Welcome participants to the 8th week of our
course on Literature Culture and Media. In
the last module we had seen how culture and
media are interconnected, shape each other
and are also shaped by each other. We have
seen how different media theorists in the
beginning of the 20th century have started
to talk about these interconnections. It is
in the 20th century that the media technologies
grew at a very fast pace. And therefore, it
was only logical to imagine the critical work
in this area.
One of the major theorist whom we would discuss
in today’s module is Marshall McLuhan who
is primarily known as a medium theorist.
He is a formalist and often he is termed as
a propounder of medium theory or general theory
or as a medium formalist. He has raised various
questions in his work, for example what are
the different channels of communication and
how do they differ particularly in terms of
influencing the cognitive processes which
are required among the people to understand,
interpret and use them.
He has also tried to find out answers and
explanation to the issue of how a medium alters
perceptions of people and thereby influence
society and culture.
The medium theory examines physical, psychological
and social variables as the sensors that are
required to attend to the medium, to understand
it and to use it. It also depends on whether
the medium which is being used is bidirectional
or unidirectional. It also looks at the efficacy
of a medium to quickly disseminate a message
among the number of people. It also reviews
the simplicity of decoding a message in the
context of a particular medium and at the
same time the number of people whom a particular
medium can access immediately.
The symbolic environments of any communicative
act are also looked at in the medium theory.
These variables determine the use of the medium
and as well as the impact in the context of
social, political and psychological environments
in any given cultural setting.
Marshall McLuhan has written various books,
even though the most famous book which is
written by him is with the title Understanding
Media: The Extensions of Man published in
1964. The other books have an equal significance
to understand how media functions in contemporary
days. There has been a renewed interest in
Marshall McLuhan’s work because 30 years
before the internet was invented he had prophesied
its invention.
His first book, The Mechanical Bride: Folklore
of Industrial Man had come out in 1951. His
last book, The Global Village: Transformations
in World Life and Media in the 21st century
was published in 1989 posthumously. The first
book, The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial
Man is a pioneer study in popular culture.
This book has been deeply influenced by the
works of Denys Thomson as well as F. R. Leavis.
Particularly it is influenced by F. R. Leavis
book entitled Cultural Environment. The title
of this novel has been influenced by a piece
of Marcel Duchamp, who was a Dadaist artist.
This book has been written with what McLuhan
has termed himself as a mosaic approach. It
is a collection of essays which can be read
independently as well as, as an interdependent
hole.
In all these essays Marshall McLuhan has began
with an analysis of either a newspaper article
or a particular advertisement and keeping
it as a focal point he has tried to understand
the eclectic cultural associations and ramifications
of that particular article or advertisement.
His next book The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making
of Typographic Man was published in 1962.
In this book McLuhan has examined the emergence
of what he called as the Gutenberg Man. As
we can understand easily on the basis of the
title, McLuhan has tried to understand the
changes which have been brought about in our
culture and in our psyche collectively by
the advent of the Gutenberg press or the medium
of the print.
According to McLuhan, the technologies are
not simple inventions, they change people,
they also help individual human beings to
reinvent themselves in terms of the capacities,
which might be latent in them. His idea is
that every technology particularly the technology
which is related with communication or media
has the capability to change the cognition
patterns and the perceptions of human being.
According to Marshall McLuhan, the movable
type when it was invented encouraged a sense
of homogeneity is standardization and repeatability.
Because prior to this technological invention
it was not possible to create an exact replica
of any book even. So, the invention of movable
type created a technological revolution as
well as a cultural revolution which changed
the way human beings understand things and
at the same time interact with each other.
Marshall McLuhan has termed this shift from
a culture of common interplay to the tyranny
of the visual over the oral. It is important
for us to note that McLuhan has distinguished
phonetic alphabet from logographic or logogramic
writing systems. These systems in which a
particular character represents a word. For
example, the Chinese characters, the Egyptian
hieroglyphs, the Japanese Kanji or the cuneiform
systems also.
He writes that the world of visual perspective
is one of unified and homogeneous space. Such
a world is alien to the resonating diversity
of spoken words. So according to him language
was the last art to accept the visual logic
of Gutenberg technology and the first to rebound
in the electric age. So we find that with
the help of the discussion of technological
advancements in the field of media he is also
trying to understand the changes in human
culture.
He has also suggested that the invention of
the printing technology has reduced the vagaries
of handwritten manuscripts because they promoted
a linear culture.
It also resulted into commodification of literature,
emergence of an independent figure of the
author and at the same time the public culture,
which emerged after it was very different
from the previous one. As we have already
noticed it motivated mankind towards a rational
and liner approach towards thing resulting
into various international changes.
His writings, Understanding Media: The Extensions
of Man is his most widely known work. It is
in this work that we find the phrase ‘the
medium is the message’, which is the phrase
which is most commonly associated with the
work of Marshall McLuhan. His focus in criticism
is not merely on the content, but also on
analysing the medium itself. According to
him medium also affects the society initiating
several changes.
In the previous discussions, we had seen how
McLuhan had given the example of the railway
networks. Another example which he has given
is that of a light bulb. According to him
the light bulb does not even have a content,
it is a sheer and simple, a very primary technological
invention, but it has initiated whereas changes
in human habits in terms of claiming the time
after the dark.
So the type of activities which could be conducted
after the invention of a lightbulb initiated
changes in the way human beings could organise
their day, their business activities and other
entertainment activities. So the simple invention
initiated a change in our cultural values.
In the same way when we adopt a new technology
particularly the new media technology our
world view also changes.
And since the 20th century the media technologies
are developing at a very fast pace, we find
that our perceptions in the context of cultural
understandings are also changing in a very
fast manner. As people had tried to criticize
Inns by saying that he proposes an argument
which is basically deterministic.
The similar idea has also been propounded
by the critics of Marshall McLuhan. He has
also criticized for forwarding what is normally
known as technological determinism as with
any other deterministic theory the basic claim
in this is that there is a single cause of
phenomenon which determines the other aspects
of life. This theory of technological determinism
states that technology particularly the media
technology decisively shapes how individual
human beings think, feel and act and how societies
organise themselves and operate themselves.
McLuhan suggested that the new media technologies
exert what can be compared with the gravitational
pull over cognition. These changes in our
cognition change the social organisation and
therefore the new technologies in the context
of media, transform and alter our perceptual
habits affecting not only individual cognition,
but also the way we socially interact with
each other.
McLuhan has suggested that there are certain
inventions over the passage of time which
are crucial for understanding the way human
culture has evolved and changed. And these
three things which are important to him are
the phonetic alphabet, the printing press
and the telegraph. So, he tries to understand
what is the significance of these innovations
for our cultural changes and how they have
affected individual cognition and perception
also.
As we have already seen, Marshall McLuhan
basically contains that technological inventions
result in significant cultural shifts and
changes and therefore there are cultural repercussions
of every technological changes and advancement.
Changes in communication technology shape
human life and I quote a sentence from Marshall
McLuhan in which he says “we shape our tools
and they in turn shape us”. So the way we
develop the media technology we are shaped
by them.
So the way we live and understand the reality
and ourselves is primarily a function of how
we process information which we received through
different sources of media. So phonetic alphabet,
printing press and telegraph dramatically
altered the way and the speed with which people
perceived themselves and the world around
them. And therefore according to him these
are the three most significant technological
developments of mankind.
He has also suggested that media is an extension
of our senses. His idea is that in every age
our culture is dominated by a particular medium.
So, in every age there is a dominant medium
which dominates people and at the same time
it acts as an extension of our physical and
our nervous system to enhance the power and
speed with which we can work. This is a very
old and conventional analogy, but the way
Marshall McLuhan has added the latest developments
of media to it, it has become very interesting.
So, he says that it can be any extension whether
of skin or hand or foot which is affected
the psychic and social complexities of mankind.
So, in his opinion the technology is same
as pushing of the archetypal forms of the
unconscious out into the social consciousness
with enhanced sensory perceptions which the
media technology has provided to us. Each
new media innovation is in a way an extension
of some human faculty.
For example, the book is an extension of the
eye, the wheel is an extension of the foot,
clothing is an extension of the skin and electronic
circuitry is an extension of the central nervous
system. So, in his views media amplifies and
intensifies a bodily organ, a sensory perception
or a function of human society. It therefore
extends our reach, increases our efficiency
and at the same time, it helps us to filter
and organize and interpret our social existence
by receiving the ideas and information in
a particular fashion.
And therefore these extensions of our sensory
perceptions and cognitive perceptions also
have psychic and social consequences which
cannot be undermined.
By changing the environment, we find that
the media evokes certain ratios of sense perceptions
among us and the extension of anyone since
alters the way we think and act and the way
we perceive the world. When these ratios change,
we find that men also change and the examples
he has already given are wheels, which we
have discussed, how phone has extended the
voice, the television has extended the eyes
and ears and how the computers have extended
the functions of the brain.
Marshall McLuhan also treats language as a
medium of technology, because according to
him it is an extension of thought and extension
of our consciousness, ideas and feelings,
because without the invention of language
it would have been impossible for mankind
to express its own ideas thoughts, creativity,
intellectual impulses or to record them for
posterity.
So in his opinion, the invention of artificial
intelligence which in a way he has been able
to forecast much before its actual invention
is like approaching the final phase of the
extension of man.
It is a technological simulation of our very
consciousness. So, he is neither a technophile
nor a technophobe. He has also envisioned
a move towards global consciousness and it
is his capability to foresee the changes in
such an effective way that have made him such
a profound voice in the context of media theories.
McLuhan has also analysed the development
of human history with the help of the changing
face of media. The first age in human history
according to him is a tribal age which was
dominated by an oral culture. The speech by
humankind was developed about 20,000 to 40,000
years back and at that time orality was the
primary mode and our world was an acoustic
place. It was dominated only by the sounds.
So, then we find that in this culture there
was a lot of passion and spontaneity in human
interactions. This is how McLuhan has imagined
that the spoken word normally has more emotionality
laden in it than the printed text because
the printed text allows us certain time gap
in order to rephrase our passions and to understand
our emotions in a better way. This time gap
was not possible in the oral culture.
And therefore the spoken word is normally
more laden with emotions. And therefore we
find that the culture which emerged during
the tribal days was of narrative story telling
in which people had to be immersed deeply
to make certain meaning of it and at the same
time there was a lot of simultaneity in the
narration also. And therefore the communities
used to interact a lot and they were interconnected.
These features change when the media of expression
changed. And the tribal age was replaced by
what McLuhan has termed as the literate age.
The invention of the phonetic alphabet in
Greece changed the situation and we find that
the visual became a dominant sense for the
human beings. The ear which was important
to listen to the sound was exchanged for the
eye which could read the phonetic alphabet.
So we find that there is a sudden shift to
civilized private detachment rather than primitive
tribal involvement and collectivity which
was a necessity of those time and learning
became a solitary affair than a collective
narration or storytelling. And therefore we
find that it is in this age that linearity
in terms of thought was promoted, it has boosted
logical interpretation of things and therefore
mathematics or logic or science or philosophy
matured during this time.
So line became the organising principle instead
of simultaneity. Another major shift came
when we move towards a print age, which began
obviously with the intervention of the printing
press in Germany in 1450 AD.
So, we find that the vision, the linearity,
logic, solitary learning became much more
important than they were in the previous cultures.
And at the same time visual dependence became
much more dominant. At the same time, we find
that repeatability of a particular book or
particular printed medium and its reproducibility
at a price which was affordable became most
important features of this culture.
It resulted into several changes which we
have covered in previous modules for example,
glorification of individualism, industrial
revolution, mass production of identical products,
standardization of national languages by promoting
vernacular mediums among other things we can
say that it also encouraged fragmented communities
as well as the emergence of the middle class
leading towards very fundamental cultural
shifts in the 20th century.
The 20th century has been termed as the electronic
age by Marshall McLuhan, it begins with the
advent of the telegraph in 1840s which was
the revival of orality or aurality as well
as tactility. It is in the 20th century when
the electronic age becomes matured that the
idea of the Global Village emerges and new
media forms like television encourage spontaneity
as well as involvement at a bigger scale.
The instantaneous communication signals also
indicated the return of a pre-alphabetic oral
tradition where immediacy of understanding
and communication was important. Even though
in the emergence of the new media sometimes
we can say that the linear and the logical
thinking fits, but it does not actually fades.
We can say that simultaneously the oral tradition
has become much more important than it was
previously.
So we have a coexistence of linear and logical
thinking and the significant oral traditions
in tactility.
When Marshall McLuhan has said that the medium
is the message, we find that the phrase can
be interpreted in various ways. To begin with
we can say that the medium defines the meaning
of communication and the form is much more
important than the content because the content
is shaped by the form at the same time we
find that the medium has the power to manipulate
our perceptions of the world because it can
null our consciousness, it can alter our cognition,
and thereby, it can change our perceptions.
So it defines the medium of communication,
form becomes much more important because the
form has the capability more than the content
to lull our senses and therefore mass communication
has become the dominant form of interactions,
the capability of the medium to be accessed
by a large number of audience simultaneously.
So, we find that when McLuhan has suggested
that medium is the message he communicates
all these ideas simultaneously.
As we have seen earlier he has also been critiqued
by various people and one of the foremost
critics of Marshall McLuhan is Carey, who
has written that his argument rest on the
grounds of psychology of perception which
in fact is primarily a weak foundation because
it can never be defined in a very straight
jacketed manner. The assumption that the shape
of sensory impression is determined by the
structure of media is at best a generalization
which cannot be scientifically proved.
Carey also says that McLuhan has overlooked
the struggle to overcome the limits of any
media through subversion and invention of
new and different forms of representation.
At the same time the audience cannot be a
passive entity which can be moulded absolutely
and entirely by the media as some other critics
in the beginning of the 20th century have
pointed out it is within the media that the
possibilities of subverting the dominant culture
also emerge. So these aspects have been overlooked
by Marshall McLuhan.
It is also said that McLuhan’s analysis
lacks a systematic theory of the relationship
between economy and technology.
He has focused more on the cultural aspects
which are influenced by technology and he
has been by and large silent about the market
forces in the economic forces. And, therefore
he lacks the critical appreciation of the
appropriation and thus privatisation of technology
by the lead institutions, multinational corporations
and the state in advanced industrial societies.
And, therefore we can say that he has privileged
media technology over all other aspects of
social existence which according to the critics
should not have been overlook to this extent.
There is a little deliberation on the way
technology has also abated the capitalist
and patriarchal structures in our society
and he has also ignored the problem of political
economy, but still we can say that McLuhan’s
ideas have influenced the way the 20th century
has started to look at the significance of
media as a whole. We will continue the discussion
of McLuhan ideas in the next module. Thank
you.
