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Marshall McLuhan: Understanding Media

The Book

Written 1964, consists of two parts. In Part One Marshall McLuhan describes his theory, in Part Two he analyzes several media that were common in that time. The core of McLuhan’s theory is his definition of media as extensions of ourselves. So with this understanding of the word media anything that extends us is media (glasses extend our eyes, clothing extends our tactual sense, a car extends our legs, a computer extends our brain…). He writes "all technologies are extensions of our physical and nervous systems to increase power and speed". And I think he uses the word media often as a synonym with the word technology. The message is not content but rather "effect". In Part One - chapter two he differentiates media in cold and hot. I looked at this chapter a little closer:

Media hot and cold

In this chapter Marshall McLuhan describes what in his opinion are the differences between hot and cold media. He writes: "There is a basic principle that distinguishes a hot medium like radio from a cool one like the telephone, or a hot medium like the movie from a cool one like TV. A hot medium is one that extends one single sense in 'high definition.'" (p. 22) High definition means that the medium contains many information and the 'audience' (as an example) does not need to complete the content with own interpretation. So a hot medium does not leave so much to bei filled in by the audience. It is low in participation. A cold medium is high in participation and needs a completion by the audience.

I tried to make a short list of what he describes generic for cool and hot media:

hot media

• extends single sense
• high definition
• low in participation
• more mechanical

cold media

• low definition
• high in participation
• organic

As an example he says that a photograph is a hot medium, a cartoon is a cold medium. Radio hot, telephone cool…  And of course: "The open-mesh silk stocking is far more sensuous than the smooth nylon, just because the eye must act as hand in filling in and completing the image, exactly as in the mosaic of the TV image." (p. 29)

He then makes a few examples of hot and cold media. Some of his classifications I could not fully comprehend but I think it is important that a medium is not sticked to hot or cold. It depends and it can change over time, so it is more a dynamic classification than a static one. When new media arrives old media can also change its temperature to the opposite. The medium interacts with other media can heat up and cool down, can form societies and can be formed by societies.

James Gleick: The Information

Chapter 2: The Persistence of the World

Walter J. Ong: speech is not a technology / writing is. Speech is more a truer sense of our internal feelings. Writing organizes thought in a technological (non-natural) way. Quotes Platon's Socrates: the invention of writing will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it because they will not practice their memory. -> writing = appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom. -> writing does allow the dead to speak to the living and the living to the unborn. -> writing is a "twisting journey from things to words, from words to categories, from categories to metaphor and logic."

Chapter 3: Wordbooks

"like the printing press, the telegraph and the telephone before it, the internet is transforming the language simply by transmitting information differently. What makes cyberspace different from all previous information technologies is its intermixing of scales from the largest to the smallest without prejudice, broadcasting to the millions, narrowcasting to groups, instant messaging to one"

Chapter 11: Into The Meme Pool

First Gleick explains the origin of the word "meme": Dawkins writes 1976 that there is not only an evolution of genes but also an evolution of ideas and human culture. Dawkins proposed the word meme for this bodiless replicator. "Memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process, in the broad sense, can be called imitation" Dawkins wrote [meme = gene + mimeme]. Memes are distinct cultural information which travels between people, places and time. He now gives some examples of memes. There are various types of memes,

• Dawkins offers for example that the belief in God is a meme, an "ancient idea, replication itself not just in words but in music and art".
• Catchphrases (text snippets) can become memes. For example "survival of the fittest" is a meme that mutates wildly ("survival of the fattest, "survival of the twittest"…)
• Images like Mona Lisa and The Scream are memes.
• Chain Letters ("copy me!")
• …

Memes are complex units, distinct and memorable. They have staying power. Simple products like the "hula hoop" are not memes just as little as numbers. Humans are carrier of genes and memes, their brains are vehicles of the memes. Now with computers and network connections "it is a perfect milieu for self-replication programs to flourish."Meme itself quickly became an Internet buzzword when Internet was born.