Post on 14-Oct-2014
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Technological Change & Cultural
Transformation
Is free will a subject of the imagination? Does communication media drive
human behaviour? Is human culture merely a technological construct? Or, do humans
have the ability to think for themselves? According to communication theorists, Harold
Innis and Marshall McLuhan, communication media shape human culture. Their
argument omits the idea that individuals have the power to act and think for themselves.
Innis was the first to justify this theory by analyzing society before and after electronic
communication media. In doing so, he discovered that every new electronic technology
has the ability to re-shape society. McLuhan explained that cultural change occurs
because different qualities exist between communication technologies. McLuhan
identified and compared the qualities of the television to previous communication
technologies such as books and radio. As a result, he discovered that television had new
qualities that could re-shape culture. This led McLuhan to confirm that every new
communication media will cause cultural change. This theory continues to be supported
today. Had Innis and McLuhan lived through the present day, they would have viewed
the World Wide Web (WWW) as the next communication medium to re-shape culture.
By exploring the evidence behind Innis and McLuhan’s theory concerning technological
control over human culture, one can predict that today’s society is driven by the values
and principles encouraged by the WWW.
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Innis was the first to claim that communication media have the ability to shape a
society. Innis argued “structures of consciousness parallel structures of
communication” (1951). Here, Innis claims that a new culture is brought into existence
with every new communication technology. To illustrate this, he formed two cultural
biases: temporal and spatial. A temporally biased culture signified the society of the
tribal age, while a spatially biased culture represented a society driven by electronic
communication media. These two biases represented the two human cultures that were
divided by different communication media: traditional vs. electronic. The temporal
culture was driven by traditional means of communication media such as speech, drums,
canoes, and dance. It was a time-based society characterized by small, personal, and
close-knit communities. With the rise in electronic communication media, the value of
community declined as technologies such as books and newspapers promoted a new
importance of individual activity and a greater focus on the self. This radical shift is what
made Innis discover the diversity of technological influence (Carey 1989).
Innis’ discovery of the cultural shift helped him to confirm that every new
communication medium has the ability to physically re-shape the human culture. To
further prove that the medium shapes the minds of its users, McLuhan went into depth
about how this occurs. McLuhan argued, “the medium is the message” (41). Here, he
reinforces Innis’ claim that communication media have the ability to transform a
message. He outlines that when a message is sent via a medium, a process of mediation
occurs which reshapes the message. Mediation allows transmission and the exchange of
information in the process of sending and receiving. Thus, the message is changed via
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technological control. To exemplify this theory, McLuhan suggested how the media used
by artists such as drawing/painting tools and or colours have control over the significance
of an artwork. As drawings and paintings create different forms, and colours signify
different moods, a variety of messages transpire (McLuhan 2001).
Since Innis and McLuhan lived in different time periods, they analyzed different
cultural shifts. Whereas Innis compared the culture of the acoustic age (temporal culture)
to the print culture (spatial culture), McLuhan compared the print culture to the television
age. McLuhan attempted to prove that television supports the idea of technological
determinism (1984). Like Innis, McLuhan used the spatial society as one of his
variables, though he re-names the culture in his own terms. He refers to Innis’ spatial
society as the literate culture (print culture), to illustrate that it was an age of reading and
writing. Following the age of print, he believed the television shaped a new electronic
oral/aural culture (television culture).
McLuhan’s television culture may seem like an attempt to construct a third
culture to Innis’ cultural biases, however, he argued that the television culture is rather a
step back to the values and traditions of a temporally biased society (Griffin 1997). He
discovered that the television culture is shaped by similar values as the communication
media that shaped Innis’ temporal culture, as it also valued participation and community.
Unlike, Innis’ spatial culture where individual activity and one’s self were of high
importance, McLuhan explained that the television culture was marked by a renewed
value of tribalism and group activity. He stated, “we are re-tribalizing, involuntarily
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we are getting rid of individualism…we are no longer so concerned with self
definition…we are most concerned about what the group knows” (1960). McLuhan
explains how television culture will move human kind away from the individual human
being shaped by print culture and back to a new tribal human being. As the print culture
valued privacy, the television culture would open up a new world of greater social
interaction.
McLuhan was able to distinguish the temporal and television cultures from print
culture by the differences between their communication media. He outlined that there are
two categories of communication media: hot and cold. He used the words hot and cold
in order to signify the opposite. He described hot media as technologies that hone-in on
one sense, promote individual activity, and are information intense. These media
represented technologies such as newspapers and radio that shaped the spatial culture.
For example, newspapers hone-in on the eye, and are information intense because they
give out lots of information and are experienced alone. In contrast to hot media,
McLuhan explained that cold media hone-in on all of the senses, promote group activity,
and are less information intense because they are experienced with others. Cold
communication media represented the stories and canoes of the temporal culture, and the
television of the oral/aural culture (McLuhan 2000).
Innis’ temporal culture and McLuhan’s oral/aural culture are similar societies
because cold communication media drives them both. Both the traditional technologies
of the temporal culture and the electronic technologies of the oral/aural culture promoted
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community and participation. The only exception is that the medium of television of the
oral/aural age expanded the ways people can see the world. McLuhan argued that the
television allowed people to see the world without travelling far distances. He theorized
that electronic media transformed the world into a global village: a place where time and
space barriers have been broken down allowing for communication over far distances in
less time (1960). He said, “the new electronic independence re-creates the world in
the image of a global village” (Griffin 344). Thus, electronic communication media
have shrunk the world to the size of a small community.
Not only did McLuhan discover that electronic communication media could make
the world smaller, but that it could re-shape the definition of community. With the
television, communities were no longer limited to small groups where common messages
remained private. McLuhan argued that the television shaped massive groups through
public promotion of standardized messages (Wolfe 1968). McLuhan stated “the world is
now like a continually sounding tribal drum, where everybody gets the message, all
the time, a princess gets married in England, and boom, boom, boom, go the drums,
we all hear about it, an earthquake in North Africa, a Hollywood star gets drunk,
away go the drums again” (1960). The television’s promotion of standardized
messages led to the formation of immeasurable communities on local, national, and
international levels.
Today, McLuhan’s theory of technological determinism continues to be
supported. The World Wide Web (WWW) is the latest electronic communication
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medium to transform culture. Society has transformed from a television-based culture to
a computer culture. One could attempt to categorize computer culture as McLuhan’s
forth period of human history. The WWW supports McLuhan’s idea that technological
influence shapes a society. As the television culture evolved from the literate culture, the
WWW has evolved out of television culture. The difficult relationships that arise
between today’s parents and children can help to prove that the television and the WWW
divided culture. Today’s parents, who grew up during the television culture, have
difficulty understanding their children because children today are shaped by the values of
computer culture. This same conflict occurred between today’s parents and their parents
as they experienced the conflicts that existed between literate culture and television
culture.
Had McLuhan experienced the WWW, one could predict that he would have
recognized it as the next communication medium to have the ability to change human
experience. He stated, “inventions in technology invariably cause cultural change”
(Griffin 343). Also, by understanding McLuhan’s notion of hot and cold media, one may
presume that he would have defined the WWW as a medium with the qualities of both
hot and cold media. It is difficult to define the WWW as hot or cold as it combines both
literacy (a quality of a hot media) and visual imagery (a quality of cold media). It is a
neutral media: not too hot and not too cold. The WWW is a medium with high and low
information intensity and more or less participation. It is information intense because it
is loaded with an immeasurable amount of web pages. However, it becomes less intense
when one knows what they are searching for. Also, the WWW requires less participation
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because it hones-in on one sense (the eye), though since one has to search and read in
order to attain information it becomes highly participatory. Lastly, the WWW shapes
individual and group experiences. Searching on the WWW is usually an individual
experience, though when users participate in interactive online games, a communal
activity is formed.
As it is difficult to justify the WWW as a hot or cold medium, it is confirmed that
it has the qualities to transform every aspect of human experience. McLuhan once said,
“family life, the workplace, schools, health care, friendship, religious worship,
recreation, politics – nothing remains untouched by communication technology”
(Griffin 343). The WWW supports this notion because it has re-shaped human behaviour,
transformed the way people communicate, and changed how institutions are run.
Nowadays almost anything can be found by the click of a mouse. The WWW is speeding
up society. It has also changed the value of traditional friendships and relationships.
Now, our society builds virtual friendships and relationships through means of online
communication. Instant messaging services (msn, aol), email, facebook, discussion
boards, and chat rooms are some of many modes of communication made available by
the WWW. These media have decreased the value of face-to-face interaction and
increased virtual interaction. Nowadays, corporations have business conferences and
perform business transactions over the WWW. Plus, certain conventions of the
educational system have changed. Student courses are now available online, and email
has become a key way for students to interact with their instructors. These are just some
of many ways computer technology has modernized society.
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While the WWW has enhanced the way people communicate, in this process it
has made the world appear smaller. The WWW confirms that electronic communication
media have the ability to shrink the globe into the size of a global village. Like the
television, barriers in human communication do not restrict the WWW. Though, what
sets the WWW apart from television technology is that it shrinks the globe even further.
It does not only break apart time and space barriers but it gets rid of them for good. The
WWW has transformed the world into a global home. People no longer have to leave
their homes to survive. The WWW allows one to shop for food, buy clothing, be
educated, entertained, do business, and build friendships and relationships. Nowadays,
one can survive with mere shelter and the WWW.
By understanding McLuhan’s theories concerning electronic media, one can
predict that he would have viewed the WWW as a positive advancement. Since
McLuhan was astonished by television’s power to allow people to see the world, one
could predict that he would have valued the WWW’s ability to take people even further.
Plus, McLuhan’s value of the communal experience continues to be encouraged by the
WWW. Even though the WWW promotes an indirect method of communication, online
communication media encourages users to participate in group activities.
The relationship that exists between communication media and cultural change
confirms that the WWW will transform culture. Innis’ analysis of cultural change and
McLuhan’s discovery of the differences that exist between communication media helped
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to prove that every new technology drives societal change. Three stages of human
history have transpired as a result of technological innovation: acoustic, literate, and
oral/aural culture. As different communication media drove each, they become cultural
divisions. Now, with the WWW, a computer culture is the latest age in human history to
emerge. As the WWW promotes different values than the communication media of the
past, it will shape a new culture. The WWW has already changed the way people
communicate and how institutions are run. It is the latest medium to govern the way
human culture acts and thinks. The WWW will continue to shape society until the next
electronic communication medium emerges and a new human culture is shaped. The
world will forever be a continuous cycle of technological innovation and cultural change.
Monday, December 4 th /2006
By: Kelly Foss
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