Reading McLuhan, Understanding Media...

The first half is very literary and historical and sociological. Though the focus is ultimately on technology, he is much more concerned with the way that it functions socially. Communication technology he figures as just another advancement--and, like Mattleart later on, he is also widening the definition of communication so that the wheel is also a communication technology. Unlike other times where a broad definition seems to make the concept itself seem meaningless (simply because it is unclear that the concept, or the word for it, means anything at all once you make it that broad, cf: culture) the inclusion of somewhat unorthodox examples of communication actually make it clearer what he means. I have some reservations about the extended metaphor of "the extension of man" and this desire to have our central nervous system extend outward (presaging Haraway's cyborgs I suppose) is part of the problem to which the electronic media are the solution (along with many other comm technologies before then.) But it does seem that he has accounted for what Polanyi might call a double movement in that, as these new forms of communcation/media/culture are introduced, there is a way that society tries to protect itself--only instead of a counteraction to the social change, he describes a numbness that develops either at the site of the change or generally throughout the social body, which helps dull the convulsive shifts.

The shifts he's decribing aren't just--or even really at all--a reorganization of the social field or the modes of production, consumption, etc. but rather it is a redistribution of the sensory emphases of the subjects of the culture. He compares this to an anaesthetic that would be required for the social surgery of the implementation of a new technology which will drastically reorder the sense rations of the culture. For this discussion, he does some very interesting things, among them, his (I suppose) famous discussion of hot and cold mediums. What I find interesting in this discussion is that, while he says there is a distinction between the two, he also tries to talk about the way they are functioning in society.

"Nevertheless, it makes all the difference whether a hot medium is used in a hot or cool culture. The hot radio medium used in cool or nonliterate cultures has a violent effect, quite unlike its effect, say in England or America, where radio is felt as entertainment. A cool or low literacy culture cannot accept hot media like movies or radio as entertainment. They are, at least, as radically upsetting for them as the cool TV medium has proved to be for our high literacy world."(31)

The distinction he makes here between hot and cool cultures seems arbitrary (of course all these distinctions are). He basically means that a cool culture is more of an oral culture. But the cool media are things like books (usually) which leave something to interpretation (a description that Adorno would probably like). So these could be cool cultures because oral words leave something to the imagination but he counterposes it with the supposedly hot culture of the West which he calls "literate" meaning, it would seem, that it is centered around literature which would make it "cool" as well. To complicate this, he has a bit of a strange discussion about jazz (p.27) where he initially calls it a hot form of music but then says "Cool jazz came in quite naturally after the first impact of radio and movie had been absorbed." In other words, while the medium or form itself might have certain tendencies which might be described as "hot" or "cool" these are only relevant in reference to the context in which they are functioning--both socially and in the "media ecology."

This also means that the distinction he draws between hot and cool cultures is also somewhat nullified. A more significant observation that he makes is that

"Any invention or technology is an extension or self-amputation of our physical bodies, and such extension also demands new ratios and equilibriums among other organs and extensions of the body. There is, for example, no way of refusing to comply with the new sense ratios or sense 'closure' evoked by the TV image. But the effect of the entry of the TV image wil vary from culture to culture in accordance to the existing sense ratios in each culture." (45)

This is a better, more general way of describing this process. Instead of trying to measure the hotness or coolness of the medium or culture it is better to consider the dialectical relationship between them at any given time--realizing that there will be some sort of social effect when a new technology is introduced. However, the rest of the book seems devoted to describing the different mediums--their essences--which would seem to preclude there being a great deal of interaction with the culture or the other media in it. Though I plan to read the last sections closely, I will note that I think the useful aspect of the first part (which would seem to undermine any discussion of the essences of mediums) is his discussion of the way artists are able to use new media to create hybrid forms, changing the earlier media as well as integating the new. Moreover, he seems committed to this line of reasoning saying

"media as extensions of our senses institute new ratios, not only among our private senses, but among themselves, when they interactamong themselves. Radio changed the form of the news story as much as it altered the film image in the talkies. TV caused drastic changes in radio programming, and in the form of the thing or documentary novel."(53)

Aside from his unfortunate use of the term "talkies," I think most of this makes sense and is a good conceptualization for the way societies take on these forms. He also gives a central role to artists as the people who "show us how to 'ride with the punch,' instead of 'taking it in the chin.' It can only be repeated that human history is a record of 'taking it in the chin.'"(66) All of this is curiously similar to some of the things that Adorno says about culture as well. Here, like Polanyi, he isn't necessarily cautioning the distructive potential of these cultural and technological changes. He simply thinks that being aware of how they will destroy and reorder lives and consciousnesses will help us to better prepare for them.

I recall one of my professors (Dr. Babbili) attending a conference in Canada a few years ago that was discussing what the social impact of the internet would be and how best to channel it. Instead of having this kind of conversation, Americans seem fine with sticking to message: anything is possible, keep the options open, let the corporations--oops I mean "free market" decide what is best. The only reason to intervene is if someone puts free music or naked pictures up: then we can just sue them and everyone will be happy.

It should be said, perhaps, that McLuhan was Canadian.