Massaging Marshall's Message: The Conclusion

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I now close my three-part series on “the medium is the message,” Marshall McLuhan’s famous aphorism about the effects that new technologies, a.k.a. mediums, have on society. (See Parts I & II on Feb. 23 and 25. By the way, I purposely use mediums as the plural rather than media, so readers will not think McLuhan was referring only to the communications media.)

McLuhan’s classic example of a “medium” was the light bulb, an invention with a profound “message,” to be sure. Other examples include the phonetic alphabet, printing press, steam engine, telegraph, radio and television, and the instant replay rule. The list is endless.

Once aware of the “McLuhan equation” I seem to find it everywhere, and the picture is not always pretty; unanticipated consequences seldom are. For example—

◘ Automobiles provide us with greater mobility, but they also bring traffic deaths and deprive us of exercise. (When I lived in Baton Rouge I had to drive 500 yards to the grocery store because there are literally no sidewalks or pedestrian crossings in that part of town. For the same reason I had to drive to the office, a mere 600 yards away. Nobody walks in Baton Rouge. No wonder obesity is a problem.)

◘ C-SPAN and cable news channels were meant to keep us better informed and provide “transparency” in the political process. Instead they gave us information overload, a sound-bite mentality, and what filmmaker Eugene Jarecki called the “radio-static noise of hyperbole on all sides.” (NYT Magazine, 2/4/11.)

◘ Televised presidential debates were meant to enlighten the voting public. Instead they led to image being more important than substance.

Among voters who heard the debate on the radio, Nixon prevailed against Kennedy. We have expected this kind of theater ever since. Are we better informed? I doubt it, and I know we're none the wiser!

Of course, there are some positive effects. Twitter and Facebook may have played key roles in the toppling of autocratic governments in the Middle East. And the Internet made it possible for me to do research for two textbooks without having to go to a library even once.

But in general I agree with Chuck Klosterman who wrote in August of 2008, “the mass media is (a) too large, (b) mostly bad, and (c) getting worse.”* He was of course speaking about communications media, just one type of medium in McLuhan’s eyes. But his point is worth noting. In the same article he says,

The mass media is the single most detrimental entity within the United States right now, and it's having the exact opposite effect of its theoretically intended one--it's making people less informed and less complete. It is much more harmful than I originally perceived. But it's also more interesting than I initially realized, because the people who are most acutely aware of this problem are the same people making the problem worse. Bloggers blog about how blogging ruins their lives. Newspapers deliver insignificant reports on the declining significance of newspapers. Entourage [the HBO TV series] is a commentary on shallow celebrity-driven entertainment such as Entourage. A writer named Nicholas Carr wrote a long essay in The Atlantic Monthly about how the Internet is making it difficult for people to concentrate on long essays, [and it] was subsequently published on the Internet. I'm writing a column in a magazine that could essentially be read as an essay against magazines, and I don't think anyone will find that strange.

No, I don’t find that strange. I’m blogging right now about the unanticipated consequences of technologies like blogging. But of course I rationalize by saying that I’m raising awareness. I want readers to realize that without mediums like cable TV and the Internet to report what they say, post turtles† like Michele Bachman and Sarah Palin would never have become the phenomena that they are. Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart might be doing standup comedy. Glenn Beck might be teaching Sunday school or holding tent revival meetings.

Their content is mostly irrelevant. They get attention not so much because of the substance of what they say but because they sell air time and newspapers, increase viewer share and advertising revenues. The McLuhanesque message is the fact that millions of people tune in and get worked into a frenzy. Go watch Network again: it's as relevant today as it was in 1976, maybe even more so. There’s an entire industry that creates this phenomenon. An industry that—like the media conglomerate in Network—is designed as much to create news as to report on it. This is a fact of life: the medium creates its own message. 

When I keep this in mind, I can screen out the hyperbolic static and background noise. When I hear or read about a politician (or their spokesperson) saying something inane at a news conference, I can remind myself that they’re just playing to the cameras, that this is not real policy-making; it’s just the message of the medium. 

At least I hope that's all it is.

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* http://www.esquire.com/features/chuck-klostermans-america/klosterman-culture-0908#ixzz1FM7BXMeA

† Imagine a turtle sitting on top of a fence post. It didn’t get there by itself. It doesn’t know how to get down. It can only point in one direction. And you wonder what nitwit put it up there in the first place.

Massaging Marshall's Message: Part II

 [Before I begin, I need to explain something. I am going into this subject in detail not only because it interests me but because I plan to get these thoughts published elsewhere as a full-length article. Therefore, I am—unapologetically—using you. You are my test audience, and I will appreciate any comments you have about the work.]

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Recapitulation

In the previous post we met Marshall McLuhan, the brilliant eccentric who proclaimed—somewhat enigmatically—“the medium is the message.” Here, in one of his more lucid statements on the subject, McLuhan elaborates on the concept:

[M]ost people … are still blissfully ignorant of what the media do to them; unaware that because of their pervasive effects on man, it is the medium itself that is the message, not the content, and unaware that the medium is also the massage—that, all puns aside, it literally works over and saturates and molds and transforms [all of our perceptions]. The content ... of any particular medium has about as much importance as the stenciling on the casing of an atomic bomb. But the ability to perceive media-induced extensions of man, once the province of the artist, is now being expanded as the new environment of [electronic] information makes possible a new degree of perception and critical awareness by [everyone].

… You’ve got to remember that my definition [of medium] is broad; it includes any technology whatever that creates extensions of the human body and senses, from clothing to the computer. And a vital point I must stress again is that societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media with which men communicate than by the content of the communication. All technology has the property of the Midas touch; whenever a society develops an extension of itself, all other functions of that society tend to be transmuted to accommodate that new form; once any new technology penetrates a society, it saturates every institution of that society. New technology is thus a revolutionizing agent. We see this today with the [electronic] media and we saw it several thousand years ago with the invention of the phonetic alphabet, which was just as far-reaching an innovation—and had just as profound consequences for man. [From the Playboy interview cited in Part I; emphasis added.]

I quote this passage at length because it is the clearest explanation I have found in the guru’s own words of what the “McLuhan Equation” means. And that meaning is profound. Consider: new technology is a “revolutionizing agent,” and society is affected more by the medium than the content of the communication. Yet we are usually "blissfully ignorant" of what a new technology does to us because it “saturates every institution” of society. As a fish is unaware of the medium in which he swims, we may be unaware of the cultural effects of the mediums (technologies, revolutionizing agents) in which we are immersed. Two examples come to mind.

Effect on Politics

First, I have long been aware of the effects of new media on the political process. Throughout our 222-year history of constitutional democracy (the Constitution took effect on March 4, 1789) politics has been one steady stream of misinformation, innuendo, distortions, lies, and malevolent character assassination. The only things that have changed in nearly two and a quarter centuries are the techniques used: the mediums, to put it in McLuhanesque terms.

In the first contested presidential election (Adams-Jefferson, 1796) the parties could spread their sleazy charges and countercharges only by speeches or printed material. “Broadsides” (posters), pamphlets, and newspapers were the mass media of the day. Since then, three major developments we now take for granted changed society and the political process. These developments were:

1. the advent of commercial radio in the 1920s
2. broadcast television (and then cable and satellite TV) beginning in the 1940s
3. the invention of the Internet

Irrespective of the content of any given communication, politics changed as a result of each of these new technologies. Instead of reading pamphlets and newspapers, people got their political and other news via the radio, and later on TV. There were FDR’s “fireside chats” and presidential debates beginning with Nixon/Kennedy in 1960.* Today we use all those media—print and electronic—and overlay on them instant access through satellite connections and the Internet, thus creating a “24-hour news cycle” that saturates us all, as McLuhan predicted it would. The effects of these developments—their message, McLuhan would say—is that politicians seem more inclined to run to banks of microphones and make pronouncements for the benefit of their constituencies than to roll up their sleeves and do the public’s business.

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*McLuhan discusses the Nixon/Kennedy debate during an appearance on the Dick Cavett Show. You can hear his comments at http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=fgv72SRHdUI&feature=related. He points out that Nixon “won” in the minds of those who listened on radio, but Kennedy came across better on TV. This is another example of the respective "messages" of radio and television.

 Sometimes openness and full disclosure are not such a good thing. We can tell that a labor/management negotiation is getting serious when the parties declare a news blackout and go behind closed doors to hammer out a deal. Would that Members of Congress did that sometimes! Turn off C-Span, close the Capitol Building to reporters, and spare us the details of the legislative sausage-making. Come back out when there is something substantive to announce. There is always time for posturing before the TV cameras after the bill is passed.

 

Effect on Society as a Whole

My second example, not entirely unrelated to the first, is the effect Internet applications such as Facebook and Twitter are having on society as a whole. Building on the old technologies mentioned above, these social media have helped us truly become a “Global Village.” (By the way, would you care to guess who coined that phrase? Yup! Marshall McLuhan.)

Tahrir Square, Cairo

The recent upheavals in the Middle East are the latest example. The fall of Mubarak in Egypt and uprisings in Tunisia, Libya, and other countries underscore the importance of the Internet. The content of the various Tweets and SMS text messages and Facebook postings is important, of course, but the “message” is the role these social media played.

 

As one commentator put it: “In the end, the real weapon is the power of networked communication itself. In previous revolutions it was the fax, or the pamphlet, or the cellphone — now it is SMS and Twitter and Facebook. Obviously none of these things cause revolutions, but to ignore or downplay their growing importance is also a mistake.” http://gigaom.com/2011/01/29/twitter-facebook-egypt-tunisia/

The Internet is the medium. Its message is the effect it had on the protesters’ ability to organize and spread the news. We no longer need traditional “media” to act as go-betweens for us. Anyone with a smart phone is a reporter now.

 

In Summary

A few days ago I posted “Philosturbation Most High,” a commentary that began with a mention of the movie Blowup but morphed into considering the effectiveness (or not) of certain kinds of highfalutin academic language. I followed that with Part I of “Massaging Marshall’s Message,” in which I mentioned Blowup again, moved on to Network, and started to explain Marshall McLuhan. Finally in this post we connect the dots, for all three of these entries are talking about the power of communication in our technological age and the effect technologies have on our perceptions and on society as a whole.

Blowup involves a photographer who may (or may not) have witnessed a murder and unwittingly captured it on film. It is a kind of cinematic trompe l’oeil in which nothing is quite what it seems and viewers are affected differently depending on how they interpret the various signs and symbols. In Network, a TV conglomerate uses a deranged anchorman’s ravings to increase their ratings, and then the need to maintain viewer share overwhelms every programming decision they make. What they pass off as “news” is actually entertainment, á là certain cable channels today. McLuhan probably loved both movies because they show that the mediums of photography and television bring their own messages into play, distinct from their actual content.

The technologies of radio, television and the Internet immerse us in a 24-hour news cycle. They envelope us with “too much information,” and we are lost in the deluge without being aware of it. Public policy debates are played out in a constant stream of sound bites, Tweets, and YouTube videos. Issues are reduced to what can be captured on a bumper sticker or in a 140-byte SMS text. Nuances are lost, and thoughtful discourse ceases. Politicians “play to the camera” or Tweet inanities instead of doing the jobs for which we elected them.

Lest I be accused of being a Luddite, let me say I welcome these technologies and the changes they bring. They may have been responsible in large part for enabling the overthrow of oppressive regimes in the Middle East, and they show virtually unlimited potential as our Global Village becomes more close-knit. My only concern is that we may not be fully aware of the hidden effects the technologies can have, whether for good or ill.

Foreshadowing Part III

I said in Part I that it would take “at least two posts” to finish these musings. I see that three is the magic number, so I will stop for now. Look for the next and final segment in a few days when I will comment on why we should remain aware that "the medium is the message.”