't imagine teenager's doing much on the back of a horse, but who knows, and with the internet I'm terrified to pursue this question. So we'll just assume, well, assume whatever you wish.
So is the medium the message? Well, sort of. Though, this statement has become more complicated for me as we've become increasingly more hyper in our environments. Some of my favorite technological thinkers appear on a website Ctheory.net. Certainly it's more complicated to critique technology while relying on the web for content-dispersal. Paul Virilio and Jean Baudrillard (among others)have many wonderful writings on this particular site.
Also, television - which was attacked harshly by one of McLuhan's student-disciples, Neil Postman, in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death - has gotten pretty slick in places. Postman argues that television can do nothing but be entertaining non-sense, and is actually best when it attempts only this. Postman thinks television is most dangerous when it attempts to be serious. I almost agree - though I would say that a show like The Wire is incredibly, seductively entertaining while also being as good and as deep and as meaningful as any novel I've recently read, with the exception of House of Leaves and Wittgenstein's Mistress by Mark Z Danielweski and David Markson respectively.
It feels to me - as much as I want to make this big statement - that what I really am is confused. I think youtube can be great. I can literally watch my favorite philosophers of today give lectures. I am not forced to watch kittens be cute, which they are for sure. Similarly I can read books by people who I am sure would barely qualify as literate to anybody I consider literate. I'll let everyone fill in that blank for themselves as that's not the argument I wish to pursue.
But my question, now that I've came to it is this - in our vast landscape, how do we think about Marshall McLuhan's statement today? Is the medium the message? Is this a wonderful ontological revelation or another attempt to separate form and content? I don't know.
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ReplyDeleteIt seems McLuhan was a visionary in predicting the trans-formative effects of computers and, specifically the Internet on human dynamics. His ideas on the "Global Village" are strikingly accurate when thinking about our modern world- How people are, in some regards, more connected through technology. I can log into Facebook and see pictures of friends I haven't physically seen in close to a decade or, like you mention, find videos of just about anything on Youtube.
ReplyDeleteLike with anything that changes dynamics, there is another "side". While we are now more empowered to reach out and share ideas and stay connected and find music and read articles and so on, we are increasingly less "physically" interactive. Tapping on smart phones and typing on keyboards is replacing vocal conversations. I suppose in this way McLuhan is absolutely correct when he changed his wording: "Media is the 'Massage'" to mean that a medium becomes an extension of our senses. I'm commenting on your blog, but we are still having a discussion, like when we were 20 years old sharing coffee in Boone.
Sorry, I just realized I went slightly off topic with my last post. To address the thought that "form dictates content". I believe this statement carries more truth when talking about older forms of media, to which we are a more passive audience. Sure, we can change the radio station or the TV channel, but the content is still dictated by medium and, more importantly, the ratings. The uniqueness of the Internet, is that we can choose the content(and contribute). This kinda blurs the line between form and content.
ReplyDeleteI think the response was pretty on topic - I think the interesting thing to explore would be the similarities and differences between drinking coffee and responding to each other and the environment we were sharing and responding back and forth in a hypertextual environment. Communication can work in this medium - sometimes it works very well, but it's harder - it takes more generosity.
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