Marshall MacLuhan and the Media

By introducing a concept called "the global village", MacLuhan saw the media as an extension of human reach. In essence, he believed that the medium was the message. But, how that message gets from originator to the intended audience is a concept that he only opened discussion on: the media, as a form of communications, is still far from reaching its potential. One cynic claims that communications is called a medium" because it is "rarely" "well done". MacLuhan felt that the media were simply extensions of the various human faculties and senses. That is why he called his major work: "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man". As our central nervous system is a single unified field of experience, so, he felt, were the global networks.

MacLuhan's definition of the "laws" of the media include four specific questions that he figured one had to ask: "(a) what does it enhance? (b) What does is obsolesce? (c) What does it retrieve that had been obsolescent earlier? (and) (d) What does it flip into when pushed to the limits of its potential?" (Grosswiler 77) If we simply take these four questions, or "laws" and refer them to modern media- well past MacLuhan's own lifetime, we find it difficult to come up with proper answers. Yes, given the recent 24/7 coverage of the terrorist attacks, the modern media- especially television- enhances our immediate knowledge of the events through pictures. However, one might carp at the verbal portion of the media, the dozens of seemingly "knowledgeable" experts, each one having his own slant on what happened and why and what the American response should be. It is interesting to note that MacLuhan was not really fond of television. He is quoted as saying:

"Do you really want to know what I
think of that thing? If you want to
save one shred of Hebrao-Greco-Roman-
Medieval-Renaissance-Enlightenment-
Modern-Western civilization, you'd
Better get an ax and smash all the
Sets." (Gordon 301)

As Gordon goers on to explain: "In his time, MacLuhan inspired and exasperated, pleased and provoked." (Gordon 301) At the same time, he became "popular"- whether he was admired or not. In the 1960s, every intellectual seemed to have some sort of opinion about MacLuhan, whether he understood his concepts or not.

We may understand his second "law" somewhat better, as to determining what is obsolescent. Certainly television has surpassed the print media. People now seem content to merely get visual and sound bytes on the half-hour newscasts, without bothering to read the "whole" story in the newspaper. Other than the New York TIMES, the Washington POST and the Los Angeles TIMES, even metropolitan newspapers have fallen by the wayside, or merged to turn a multi-paper town into a monopoly. We now hear of editors resigning because publishers wanted to slant news to be more favorable toward their disappearing number of advertisers, as well as reducing news coverage by slashing jobs to reflect better on the bottom line.

Do the media "retrieve" anything that had been obsolescent earlier? Chances are not. Society and the media are changing. We now have web sites instead of "bulldog editions". Every medium is now represented somewhere in cyber-space. "Cyberspace, Information Highway, Network Marketplace, Tele Shopping. There is no shortage of reminders that society is changing and these changes have something to do with technology that communicates." Das 5) And it is in the realm of modern technology that many7 people see MacLuhan's basic premises fall short. Maybe he didn't care about technological progress. "The prophet of global speak is ripe, if not for resurrection, at least for reappraisal." (Das 1) When MacLuhan proposes the law of reaching communication's potential, he left the door ajar to innovations that would come long after he was dead. "He was concerned with the humanizing or dehumanizing potential of technology, especially communication technology." (Das 1) In reading over some of his works and appraisals of the media in society, it seems that he sees as a major threat to freedom of the human spirit the (according to him) erroneous belief that technology is a neutral, external instrument to be used for either good or evil. "The message is the medium by which we seek answers to the problems of our lives. Marshall MacLuhan…got it backwards….The medium merely carries the data we all require." (Koch 1) One can remember when sports fans would buy the morning papers to learn scores of ball games, who got hits, who struck out, who won. Now, we have ESPN and Fox Sports to give us instant data- even data about other games and other sports as we are watching a particular game. However, Koch tends to believe that MacLuhan is off=-base in attempting to portray communications as a means of creating a global village. "MacLuhan's dream of a 'global village' will remain a utopian dream. Why should we be surprised by this? Television carries images from around the world, telephones reach into every land….Yet, struggle, injustice, prejudice, and strife remain the constants of our age." (Koch 217)
So, in essence MacLuhan's law about the media reaching the point of satiety- or, at least reaching its potential, may never occur. Again, pointing to the events of September 11, 2001, modern communications has brought us up close and personal to disaster, but it has found no way of using the power of persuasion and modern communication to prevent it. Bad news sells. That is a given. More people watch disasters or sad events, whether the World Trade Center or the death of Princess Diana, than they will watch "happy" events. Some local television stations attempted to provide a "good news" hour. The viewership declined, and so it was ended. Even religious broadcasters found that their contributions and ratings soar whenever something awful happens. It was modern communications that brought us Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson on their Christian network, blaming terrorist attacks on lesbians, gays, and abortionists- that their evil created further evil.

One needs to look a little more closely on some of what MacLuhan actually said, as a means of rebutting those who now treat him as a relic of ancient times. "Where MacLuhan speaks of the global village, his key word is interdependence- a far different matter from unity…The village is not the place to find ideal peace and harmony…I don't approve of the global village. I say we live in it." (Gordon 303)

Some of MacLuhan's critics claim that he considers Man to be a prisoner of the media? If this is so, why did he write a book entitled "Understanding Media"? However, perhaps what some of the critics mean when they use the word "prisoner" is that we are somehow forced to watch what the powers-that-be of the television and cable networks feel we should watch. There is no public opinion poll to select sitcoms or dramas. That opinion comes when ratings are measured and lower-rated programs are cancelled. What needs to be understood, it seems, is that the media (print, TV, radio, even the Internet) are profit=-seeking enterprises. Even Public TV and radio have their pledge drives, which, in some cases, seem to count as many minutes as the commercial broadcasters sell to its advertisers. So, all things considered, one might easily answer NO to that fourth MacLuhan question: Man's communications through the various media will never reach their potential.

Having admitted that, however, there are a number of positives to consider about MacLuhan's basic premises and his concerns about understanding media. He had become interested, during the last few years of his life about something that goes well beyond what we might think of as "intellectual" make-up of the media. As he explained, "The drift in communication theory…is toward the study of how the whole range of the electromagnetic spectrum affects human beings." (Gordon 306) In fact, as Gordon points out (p 307) "In the early pages of Understanding Media, MacLuhan refers to the unified 'field' character of our new electromagnetism.. MacLuhan seems to consider this the same sort of "refashioning of space and distance that happened after the automobile was invented. However, he had some concerns about his theory and the reality of it. "The effect of electronic technology that most troubled MacLuhan because of its implications for Christianity, was the loss of the physical body…That is, Man has become essentially discarnate in the electric age." (Gordon 315) In other words, we relate to electronic figures and vistas, rather than to the real thing. How true this is can easily be seen by many of our exclamations upon meeting a "personality". We say things like "You're taller in person!" or "You look so much younger and thinner." At the same time, we have to rely on what the camera and/or the microphone, and the printing press decide to let us hear, read, or see. In the last several weeks, we have often heard the comment (about the World Trade Center): "It is so much more terrible in person than you see on television." Yet, for hundreds of millions of people, world-wide, what we see on TV, or hear on radio is the absolute truth, and we tend to accept it as such. "The camera does not lie!" we believe, false as that premise truly is. But, what needs to happen to get closer to the mass media meeting their potential is something MacLuhan envisioned in his idea of a "global village": "not as a place of of totalized, primitive conformity, but as a place where minority issues and views cannot be ignored, where difference and diversity are celebrated." (Grosswiler 217) The global village, therefore, is not merely seeing Hispanic actors s maids or gang members, and African-Americans as pushy, upwardly mobile types, but understanding motivation well before accepting the technological "reality" of a TV screen or a website. There is room today both for the medium being the message, as well as the message being the medium.

WORKS CITED:
Das, Biswajit: "Do Technologies Communicate Culture?"
www.iias.leidenuniv.nl/host/ccrss/cp/cp-do.html

Gordon,. Terrence: Marshall MacLuhan (1997) New York: Basic Books

Grosswiler, Paul: Method is the Message (1998) Montreal: Black Rose Books

Koch, Tom: The Message is the Medium (1996) Westport CT: Praeger Publishing