Marshall McLuhan What Are You Doin'?

To my mind, Marshall McLuhan was doing what many of us in Neil Postman's early NYU Media Ecology program were doing: Trying to create a new language and a new structure for describing the true impact of technology on human society and human psychology. One term that comes to mind is "paradigm switch." Through puns, probes and metaphors McLuhan attempted to define how electronic media put us into a post-print paradigm. One problem: when you're in one paradigm, its hard to see it. Terms like "reductionist," "technological determinist" etc are the ways other people try to describe in their own paradigmatic terms what McLuhan was attempting. They were misinformed.

One reason I always bring up Claude Levi-Strauss (ad nauseam to some  peoples minds) is that he also straddled paradigms. In an cultural and  intellectual environment where it was easy to describe native peoples as "primitive" Levi-Strauss suggested that they were capable of a sophistication of  thought and a nuance of expression through their "mythology" equal to or perhaps  greater than our own. That doesn't mean "right," just complex. In his analysis of myths Levi-Strauss stumbled upon a great realization. It was the not content of the myths which contained their true meaning. It was the structure of the total mythic canon which contained the "message." McLuhan knew of Levi-Strauss and admitted his debt to him. (see James M. Curtis "Marshall McLuhan and French Structuralism" Boundary 2 1/1:134-46, 1970 and McLuhan's own note in Technology and Culture, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Jan., 1975), 74-78.)

"I don't know who discovered water, but it wasn't a fish" McLuhan was fond of saying. He could have added that whoever did discover water was probably labeled an H2O determinist or an "airhead" by the other water dwellers.

Claude Lévi-Strauss and Media Ecology

I recommend two excellent obituaries about Claude Lévi-Strauss, the father of Structural Anthrology, who died this past weekend. The New York Times does a good job summarizing his life and times.

The Guardian does a better job explaining the roots of Levi-Strauss' Structural Anthropology and I believe, underscoring its importance to Media Ecology. In particular, Maurice Bloch of The Guardian writes:

The basis of the structural anthropology of Lévi-Strauss is the idea that the human brain systematically processes organised, that is to say structured, units of information that combine and recombine to create models that sometimes explain the world we live in, sometimes suggest imaginary alternatives, and sometimes give tools with which to operate in it. The task of the anthropologist, for Lévi-Strauss, is not to account for why a culture takes a particular form, but to understand and illustrate the principles of organisation that underlie the onward process of transformation that occurs as carriers of the culture solve problems that are either practical or purely intellectual.

It seems to me that there is an unspoken assumption in Media Ecology that there are no differences in the intellectual capabilities of peoples of different ages or technological achievement. By this I don't mean differences in sensory balances, which may be determined by the particular technologies or media of communication available, but rather differences in the basic structure and capacity of the human mind.

When we use the terms, "oral" or "literate" or "post literate" in lieu of "primitive" or "modern", we are not referring to intellectual complexity or intelligence, but rather the modes of thought, the uses of systems of symbols and the religious, social and psychology outlooks encouraged or discouraged by a media environment. In refusing to see the people of cultures without writing (as he called them) as "primitive" or somehow inferior to Western white races, Lévi-Strauss provided the philosophical foundation for McLuhan, Postman and Ong. In a letter to the journal Technology and Culture in 1975, McLuhan acknowledged his debt to Lévi-Strauss' structural methodology for his own Laws of the Media.

If it is possible to distinguish a "primitive" mind from our own then how could we apply Marshall McLuhan's Laws of the Media universally across all cultures and time periods? We can talk about the sensory impact of different types of communication media in different eras only if we accept that the basic mental equipment and the capacity for intellectual activity we are born with has been the same throughout all human history and everywhere in the world. In his exhaustive analysis of Amerindian mythology, Levi-Strauss put the study of human culture on a scientific basis and his work belongs in our Media Ecology foundational canon along with Lewis Mumford, John Dewey and Edmund Carpenter.

Lévi-Strauss wrote:

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact.

Isn't this what we Media Ecologists claim in our own studies of how symbol systems and technologies affect human beliefs and activities? Lévi-Strauss discovered and demonstrated connections between seemingly disparate mythic stories, and offered explanations for seemingly random elements of those stories. His methodology can be used as model for ways to interpret the products of our contemporary culture, which, while seeming to be unrelated, actually constitute our system (or systems) of symbolic meanings.

Rest in peace Professor Lévi-Strauss, and thank you for your life and your work.

Susan Boyle's Transformation: We Have Met The Ugly Duckling And He Is Us

Turnabout is fair play as Susan Boyle turns Les Mis into Les Millions in her now famous YouTube fairy tale.

The Susan Boyle video clip that currently is reaching new viewer heights on YouTube exhibits aspects implying post-production tinkering (or at least extensive pre-production planning) which moves it from the realm of real time cinema verité to preconceived narrative.
The way Boyle's stunning performance is preceded with shots of her in the waiting room, the contrast of her plebeian appearance with the glamour and celebrity of the judges, even her song choice creates a specific effect. Is it a coincidence that this would-be ugly duckling chose as her performance piece Fantine's swan song from Les Miserables?

I had a dream my life would be

So different from this hell I’m living

So different now from what it seemed

Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

Imagine after that lengthy and somewhat embarrassing introduction, Ms. Boyle had begun singing "Oklahoma!" or "Luck Be A Lady Tonight!" The audience reaction might have been quite different.

The presentation and contemplation of transformation is a key characteristic of mythology, properly understood. Myths and fairy tales use a magical transformation as a standard narrative device. The ugly ducking transforms into the beautiful swan. The kitchen drudge transforms into the beautiful princess. The frog transforms into the handsome prince. What is different about the Boyle YouTube video, which might be called a Twitter fairy tale, is that it is we, the audience, that is transformed, not the protagonist.

Using multiple shots of the Britain's Got Talent judges, hosts, and audience, this video narrative clearly documents their (and by extension our) transformation from ugly critics to enthusiastic supporters. By contrast, Susan Boyle herself remains unchanged, except in our eyes. This reversal of transformational aspect as a narrative device is what makes this video so compelling, and I believe it could only happen in our television-weaned, computer-enhanced, social networking era.

Particular storytelling techniques shape themselves to the available medium. In distinguishing the "light through" aspect of the video image vs. the "light on" nature of movies, Marshall McLuhan observed that with television (and by extension the computer monitor) the viewer is the screen. New media present opportunities to tell old stories in a new way, and from a different vantage point. The salient feature of this Twitter-Tale is that it replaces the protagonist with the audience as the object of transformation. We have met the ugly duckling and he is us.

What We Know About Battlestar Galactica

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

The final season of Battlestar Galactica has begun and the teaser commercials have posed the question: Who is the 5th secret Cylon? While this will be the focus of the final ten BSG episodes, there are a number of other questions the series has presented that may not be resolved by the final curtain.

1. Why do Cylons’ spines glow red when they make love?
It would seem that such an obvious sexual tell would be counterproductive for a cadre of seductive simulacrums. In all the years of sexual subversion, did no human ever wonder why their incredibly attractive partners insisted on the missionary position?

We do know that Cylons like sex as much as the next automaton and that they are genetically compatible with humans. They claim to experience “Love” and they purport, at times, to having free will. One can only conclude that the glowing red spine was a feature meant to be included only in Christmas Cylons, but someone slipped in production.

2. How did Cylons develop monotheism?

BSG humans are portrayed as generally secular and polytheistic. Neither Greek nor Hebrew, but rather both and more, human BSG characters sport names or appellations like "Adama," "Apollo," "D'Anna" and for the coffee worshippers amongst us "Starbuck." Their twelve colonial worlds correspond to the twelve signs of the zodiac. They say things like "Thank the Gods" and "Gods help us."

The robotic Cylons are monotheistic, fanatical and proselytizing. Despite their claim that their one god is “love,” or perhaps because of it, they bring about the destruction of the twelve human colonies, killing billions of people and then zealously pursue the few survivors. There is one chilling scene from the first season where the Cylon attack is imminent and Number 6 bends over a carriage to kill an infant. It is unclear whether this is an act of mercy or a preemptive strike.

The odd thing is that the Cylons, being robots, have already achieved eternal life. They literally cannot be killed. Or rather, we see them continually dying and then being reborn. Their reincarnation factory vessels are even called “resurrection ships.” A reborn Cylon is not a type or a clone. It is a recreation of the dead individual Cylon, downloaded from the original with memories and emotions intact. In other words, one of the core motivators of many of Earth’s religions is already an integral part of Cylon existence. The only exception to the rule is if a Cylon dies out of range of a resurrection complex. Then they truly die.

If, in spite of being formed in the image of their creators, Cylons reject polytheism, how did they stumble across monotheism?

There is a school of cultural evolutionary thought that suggests that a pre-existing condition to the adoption of monotheism is a phonetic alphabet and some degree of literacy. In a 1977 Issue of ETC: The Journal of General Semantics, in an article titled "Alphabet, Mother of Invention," Marshall McLuhan (yes, that Marshall McLuhan) and Robert K. Logan speculate on the possible origin of monotheism:

"Western thought patterns are highly abstract, compared with Eastern. There developed in the West, and only in the West, a group of innovations that constitute the basis of Western thought. These include (in addition to the alphabet) codified law, monotheism, abstract science, formal logic, and individualism. All of these innovations, including the alphabet, arose within the very narrow geographic zone between the Tigris-Euphrates river system and the Aegean Sea, and within the very narrow time frame between 2000 B.C. and 500 B.C. We do not consider this to be an accident. While not suggesting a direct causal connection between the alphabet and the other innovations, we would claim, however, that the phonetic alphabet played a particularly dynamic role within this constellation of events and provided the ground or framework for the mutual development of these innovations." (Emphasis added)

While the final verdict on this Media Ecological interpretation of religious thought is still out, there surely is some confusion over how the artificial intelligence products of the pantheistic human culture of BSG could arrive at the notion of one God. Religious robots, while intriguing, remain a problem, especially self-ordained monotheistic robots.

Computer processing, as we understand it, requires at least binary notation, which would imply a minimum of two gods. I believe that the depiction of Cylons as monotheistic in the absence of human mortality or alphabetic literacy can only be seen as a true leap of faith on the part of BSG's creators.

3. Why didn’t the Cylons make their “skin jobs” better than they are?
Humanoid Cylons are stronger, arguably smarter and definitely sexier than their human counterparts. However, given the range of possibilities presented by human/android genetics, one wonders why the Cylons didn’t do more?

How about x-ray vision or invulnerability? Is a spider-like precognition out of the question? At the very least, all Cylons could have been equipped with metallic claws that pop out of their knuckles on command.

When you compare humanity’s current evolutionary state to our closest monkey’s uncle, it is clear we are far superior. Our brains are so large we only need to use 10% and often use much less. Every year some Olympian or Marathoner runs faster, jumps higher, or swims more synchronously. To your average orangutan, we must seem like the types of Super Hominid into which they’d all like to evolve. For those of us already at the summit of Earth’s evolutionary trail, where is there to go but up, as in “Up, Up and Away!”?

It may be that Cylons, while clearly superior to humans in every conceivable way, lack the ability to imagine the next great steps in humanoid evolution and the amount of spandex required.

4. Why do the Cylons want to breed half-human/half-Cylon children? Why have children at all?
Any parent who has been on the receiving end while changing a diaper, who has been involved in any school science project or who has attempted sound moderately coherent while explaining the facts of life to a pre-pubescent human child would wonder why Cylons wouldn’t design their offspring to skip right to adulthood. Would-be Cylon parents will soon discover that it is not possible to annihilate the remainder of the human race while coordinating a schedule of after-school activities.

5. Finally, who is the fifth Cylon? What’s the deal with Starbuck? And what about Earth-that-was?

I personally believe that Starbuck is Amelia Earhart and Colonel Tigh is Jimmy Hoffa. The fifth Cylon is not Ellen Tigh, he's Howard Hughes. Or maybe Walt Disney's head. Wait. Didn't he invent animatronics?

That's it! The Cylons are Disney World Character refugees, who fled Earth when Lawrence Lessig finally got Congress to approve term limits on corporate copyrights! First they evolved from singing bears and cavorting pirates into “toaster-heads.” Now they swing full circle back to humanoid approximations of perfection, but they have not been able to completely eliminate the desire to slavishly cater to the pre-adult offspring of their creators.

If this “Magic Kingdom Galactica” hypothesis is true, we should be on the lookout for an upcoming Battlestar Galactica episode that would be a dead giveaway: “Cylons On Ice”.

DWUI-CP: Driving While Under the Influence of a Cell Phone

I was on Thom Hartmann's radio program yesterday, discussing the use of cell phones while driving. Thom's position was that regulating cell phone usage in cars was an imposition and probably unenforceable anyway. I suggested that like drunk driving, driving while cell-phoning impaired responses and may result in hazardous driving. Here is an edited clip of the transcript:

Hartmann: The Safety Council... now they want to tell you that when you are driving your car you cannot use a hands-free cell phone. You know the little Bluetooth things that most cars have where you've got the phone in your pocket and your car answers the phone and you're just talking at the windshield wipers or the dashboard. You don't even have to take your phone out of your pocket. Hands-free phones. And they're saying we should ban this. It turns out 2600 deaths, 12000 serious injuries per year, this is 6% of vehicel crashes, are attributed to people using phones. Now that's not hands-free phones, that's just phones. But included in that some small percentage of people using hands-free phones and they say "Let's make that illegal."

I say enough of the conservatives telling us what we can do or not do anywhere on earth. Or maybe we should just ban talking in the car, because their argument is that...its not just what you're doing with your hands, its that your head is in the conversation. OK, so lets ban talking to people in the car. In fact, lets even take it a step beyond that. Lets make it required that people have duct tape in their car and that when they get in and sit down not only do you have to fasten your seat belt but you also have to tear off a three inch strip of duct tape and put it over your mouth. Because how are you going to know. I mean, if a police officer's driving by and they see somebody talking, they see their mouth moving, how do they know that that person is not talking to the person next to them or is not talking on a hands-free phone?
....
Blechman: There are researchers who have shown that using a low-fidelity instrument like a cell phone as compared to a high fidelity radio or even talking to a person in a car takes more brain processing power. Its what McLuhan called a cool medium and you actually develop a form of tunnel vision while you're doing that.

Hartmann: Right, but if it was Bluetooth and it was running through the speakers in your car that would not be the case, would it?

Blechman: Its still low fidelity. The signal is coming from the cell carrier, not from the FM radio station.

Hartmann: Oh, so its the bandwidth. Now that's interesting. Now let me extend the logic on this. You're saying that the bandwidth is narrow because there's not such a broad spectrum of frequency the brain has to focus on it more intently. You know AM radio has a narrower bandwidth than FM radio. Should we ban AM radio?
Blechman: Well, I guess you have to find the degree of involvement.

Hartmann: There's some critical threshhold there. That's interesting, Bob! I tell you, I've got the smartest listeners in the world! I thought I was bringing some science to the table here and Bob trumps me! Well done Bob!

Its not every day that I can trump Thom Hartmann! And while I did get the McLuhan reference in, I'm sorry I wasn't able to work in Media Ecology or my blog site as well.

I think the fact that using the cell phone can be demonstrated to affect perception is an excellent example of McLuhan's "Cool Medium" terminology. Like connect-the-dot drawings as compared to photographs, cartoons as compared to paintings or traditional television as compared to cinema, a cool medium requires that we "fill in the blanks."

We experience a voice we hear over the phone as the same as normal conversation because our brains are filling in the gaps. Its only when we hear a recording of a phone conversation that we become aware of the low fidelity. That the process of talking on a cell phone can result in tunnel vision is truly interesting.

So thank you Thom for having me on and for recognizing how smart McLuhan was!

In a message dated 12/04/08 18:46:39 Eastern Standard Time, Lance Strate writes:

"I'm not sure if you absolutely have to have a sense of humor to be a media ecologist, but it certainly is highly recommended. McLuhan was a notorious punster, Postman loved to people people on, and there is a trickster mentality that constitutes a significant strain in our intellectual tradition."

Lance is right. The tradition of humor in Media Ecology goes back over 16,000 years to the Lascaux cave paintings. Recent scholarship has suggested that the cave paintings were actually elaborate knock-knock jokes. The reason the humorous tradition was lost is that the creators of those cave paintings were in the habit of telling their knock-knock jokes with a stone club.

A careful reading of the Socratic dialogues reveals what a kidder Plato was. For example, consider this exchange between Socrates and Phaedrus.

(Phaedrus gives a long exposition on the relationship between lovers and then asks:)

"What do you think of the speech, Socrates? Isn't it extraordinarily fine, especially in point of language?"

Socrates: "Amazingly fine indeed, my friend. I was thrilled by it. And it was you, Phaedrus, that made me feel as I did. I watched your apparent delight in the words as you read. And as I'm sure that you understand such matters better than I do, I took my cue from you, and therefore joined in the ecstasy of my right worshipful companion."

Phaedrus: "Come come! Do you mean to make a joke of it?"

Socrates: "Do you think I'm joking, and don't mean it seriously?"

What a kidder that Socrates was! And a true Media Ecologist!

At nearly the same time, Moses was knocking them dead at the Red Sea with his own unique variation on the classic surfer dude/wipeout routine. That was after God had said to Moses, "Take two tablets and call me in the morning."

Fast forward 2000 years, and Johannes Gutenberg was killing the scions of the Catholic Church with his famous "You're not my type" tag line.

Our own electronic era owes a lot to the whimsey of Alexander Graham Bell who liked to play tricks on his assistant:

Bell: Come here Watson, I need you.
Watson: Who said that?
Bell: He he he.

There are countless other examples of the mirth and humor of the pillars of Media Ecology, but its late, and I'm not getting paid for this. However, I will include one of my favorites, which I've shared here before, the best McLuhan joke ever:

Several students of Media Ecology consult a famous psychic in order to contact Marshall McLuhan and finally get a clear explanation of his writings. The seer goes into a trance, but says nothing for several minutes.

Losing patience, one of the students cries out, "Dr. McLuhan, are you there? Why won't you speak to us?"

A deep voice replies, "The Medium is the Message!"

So the next time you are at a media conference, and someone tries to go all serious on you over the biases of communication, technological determinism or hot and cold media, remember that humor is an integral part of Media Ecology and look that person right in the eye and sing "Media Ecology almost is theology!" and walk away. If one person does that, they'll think he's crazy and try to ignore him. If two people do it, they'll think that Media Ecology is some sort of conspiracy and try to have them removed from the building. But if 50 people do it, imagine, 50 people singing "Media Ecology almost is theology!" and then walking out! They'll think its a movement, which it is.

Television's "Good News"

University of Maryland study finds television causes unhappiness.

There is a posting in Tuesday's Canada.com entertainment section concerning a recent University of Maryland study on television. Commenting on how the study asserts that television makes viewers unhappy, Alex Strachan writes:

"The study's conclusion is that TV has addictive qualities, and that viewers addicted to TV share behavioral traits with those who are prone to substance abuse, "since addictive activities produce momentary please but long-term misery and regret. People most vulnerable to addiction tend to be socially or personally disadvantaged, with TV becoming an opiate."

The point Strachan misses is that the purpose of television is to make us unhappy and then to provide solutions to our discomforts through advertising. As former FCC commissioner Nicholas Johnson pointed out nearly 40 years ago, the viewer is not the consumer of television, he is the product, offered to advertisers at a cost per thousand. (see his book, How To Talk Back to Your Television Set).

Without the bad news of "News", the end-of-the-world melodramas of "Dramas" or the embarrassment provoking unlikelihoods of "Comedies," advertisers would not have the properly conditioned audience to pitch their products to.

That is why Marshall McLuhan, also almost 40 years ago, called advertising television's "good news" or "gospel."

So Strachan's concern over which came first, the unhappy viewer or the television is misplaced. Sure unhappy people may naturally gravitate toward television, but why they do so has less to do with chickens and eggs and more to do with the underlying purpose of television broadcasters.

And as for the University of Maryland's study, as I haven't read it yet, I won't comment except to note Charles Schultz's take on the impact of television on children:

Charlie Brown: Do you think television is harmful to children?

Linus: I don't know. I've never had one fall on me.