Week 1 - Medium Theory
Mills & Barlow – What is Theory? McLuhan – Understanding Media Lecture 1.1
Nomothetic knowledge → generalization/rule The Toronto School of Communication Theory Text McLuhan
Idiographic knowledge → uniqueness 1. Harold Innis (1894-1952)
2. Eric A. Havelock (1903-1988)
3. Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) Mechanical technologies Electric technologies
What is a medium?
- Etymology: Latin medius “between”
→ Eg. “in medias res” = a narrative that starts in Key argument: communications systems and technologies
Extend our bodies in space Extends our senses /
the middle of the plot structure our individual psychology and our culture/society.
consciousness / central
- Mediation as philosophical concept: the process,
nervous system
not the object, and without privileged reference to - Emphasis on the form and function of media communication,
communication rather than the content.
- (Trans)historical research: comparing different eras/periods and Explosion Implosion
- Medium: only end of 19th century linked to technical
formulate general principles (nomothetic) - eg. Bike: in the mechanical age - eg. Television or skype: the
means of communication
- Conclusion: communication technologies are the engine you extend (explode) your body body stays put - the body
of socio-historical change (→ technological determinism, into space (you take the bike and doesn’t move. What is
Marshall McLuhan:
technology→ society) move from point A to B, faster extended is the nervous system,
→ Several approaches retain the broader
than walking, so you extend your the senses have extended (eyes,
definition of a medium as “an intervening
foot and you move in space (= ears). But because of that, there
substance”. A medium is anything that makes a Our inventions reinvent (affect) us → we’re profoundly affected
explosion). was an explosion of the world
connection so that communication becomes possible. by the inventions that we make, and we become new
into humans. So the world
→ “The content of any medium is always humans and our societies become new societies.
collapses into you, while your
another medium”
body stays put.
Harold Innis’ “bias of communication”: Every medium is biased
with respect to time and space.
→ Media that emphasize time are those durable in 3000 previous years Last 100 years
character, such as parchment, clay and stone.
→ Media that emphasize space are apt to be less durable Fragmentary / taking place in Global / instantaneous →
and light in character such as papyrus and paper. time and space the world is a global village.
- Our communication means have a bias towards (or influenced by) - Printing press: not taking - Tv: instantaneous and
time or space. Durable media are hard to transport (eg. stone place instantaneously: news potentially global in reach. This
engraved hieroglyphics), less durable media can be distributed about events that have means, we are in a way
more quickly. happened reach people later connected to the entire world
(there is a delay). → We are at once.
McLuhan “The Medium is The Message” not linked to the world in
- We should always attend to the changes brought about one global embrace.
by the particular form and features of media technologies. → In this way, time and
→ not looking at content (message) but at the form and space are fragmented
features of media technologies. between me sitting here
- “Societies have always been shaped more by the nature reading about it, and the
,of the media by which humans communicate than by the
event taking place there.
content of the communication” → focus on the way the
medium itself focuses, not on its content.
- “The ‘message’ of any medium or technology is the change of Action & reaction separated We live integrally
scale or pace or pattern (form) that it introduces into human - ‘Slow mechanical (“mythically”)
affairs” → so the message is the impact the medium brings technology’ means there is - We are all connected, we can
about. no instant reaction possible be in touch with everybody at
→ reach/speed/connection between action-reaction will be → delay between the action every moment.
different when a society organized through a postal system and reaction.
driven through horses or trains vs a society that is
organized through computerized means (action-reaction is Detachment of the world Involvement of the world
instantaneous) → Eg. a drone: would be analyzed not by - Aloof, detached posture → new types of
what it does but by its change in scale, pace or pattern subjectivities
that it introduces into human affairs. - Involved posture
- Eg. printed media: printed words sets up a structure of - Wholeness, empathy and depth
awareness which affects everybody → the impact of of awareness of the world
the medium on the world is therefore bigger than
the content it spreads. Examples? Literacy Examples? Electric media
- eg. McLuhan: The telephone is a huge environment
which affects everybody → what you say (content) Rational involvement Emotional involvement
on the telephone is irrelevant, it only affects one
person. - Age of anxiety: electric technology = implosion, mechanical
technology = explosion.
Media as Extensions of Man
- Each medium has its own specific effects on our behavior, Theater of absurd: a post world war 2 designation for particular plays
thinking, and sense perception – these are extended through of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily european
this medium. playwrights in the late 1950s… The plays focus largely on ideas of
→ eg. can see better through glasses than without them. existentialism and express what happens when human existence lacks
→ eg. infrared camera: able to see other (extended) things meaning or purpose and communication breakdown.
than with own eyes. → Ablation:
1. the surgical removal of body tissue
- Anything can be a medium: TV, radio, book, but also cars, 2. the removal of snow and ice from a glacier or iceberg by
clocks, glasses, etc… → anything of intervening substance. melting or evaporation
- Modern Western culture, like earlier/other cultures, is shaped by
media and communication technologies. However, unique is that - Any technology is always an extension of ourselves (whether
our media are electronic (vs the mechanical media of old). it's mechanical or electric → think of the bike, which is an
→ driven by electricity extension of the foot and replaced by the bike. Each of these
→ trains are mechanic - object that brings us somewhere extensions not only have an effect on the individual, but on
else culture at large.
→ with electronic media our senses are extended but in a → When someone calls, you extend the central nervous
very different way. system to where the person is, so you’re not separating but
,These electronic media are instantaneous (no time delay) and compressing the world (time and space), because it is an electric
global in reach: the world as a “global village”. technology.
→ eg. sending a message through postal service vs text
message.
McLuhan’s “Media ecology” The Gadget Lover. Narcissus as narcosis
Media create all-encompassing “environments” in which we live - Narcissus myth – conventional interpretation: Narcissus sees the
(and therefore don’t notice them) reflection of his face in the water and fell in love with himself and
became so self-absorbed, self-centered, that he pined away.
- “Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible
without a knowledge of the way media work as environments” - However, McLuhan interprets the myth as a story about what
happens when we extend our senses in technology. The pond, in which
- The present is always invisible because it is environmental. No he sees himself, is an extension of our sight through technology -
environment is perceptible, simply because it saturates the whole namely a mirror.
field of attention” → So not a story about self-love but about technology
→ searches for an anti-environment → Technology (any extension of man) creates numbness →
when we extend our senses, numbness will arise.
- Parallel to Heidegger’s tool-being: technology and objects have - Narcissus was so absorbed with own reflection (by the technological
the tendency to withdraw from our consciousness – they extension), he became a closed system - so numbed for his
become invisible, transparent. surroundings that he couldn't hear anybody attracting his attention
→ only when they break or when they become superseded (Nymph Echo).
by something else that we’re able to see how they are
working. Four central ideas to understand his argument
→ eg. hammer: when it breaks, you become conscious of 1. Extension of a sense is auto-amputation
its importance. → Eg. bike: if I change walking to biking to university, I extend
my foot. By extending the foot, I auto-amputate my foot, in
McLuhans’ “Laws of Media” (1988) the sense that the foot is not used for the same thing and the
- Media effects are “law-like” action of moving from point A to B is replaced by the bike
- These laws of media are more like natural laws than judicial laws (technology).
(descriptive not prescriptive) → Not a permanent thing, but usually you wouldn’t be able to
- This asks for an “exact science” of media & culture (a pure see the environment as detailed when you go by bike or car vs
nomothetic approach) by foot.
- Is this still critical? → Pressure creates the incentive to invent technological
- Charges of technological determinism by Raymond Williams (next solutions, that in turn will affect us.
week) → eg. invention of the wheel as an extension of the foot:
→ Humanities scholar who ends up with nomothetic claims. before the wheel, only a small amount of goods could be
carried by hand (this creates a burden/pressure on the body)
→ incentive to invent a solution: the wheel (more products
could be brought to the market). → instead of going to the market
in the village next door, man could go to the city 30km further → this
extends people’s consciousness of the world through the
,invention of the wheel.
→ technology as a solution to our burdens → then that technology
will affect us.
→ burden → technology → affect
2. When we extend (or auto-amputate) ourselves, numbness is an
effect of that.
- Selection of a single sense for intense stimulus or a single
extended isolated or amputated sense in the technology, is in part
the reason for the numbing effect that technology and such had on its
makers and users (eg. audiac, focus on sound removes the pain from
the drill at the dentist).
3. Sense ratios
- Every extension is an auto-amputation (synonyms)
- Our senses are in a way an equilibrium system – if one sense is
experienced intensely, the others will fade from our
consciousness. In culture: when a culture becomes more visual, this
will affect the way the culture is.
4. We serve our technology (we become auto-servants)
- Reverses the usual relationship (that we humans use technology). He
is saying that it is reversed: we’ve become the servants of the
technologies we create (servo-mechanisms).
- Man is a server of technology → human beings are
determined by the technologies that they use.
→ eg. clock: if we have the clock, we become nervous because
we’re running late. If we didn’t have the clock, we didn’t know
we were becoming late.
→ eg. film Her: surrogate-partner works for the desires of the
AI.
→ Relation with Ruha Benjamin (week 2): “technologies use
us/we’re being used”.
, Week 2 – Conceptions of relations between technology and society
Marshall McLuhan Raymond Williams Wiebe Bijker Bruno Latour Ruha Benjamin
Harold Innis
Eric A. Havelock
1911-1980 1921-1988 80s - now 80s - 2022 now
1894-1952
1903-1988
Technological Determinism Cultural Materialism → culturalism Social Construction of Actor-Network Theory Race critical code studies →
Technology (SCOT) → (ANT) post-structuralist
humanist Bruno Latour → new-
materialism
History - The type of products that are produced are - Rather than technology - Non-humans have agency - “Anti-technological solutionism”: even
Feudalism: legal and social system shaped by the material constraints shaping human (inter)action, it too: they play an active role though technological fixes promise
where vassals were protected and of our time. → these material constraints is the other way round: focus is in socio-technical networks neutrality and objectivity, they do not
supported by their lords and had to shape the kind of cultural production that is on the way humans (eg car, gas and driver). function like that.
serve their lords during wartime (eg. possible. collectively shape → eg. Driving the car → so technology isn’t the solution (like
knights on horses). The stirrup → eg. If I want to reach a pamphlet to people technologies. → ‘use wouldn't be possible many people think)
(technology) of a horse allowed the in 1300, I will have to write it by hand. 200 cultures’ (use determines without fuel. So fuel, → eg. predictive policing – data is
knights to mount themselves in such a years later, when we have the printing press, meaning of technologies) tires, steering wheel etc, used and the algorithm chooses
way that they experienced the shock this becomes much easier. So the type of are all actors for the car where the police should focus their
of the attack as minimally as possible. products that are produced are shaped by - Societal history important to to work. Humans as well activity.
This feature made the horse-riding the material constraints of our time. contextualize development of as non-humans play a → If algorithms “automate the
knight the most powerful element of technology (like Williams). role. → so driving a car is social”, a racist society will
medieval war (they didn’t have to fight - Technology is continuously shaped by an actor-network. automate racism.
on foot anymore). The new military societal pressures. - Meaning that is given to
technology required a reorganization technologies determines the - There is no society Names are markers of identity /
of the land, as knights were - Societal power relations (between various way people use and shape without technology: all of racially coded (not neutral) → look at
expensive and land was the main social groups) are a key concern. them. life takes place in socio- the name and know what ethnicity
form of capital. Because long → eg. If many people have a computer to technical networks. that person has.
professional training was required to access the internet, it becomes easier to - Mutual shaping of - Technologies act upon names →
master horses and lances, the new communicate; if only five people have a technology and society (of the - technology is essentially a algorithms analyze Afro-American
technology created a new computer, this will lead to different kinds users who are shaping the mediator (like in names to determine if they’re
aristocracy, the knightly order, which of communication. object). McLuhan’s text). But ‘risky’ profiles.
dominated the later Middle Ages. mediation always means an - Racial codes are a form of control
(Homans, 1962) Not because there’s a societal need there will Examples of SCOT act of translation, and technology plays a role in
be an immediate answer: depends on the 1. Classic eg. → Evolution of transforming any action it replicating that.
– Stirrup → Mounted knight → powerful groups in society, they will fund the bike: first (1880s) there mediates.
Cavalry → Reorganization of land money to develop technologies. was a bike with a big wheel → technology translates
