Meta Forms

Johnson goes on to talk about a "meta" form of commentary. In the past hundred years, we've moved from the victorian novel of storytelling to the meta discourse of commentary on other mediums. Television about television. Books about books. Commentary about events. As Johnson puts it, "The infosphere is now part of our "real life" - which makes commenting on it as natural as commenting on the weather."

Thus, we have programs like Talk Soup on E! (or, anything on E! as Johnson points out) which give the highlights of talk shows of the week.

This phenominom exists on the Internet as well. We have websites about other websites. We have standards organizations such as the www.w3.org (the world wide web consortium) who dictate web standards for browser companies and developers to code to in order to create a better online experience.

XML is a meta language-that is, a language about how to write languages for the web. It seems like everything is moving towards XML now. The benefit is standardization of form, but what information does it give us?

We're back to decision theory-how do we trust sources? What information do we believe? What do we do about information overload?

Technology Break

I've recently had a technology break. It's called Thanksgiving!

I think I actually went two days without checking my e-mail, which seems to be a record of late. We're soo hooked on technology that it's hard to imagine life without it.

Steven Johnson agrees with me on this last point. As I was reading more of Interface Culture this morning, I was struck by the following passage:

"We are fixated with the image not because we have lost faith in reality, but because images now have an enormous impact on reality, to the extent that the older image-reality opposition doesn't really work anymore. This pattern of renunciation and acceptance has a long history. New technologies invariably posess the aura of unreality at their outset, and then march steadily toward the natural world."

This is soo true. New technology comes in and it's odd and strange and we have to get used to it and then it becomes part of reality.

The Interface

Steven Johnson's "Interface Culture" poses a lot of interesting ideas. This is the book that I'm working on now...

I think the most interesting so far, is that Johnson believes that the Interface is one of the greatest inventions of the century-one that fundamentally changes the way we look at reality.

"We live in a society that is increasingly shaped by events in cyberspace, and yet cyberspace remains, for all practical purposes, invisible, outside our perceptual grasp," (Johnson, 19).

This rings true-we can't really perceive cyberspace except via the interface-another artiface between us and the computer. Unfortunately, we can't directly contact the computer in its language of 1's and 0's, we must have the interface there to translate for us.

Is something lost in that translation? If so, what?

We perceive reality instead of from our own senses, but through an itermediary-the interface. It all goes back to Vannevar Bush's Memex device and the concept he invented of the quick access to documents. And later on, the invention of the Mouse by Doug Engelbart. The mouse, as Johnson put it, "Allowed the user to enter [the electronic] world and truly manipulate things inside it, and for that reason it was much more than just a pointing device," (p. 22).

Now, even when we look back at the past, we view it through the medium of the interface, which ironically makes us feel closer and more at one with the computer (Johnson).

Videodrome

David Cronenberg's Videodrome offers an interesting critique on the work of Marshall McLuhan.

To start, here's a link to the IMDB entry: Videodrome.

Aside from some more obvious things, such as Professor O'blivion as Marshall Himself, the film asks some very interesting questions about the effects of media on society.

The main character, Max Renn, watches a film (called Videodrome) depicting graphic acts of violence. Everyone who watches this film suffers from a brain tumor and Max ends up going crazy and killing himself. (Sorry to those out there who want to watch the film!). Is media really that immersive? I think it can be-look at the internet. It only gets more immersive as we get into virtual reality. It's interesting that this critique would come out mostly criticizing television, which has now become almost passe.

Other horrific events include Max's delusions of an opening in his chest to insert video cassettes. It's almost like we literally insert media into ourselves. It's sick to ponder how infiltrated we are with mass media culture.

What does this have to do with McLuhan? Everything.

Questions to ponder:

- Does graphic violence shock us out of our complacency or does it contribute to our delinquency?
- Does Media affect us unconsciously or do we allow it to affect us?
- In terms of decision making, how do we as a culture promote questioning the source of information?
- Why do we believe things from media on "blind faith"?
- Are things more or less real because they are on television or the internet?
- How much validity should we give information we come across via mass media?

Anatomy of the Electric Crowd

Eric McLuhan, in "Electric Language" goes into looking at crowds. "All mass audiences are electric crowds, and vice-versa," (p. 143).

I think this is very interesting from the Technical Communication perspective. What is the point of audience analysis? Maybe I'm missing his point. He posits a few more interesting ideas:

- All mass audiences, regardless of numbers, are the same size.
- Everyone in a mass audience becomes everyman (and thus no one).
- All members of every electric crowd are disembodied, discarnate.

Hmm, very interesting. There is something about the internet that anonymizes us-that treats us as if we are all the same. It brings up questions for me about the "personalized" web experience. Can this really exist? Is it even possible?

Electric Language

Eric McLuhan's "Electric Language" is a great book. I've been reading it to see how he extends his father Marshall's thought. Eric saw the beginning and evolution of the internet and can apply his father's thought aptly.

The first idea I'd like to address is the new "mistress of the web." Is it arachne or penelope?

Eric begins by explaining how Athena has been the reigning goddess in the past as she is the goddess of rationalism and wisdom. With the advent of the "electric age," we need a new goddess.

Arachne

Arachne was an excellent weaver who challenged Athena and won. In anger, Athena turned her into a spider, forever weaving a web.

She is the goddess of the content of the web-not reigned by thought, but by gut reaction... "Instantaneous, unreasoning, participational knowing works here, finding our Western accustomed detachment cumbersonme and ponderous." (p. 8)

Penelope

The wife of Odysseus, after years of his being away entertained suitors. She said she would choose one after finishing a shroud. She would weave all day and take it out by night.

She personifies constancy, prudence and resourcefulness. She concerns herself with the present whereas Arachne focuses on the future outcome of the contest.

As Eric sums it up:

Let Arachne, then, serve as patroness and guide ot those nomadic hunters who wanter or surf the webs and nets. She spins tales and casts eloquent images to seize the gaze and stun her prey. She is the huntress and the patroness of those who would seek to exploit the net for goal, profit. She is the left side of the brain on the net; Penelope is the right side. Let Penelope reign as patroness of this new state itself, not a city-state but a global state with the gossipaceous character of a small village, even as the kingdom of Ithaka was small, but no less royal. Urban and orbal... The net and the web are themselves encyclopeidias, culture-poems of corporate - anonymous, unanimous - authorship.

Eric McLuhan

Eric McLuhan is the son and intellectual successor of the famed Marshall McLuhan. He teaches at the Univ of Toronto. Here's a couple links to get you going:

• Meet Eric McLuhan


• McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology


• McLuhan Global Research Network


• Marshall McLuhan Offical Site


• Related Links

Hot and Cold Media

Marshall McLuhan differentiates between hot and cold media.

"A hot medium is one that extends one single sense in high definition. High definition is the state of being well filled with data." So, basically, a high definition image, such as a photograph. Hot media require little viewer/reader participation as they don't leave many gaps to be filled in by the viewer/reader. Thus, low audience participation.

Cold medium, on the other hand, is low definition, and high in audience participation. The telephone, speech, books, newspapers - these all require more participation on the reader's part.

We live in a culture of increasingly more hot media and fewer and fewer cold media. Books are on a downward spiral as the internet takes over everything.

The internet can be both hot and cold, actually. There are few sites with ONLY text-thus it has to be hot to some degree. Though image quality may leave a bit to the reader to interpret at times. I think cinema is the quintessential hot medium as it gives the audience a lot of inofrmation-it is replete with information.

What does a culture focused on hot media turn into? How is our search for knowledge affected by making this distinction?

Ads as News

In "Understanding Media," Marshall McLuhan makes the statement that, "The ads are by far the best part of any magazine or newspaper. More pain and thought, more wit and art, go into the making of an ad than into any prose feature of press or magazine."

This holds the ring of truth-much more thought is put into advertising than any banal thing a news pundit can say... and yet, I often feel violated and cheated by ads.

McLuhan reasons this is because, "Ads are news. What is wrong with them is that they are always good news. In order to balance off the effect and to sell good news, it is necessary to have a lot of bad news."

Well, there you go! It makes sense.

He goes on to say that the newspaper is a hot medium, which has to have bad news for the sake of intensity and reader participation. So, it has to be bad news.

Why does it have to be bad, though? Why can't we just tell things like they are? Oh yeah, political economy... the multi-billionaires decide what gets printed anyway. Maybe we need to take all news with a grain of salt.

New Media Frustration

Well, I have two posts from last week that didn't get posted. They were both about Marshall McLuhan and they were pretty interesting. I posted them via my "Widget" on my Mac OSX Tiger iBook G4, which I love and have not had any problems with thus far.

Alas, I now have two blog entries bumbling around in cyberspace (or do I?) and they have not found their way home.

The Internet/the Web/New Media/Technology X work great when it works, but it's frustrating when it doesn't. Isn't that the way it is with everything? For some reason, we expect some kind of permanence to things on the web, but it is never permanent. For the time that my postings existed in my head and on the screen, they were great and interesting, but now, they're lost.

How much of our culture, once we move everything over to the web, will become lost? Forgotten? Or simply not remembered because it's written down somewhere?

I know basically what I said, but I can't quite recapture it.

What means do we have of preserving information for the future? What are the "lessons learned" from this event? Here's a few:

- Technology doesn't always work the way we think it does.
- Back up posts before posting. Keep at least one other record of it.

Is that all I learned? I know that the web is not permanent, but I trusted my information to the program...