Our Brains as Media
What changes do you expect in the information society in the next ten years? Write a essay what you expect to happen, and why - using a critical review of McLuhan's theories (i.e. basing it on his thinking, or basing it on a cirtique on his thinking). Use the material prodvided and the film to as supporting material. Post the essay below.
The pace at which information is being transmitted across the globe is ever increasing over the millenia. Technology is the enabler of this increase, not just media. For example, Charlemagne’s horse saddle created a new era for military prowess, but also for spreading culture-specific messages and norms across wide areas. Was the horse the medium? Perhaps. This is the first indication that McLuhan’s theory of the medium being the message may not be as crazy as it seems, because more than just the Internet and television can be labeled as media.
Of course, the example given above can at first be seen as taken out of the context of McLuhan’s meaning. His work studied the amount of information delivered in media, such as the frames per second delivered in films compared to television. He argued that a film is an overwhelming experience because of the richness of the media. Is it possible that by looking as far back as the horse and saddle as a means for delivering information, we can gain insight into what is to come in the future and simultaneously critique McLuhan’s work? Yes, it is possible.
The critical question when considering the horse and saddle is whether the local people receiving information from far-off lands, such as Native Americans in what is now the Midwest of USA during the time when their land was invaded by cowboys on horseback, were overwhelmed by even the sight of the cowboy. Indeed, the coyboys dressed radically different from the Native Americans. It can be argued that the fear of the unknown – in this example and in many examples – was simply too overwhelming for both the cowboy and the Native American. Hence, hostilities erupted; a by-product of the message being lost in the media.
Another situation in which the medium becomes stronger than the message occurs frequently in hostage situations. Consider a bank robber who takes too long for his get-away and is stuck with hostages inside the bank. He communicates with the police that he will surrender, and then walks outside with his weapon raised. However, as he is rasing his weapon it accidentally goes off. The police shot him dead. If we consider the gun as the ultimate carrier of the bank robber’s message, it spoke louder than his words. His medium became his message.
Taken in these types of examples, McLuhan’s work ultimately applies to any scenario where actions are speaking louder than words. We can ultimately ascribe an action to an object -- such as the gun, the saddle, the Internet, television – and think of it as a medium. It becomes more difficult to assign a message to an object, however, because a message is abstract. It has no real, tangible meaning; it must rely on the way in which it is delivered, its medium.
Applied to McLuhan’s tetra of Enhance/ Obsolete/ Retrieve/ Reverse, the horse and saddle example indeed enhanced transportation and the ability to ride long distances. It made obsolete the need to ride uncomfortably. It is possible that it retrieved from the past humankind’s instinct for dominating animals. However, by saddling a horse humans reversed the trend of domination to also conquer other civilizations of humans, a in the cowboys with the Native Americans.
In the future, it is conceivable that memory chips will be available for implantation into our brains, for applications as profound as receiving chip-based medicines, or as pithy as surfing the Internet via our thoughts and controlling chip-based household appliances. In McLuhan’s view then, our brains will become the media.