Marshall McLuhan Technological Determinism

1. Marshall McLuhanTechnological Determinism

4. McLuhan’s Vision • We are entering an electronic age • Electronic Media alter the way people • Think • Feel • Act

5. Technological Determinism • The belief that technological development determines cultural and social change. • “The medium is the message.”

6. Basic Concepts • Communication technology inventions cause cultural change • Changes in modes of communication shape human life • Channels of communication are the primary causes of cultural change • “We shape our tools and they in turn shape us.”

7. More Basic Concepts • Way we live is largely a function of how we process information • Phonetic alphabet, printing press, and telegraph changed the way people thought about themselves • Same words spoken face-to-face, printed on a paper or presented on television provide three different messages

8. More Basic Concepts • Primary channel of communication changes the way we perceive the world • Dominant medium of an age dominates people

9. Media • Technologies through which we relate to the world around us • Very broad definition (includes the light bulb and the wheel) • Dominant media determine our “ratio of the senses.”

10. Media • Anything that amplifies or intensifies a bodily organ, sense, or function • Extend our reach • Increase our efficiency • Act as a filter to • Organize • Interpret

11. Extensions • Media innovations are really extensions of human faculties • Book extends the eye • Wheel extends the leg • Clothes extend the skin • Electronic circuitry extends the central nervous system

12. McLuhan’s “Ages” Tribal Literacy Print Electronic

13. Tribal Age: Oral Culture • World was an acoustic place • Hearing, touch, taste, and smell more developed than sight • High involvement, passion, and spontaneity in interactions • Spoken word more emotionally laden than printed text • Life more complex because the ear is not capable of selecting the stimuli it takes in

14. Age of Literacy: Writing • Results from development of phonetic alphabet (2000 B.C.) • Visual becomes dominant sense • Ear exchanged for the eye • Encourages “civilized” private detachment rather than “primitive” tribal involvement • Encourages logical, linear thinking. • Mathematics, logic, science, philosophy • Line became the organizing principle

15. The Print Age: Printing Press • Invention of the Printing Press (1400’s) • Made visual dependence widespread • “Repeatability” the most important characteristic of movable type • Standardization of national languages encouraged nationalism • Books could be read in privacy/isolation • Individualism glorified • Prototype of Industrial Revolution • Mass production of identical products

16. Electronic Age: Electronic Media • Telegraph (1840’s) • “Global Village” emerges • Cool medium of TV encourages spontaniety and involvement • Retribalization • Instant communication returns us to a pre-alphabetic oral tradition • Linear, logical thinking fades

17. Hot and Cool Media • Hot • A high definition channel of communication that focuses on a single sensory receptor • Cool • A low definition channel of communication that stimulates several different senses and requires high sensory involvement

18. Hot Media Cool Media Movies Radio Photographs Print Lecture Television Telephone Cartoon Face to Face Talk Class Discussion

19. McLuhan and Education • People living in the midst of change cling to what was rather than embrace the new • Education is a battle ground over forms of literacy -- print versus video versus audio • Acoustic media threaten book-bound establishment of education

20. The End