TEXTBOOK: Ch. 12: Meet Marshall McLuhan: A Less Scientific Approach to Media Impact

"*The medium is the message*"

Because television was the dominant medium of the electronic age, McLuhan often used it to illustrate his basic points. Unlike the linear processing of print, television encourages a kind of information processing similar to the acoustical principle of the tribe. Processing a TV message is much more like the all-at-once processing of the ear than the linear processing of the eye reading a printed page. McLuhan was fond of pointing out that most people were in error in regarding television as a visual medium. On the contrary, he argued, television is fundamentally an acoustic medium. To make this point clear, he invited people to try a simple experiment. First, turn the sound down on the TV set for one minute during your favorite program. Now, for another minute, adjust the TV so that you can hear the sound but you can't see any picture. Which condition was more frustrating? Which condition gave you less information? McLuhan believed that people who tried this little exercise would invariably report more frustration in the condition where the picture was visible but the sound was inaudible. So, even though we think of television as a visual medium, McLuhan argued that it was primarily a medium of sound. Second, McLuhan argued that the electronic communication forms were in direct opposition to the great technology of print. Linear thinking, deductive logic, and the private, information-packed experience of reading would gradually give way to the new electronic experience of radio and television. At the same time, the familiar way of thinking would gradually give way to a mode of thinking that was less linear, less logical, more spontaneous, and more like the thinking of our tribal ancestors. As far as McLuhan could tell, there was no way to stop these changes from occurring. The power of instantaneous electronic information would overwhelm the great culture of print in a matter of time. Although McLuhan claimed that he was almost always against the changes that he saw the electronic media instigating, he remained determined to understand exactly what was happening to us. In his determination to communicate what he thought, McLuhan often relied on pithy sayings. His most famous of these, "*_____________________________________*," was really an attempt to summarize his view of human history just outlined. A closer look at this saying will reveal a key principle of McLuhan's analysis of the media age.

*sensory balance*

McLuhan also believed that processing information went beyond acoustics, with people relying heavily on the other senses as well. Sight, smell, touch, and even taste were all important sources of information to tribal peoples, who lived, as McLuhan pointed out, in a state of *________________*; the 5 senses were all important sources of information.

*global village*

It was in talking about the various consequences of the move to electronic media that McLuhan came into his own as a media guru. He enjoyed the attention he received from TV talk shows and movie celebrities (he made a brief appearance in Woody Allen's 1977 film Annie Hall). All of the media attention, combined with the obscurity of some of his ideas, caused him to lose favor in the eyes of the academic world. Still, McLuhan had some interesting things to say about what was happening to our culture with the steady rise of electronic communication forms. First, McLuhan believed that in the electronic age, human culture was returning to a form of communication that was much more similar to that of the tribal age. He often talked about the *_________________* produced by electronic media—a reference to the power of instantaneous communication to unify the world into a massive modern-day tribal community. Almost everyone who was alive at the time remembers exactly where they were on November 22, 1963. On this date, John Kennedy died at the hands of an assassin. McLuhan often explained that the media coverage that followed an event of this magnitude allowed people to experience "one big group emotion." Since 1963, we have often seen the power of the electronic media to unite large portions of the world by drawing their collective attention to the same event. Think about the space shuttle Challenger exploding in midair; the first night of fighting in Operation Desert Storm; the Berlin Wall tumbling to the ground; the death of Princess Diana; the O. J. Simpson car chase on the Los Angeles freeways; the tragic shootings at Columbine High School; the twin towers of the World Trade Center tumbling to the ground; or the moments following the announcement that Osama bin Laden had been killed. On occasions like these, it is not hard to appreciate what McLuhan meant when he said that electronic media bring about the experience of the global village. But the concept was not one that he reserved only for specific moments when a significant global event took place. He also had in mind the idea that when information flows back and forth across the globe at the speed of light, people who live in diverse geographical locations become psychologically and emotionally closer than anyone could have conceived possible years ago.

"*technological determinism*"

MCLUHAN'S INFLUENCE: Because McLuhan's ideas seem to defy direct empirical testing, they have been of little value from a scientific perspective. But scientists often give high marks to theoretical thinking that instigates new discussion and controversy—even though that thinking itself may not enjoy much direct support. If we use this standard to evaluate McLuhan's contribution, perhaps there is some shred of scientific value. McLuhan started writing about the media more than 50 years ago. Communication scholars still use his ideas and extend them to new areas. McLuhan's basic perspective of "*___________________________*" (the medium, not the message, determines changes in human behavior) is particularly evident in 2 books that have received wide acclaim. In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Neil Postman argues that television has trivialized public discourse. He states: "There is no more disturbing consequence of the electronic and graphic revolution than this: that the world as given to us through television seems natural, not bizarre. For the loss of the sense of the strange is a sign of adjustment, and the extent to which we have adjusted is a measure of the extent to which we have been changed." Another scholar, Joshua Meyrowitz, has written a provocative book, No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior. The following excerpt from the book's introduction sounds like McLuhan himself: "[T]his book suggests that the widespread use of electronic media has played an important part in many recent social developments, including the social explosions of the 1960s, the many "integration" movements (blacks, women, elderly, children, disabled, etc.), the rise of malpractice suits, the development of "halfway" houses for prisoners and the mentally ill, the decline of the nuclear family. The theory suggests that a broad, seemingly chaotic spectrum of social change may be, in part, an orderly and comprehensible adjustment in behavior patterns to match the new social situations created by electronic media." To be sure, both Postman and Meyrowitz go well beyond McLuhan's notions in advancing their own thoughts on electronic media. But McLuhan's influence on these widely read scholars and others writing about media impact is quite evident and openly acknowledged. There is no escaping the fact that McLuhan's basic ideas about media impact are at least worthy of some attention.

*prober* *proofs*

Marshall McLuhan didn't seem to mind the fact that he couldn't prove any of his claims. He thought of himself as a *___________* or an explorer and found that there was a certain luxury in thinking about things that eluded clear-cut *___________*. True, he might never be able to prove that his analysis was right, but others could never prove that he was wrong, either. McLuhan found this state of affairs to his liking. The genius of McLuhan (if any) was in his ability to stimulate thought about the exact nature of those changes that the move to electronic media had triggered. Even though he had never lived in the past, that didn't stop him from talking as if he knew exactly what the media were doing to us. Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian scholar, born in Edmonton in 1911. After earning bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Manitoba, he won a scholarship to Cambridge, where he earned a second bachelor's degree, a second master's degree, and a doctorate. He taught English literature at St. Michael's College of the University of Toronto. He died in 1980 after suffering a series of strokes. In the early 1960s, his reputation as a provocative new thinker about mass media started to grow (it was McLuhan who coined the term "the media"). Harold Innis and Walter Ong influenced him, but McLuhan was the one who wrote The Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media, books that propelled him into the limelight.

*linear information processing*

McLuhan thought that the shift to *_________________________________* altered people's basic thought patterns. Thought became more linear than it had been in the tribal state. This shift brought about an emphasis on deductive logic and on making sure that every thought connected well to the one that had come before. Messages that reflected the less linear pattern of the tribal age seemed increasingly strange and incoherent. Over time, they diminished in value.

*electronic age*

Moving On to the Current Electronic Age: According to McLuhan, the great technology of print completely transformed human culture. Then, in the late 1800s, Marconi's invention of the wireless telegraph gave rise to a new age in human history. The age of electronic communication had begun. Just as print transformed the old tribal age, so electronic media would transform the great culture of print. McLuhan pointed out that the transition from the print age to the *________________* would be similar to the earlier shift away from the tribal state. Both changes would occur over several hundred years. According to McLuhan, then, you and I are living at a most unprecedented time in human history. We are living on the cusp of 2 great communication technologies: print and electronics. If McLuhan is right, then a very provocative thesis presents itself for our consideration. McLuhan asks us to consider the possibility that much of the social upheaval and change that have occurred over the past 50 years are directly due to the shift toward electronic media.

*print age*

Moving from the Tribal Age to the Print Age: In terms of human history, the tribal age was the longest. Speech and the oral tradition persisted over thousands of years as the most important form of communication. Around 1500 B.C.E., however, the beginning of the end of the tribal age became evident when the phonetic alphabet emerged. This emergence, according to McLuhan, signaled the beginning of a major transition period to a new medium of communication and a new age of human history. Some versions of McLuhan's historical analysis note that the tribal age moved first to the age of literacy prior to its formal move to the print age. It was the invention of the printing press which allowed documents to be mass-produced that moved human history from literacy to the next major communication era. The printing press ushered in the formal *_______________*.

*media ecology*

THE EFFECTS OF ELECTRONIC MEDIA ON HUMAN BEINGS: McLuhan liked to emphasize that the dominant medium of communication changed human behavior more than the individual messages that the medium contained. He played with his own slogan a bit and changed it to "The medium is the massage." By this play on words, he meant to underscore the fact that communication media are not neutral. They affect people. He once commented that media "rough people up" and act "chiropractically." Comments like these prompted some to charge that McLuhan's mind could think only in metaphors—that he would create a metaphor even when there wasn't a need for one. But despite this criticism, McLuhan actually had quite a bit to say about the specific ways that electronic media were changing us. That is one reason this chapter is included in this text. Today, McLuhan's theory if often studied under the general rubric of something called *_______________________*. The term "ecology" reflects a concern for the environment. Media ecologists study changes in the media environment. If "the medium is the message" is to be taken seriously, some of the most significant changes in our environment are being driven by changes in the media that increasingly dominate our daily living environment.

*eras of communication* *tribal state* "*all-at-onceness*"

THE ERAS OF COMMUNICATION HISTORY: The Tribal Age: McLuhan saw the history of the human race in terms of *____________________________*. When he looked at the dawn of human history, he saw people who lived in a *___________*. They communicated with each other orally, and they didn't have a well-developed alphabet or system of writing. In this period of history, there was a heavy reliance on acoustics, or sound. Because most communication took place through speech and other vocal sounds, the sense of hearing was important. McLuhan liked to point out that often the ear did not need to process information in any particular order to make sense out of it. That is, sounds from the environment come to one's ears in an all-at-once fashion, and frequently it doesn't matter which ones we process first. It is true that the order of spoken words does matter in most languages. But McLuhan believed that in the tribal age, the order of spoken words was only a small part of the meaning that people derived in the communication process. If you are not in a totally quiet environment as you read these words, take a minute to close your eyes and see how many different sounds you can hear. How many were you able to identify? To appreciate McLuhan's point about the "*___________________________*" of processing sound, ask yourself this question: What difference would it have made if the sounds you identified had occurred in a different order? The answer to this question is quite likely "not much difference at all." In fact, some of the sounds that you heard were probably happening simultaneously. As you will see in the rest of the chapter, McLuhan believed that this quality of acoustical information was important.

*Cool media* *Hot media*

Why was the Vietnam War so unpopular? Marshall McLuhan thought he knew the answer to that question. He argued that people experiencing the war through television found the brutal images to be extremely unpleasant and ultimately unbearable. Television, McLuhan argued, was a cool medium. *_______________* were those that allowed high levels of participation and involvement. *________________* were those that had higher information definition, and consequently did not involve the recipient of the message as intensely. Newspapers and radio were relatively hot media. Film was also a hot medium. According to McLuhan, hot media could tolerate higher levels of violence because people could not become actively involved in the processing of messages delivered over hot media. Newspapers and film thrive on violence, but television must be more careful in its portrayal of violent events because it is so involving.