Media and the modern man
"As the preliterate confronts the literate in the post-literate arena, as new information patterns inundate and uproot the old, mental breakdowns of varying degrees-including the collective nervous breakdowns of whole societies unable to resolve their crises of identity-will become very common."
Marshall McLuhan
At a time when television was still in its infancy, and the personal computer was almost twenty years into the future, Marshall McLuhan, the man who coined the term 'global village' and the phrase "the medium is the message" warned that all media-in and of themselves and regardless of the content they communicate-exert a compelling influence on individual man and the shape of the society that he inhabits.
His contention was that innovations of media and/or technology are also extensions of human abilities and senses. They alter the sensory balance and these alterations, in turn, inexorably reshape the society that created those innovations and impact the individuals themselves.
He maintained that prehistoric, or tribal, man existed in a harmonious balance of the senses, perceiving the world equally through hearing, smell, touch, sight and taste. In addition, as the primary medium of communication was speech, no man knew appreciably more or less than any other. This meant that, for over 1.5 million years of man's existence, there was little individualism or specialization.
Under pressure
The arrival of the phonetic alphabet (1200B.C. to 800B.C.) had the effect of disturbing the balance between the senses, as vision became dominant and with it, reasoning in a sequential linear fashion became the norm.
Then around 1450 the printing press, invented by Johann Gutenberg, made the mass publication and circulation of literature possible. Within fifty years, the intellectual face of Europe had changed and it is not too much to say that nationalism, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution and democracy would never have developed without the printing press and cheap paper.
Printing enabled every literate man to see his mother tongue analytically as a uniform entity. It turned the vernacular regional languages of the day into a uniform closed system of a national language and gave birth to the concept of nationalism. The herd now believed that the concept of a nation was an intense and beguiling image of group status and destiny.
Printing was also the first mechanization of a complex handicraft. By creating an analytic sequence of step-by-step repeatable processes, it became the blueprint for all mechanization to follow. Typography, by producing the first uniformly repeatable commodity, also created the first assembly line and the first mass production. Movable type was archetype and prototype for all subsequent industrial development.
Therefore, literate or visual man created an environment that is strongly fragmented, individualistic, explicit, logical, specialized and detached.
Electric shock
In the 20th century the electronic media (the telegraph, radio, films, telephone, computer and television) transformed all aspects of our sensory relationships, of our social and psychic existence and our values and institutions. Leaders who understood the power of the dominant medium at the time became 'Tribal Emperors' on a scale never before envisaged. (Mussolini, Hitler and Franklin D. Roosevelt in the days of radio, Jack Kennedy, Castro, Ronald Regan and Clinton in the television era).
Just as phonetic literacy was a break between oral-tribal man and visual man the use of the electronic media constituted a break between the fragmented Gutenberg man and the new 'Integral Man.'
McLuhan maintained that the depth of participation engendered by the electronic media would bring us back in touch with ourselves as well as with one another, but that the instant nature of the electronic-information movement would decentralize the family of man into a new state of multitudinous tribal existences.
The open society, the visual offspring of phonetic literacy, will be replaced by the closed society, the product of speech, drum and ear technologies. Society will become re-tribalized. As the new information patterns uproot the old, the rational sequential value system will be replaced by a desire for instant and total involvement. The right of privacy and the sanctity of the individual will disappear.
A world of villages
Because the electronic media produce psychically integrating and socially decentralizing effects, new mini-states, which will be tribal agglomerates of ethnic and linguistic groups, will arise. Nation-states will break up and the existing institutions and bureaucracies will disappear. The world will become a 'global village.'
The global-village conditions will stimulate more discontinuity and diversity and division than the old mechanical, standardized society; in fact, the global village will make maximum disagreement and creative dialog inevitable. Eventually the mini-states will discover that their tribal bonds transcend their differences and will thereafter live in harmony. Cultural cross-fertilization will be the norm.
Unfortunately, before new solutions are implemented the old ones will have to be shown as wanting. In countries where literate values are deeply institutionalized, the process of change will be highly traumatic as the clash of the old segmented visual culture and the new integral electronic culture creates crises of identity within individuals, within institutions and within nation-states, a crisis exacerbated by the coming economic depression. Cycles repeat.
Marshall McLuhan
At a time when television was still in its infancy, and the personal computer was almost twenty years into the future, Marshall McLuhan, the man who coined the term 'global village' and the phrase "the medium is the message" warned that all media-in and of themselves and regardless of the content they communicate-exert a compelling influence on individual man and the shape of the society that he inhabits.
His contention was that innovations of media and/or technology are also extensions of human abilities and senses. They alter the sensory balance and these alterations, in turn, inexorably reshape the society that created those innovations and impact the individuals themselves.
He maintained that prehistoric, or tribal, man existed in a harmonious balance of the senses, perceiving the world equally through hearing, smell, touch, sight and taste. In addition, as the primary medium of communication was speech, no man knew appreciably more or less than any other. This meant that, for over 1.5 million years of man's existence, there was little individualism or specialization.
Under pressure
The arrival of the phonetic alphabet (1200B.C. to 800B.C.) had the effect of disturbing the balance between the senses, as vision became dominant and with it, reasoning in a sequential linear fashion became the norm.
Then around 1450 the printing press, invented by Johann Gutenberg, made the mass publication and circulation of literature possible. Within fifty years, the intellectual face of Europe had changed and it is not too much to say that nationalism, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution and democracy would never have developed without the printing press and cheap paper.
Printing enabled every literate man to see his mother tongue analytically as a uniform entity. It turned the vernacular regional languages of the day into a uniform closed system of a national language and gave birth to the concept of nationalism. The herd now believed that the concept of a nation was an intense and beguiling image of group status and destiny.
Printing was also the first mechanization of a complex handicraft. By creating an analytic sequence of step-by-step repeatable processes, it became the blueprint for all mechanization to follow. Typography, by producing the first uniformly repeatable commodity, also created the first assembly line and the first mass production. Movable type was archetype and prototype for all subsequent industrial development.
Therefore, literate or visual man created an environment that is strongly fragmented, individualistic, explicit, logical, specialized and detached.
Electric shock
In the 20th century the electronic media (the telegraph, radio, films, telephone, computer and television) transformed all aspects of our sensory relationships, of our social and psychic existence and our values and institutions. Leaders who understood the power of the dominant medium at the time became 'Tribal Emperors' on a scale never before envisaged. (Mussolini, Hitler and Franklin D. Roosevelt in the days of radio, Jack Kennedy, Castro, Ronald Regan and Clinton in the television era).
Just as phonetic literacy was a break between oral-tribal man and visual man the use of the electronic media constituted a break between the fragmented Gutenberg man and the new 'Integral Man.'
McLuhan maintained that the depth of participation engendered by the electronic media would bring us back in touch with ourselves as well as with one another, but that the instant nature of the electronic-information movement would decentralize the family of man into a new state of multitudinous tribal existences.
The open society, the visual offspring of phonetic literacy, will be replaced by the closed society, the product of speech, drum and ear technologies. Society will become re-tribalized. As the new information patterns uproot the old, the rational sequential value system will be replaced by a desire for instant and total involvement. The right of privacy and the sanctity of the individual will disappear.
A world of villages
Because the electronic media produce psychically integrating and socially decentralizing effects, new mini-states, which will be tribal agglomerates of ethnic and linguistic groups, will arise. Nation-states will break up and the existing institutions and bureaucracies will disappear. The world will become a 'global village.'
The global-village conditions will stimulate more discontinuity and diversity and division than the old mechanical, standardized society; in fact, the global village will make maximum disagreement and creative dialog inevitable. Eventually the mini-states will discover that their tribal bonds transcend their differences and will thereafter live in harmony. Cultural cross-fertilization will be the norm.
Unfortunately, before new solutions are implemented the old ones will have to be shown as wanting. In countries where literate values are deeply institutionalized, the process of change will be highly traumatic as the clash of the old segmented visual culture and the new integral electronic culture creates crises of identity within individuals, within institutions and within nation-states, a crisis exacerbated by the coming economic depression. Cycles repeat.
