Course Content

Marshall McLuhan (… the granddaddy of the Media Ecology Movement) is one of several influential people who have written about media and its effect on people. In looking at story you must also pay attention to those things that affect how the story listener (i.e., audience) thinks, learns, and communicates. The interesting thing about McLuhan’s work is that he actually died much prior to the Internet, PC, mobile devices, and all the pervasive media around us today. Yet, he seemed to sense where we were going as a digital culture.

McLuhan spent two years acquiring a B.A. from Cambridge University. There he studied under I. A. Richards, a psychologist turned literary critic who examined the process of reading. 
For Richards it was not the para-phrasable content of a poem that mattered but the way the poem communicated certain effects in the mind of a reader. After he left Cambridge in 1936, McLuhan taught for a year at the University of Wisconsin, and then, following his conversion to Catholicism, he joined the faculty of a Jesuit institution, the University of St. Louis (WHERE HE MENTORED Walter Ong). He later met a political economist named Harold Innis who had discovered that certain media of communication are time-based and certain media (more portable and ephemeral) are space based. Working with this hint, and discovering simultaneously in the works of James Joyce, notably Finnegans Wake, a critique of radio and television, McLuhan articulated his perceptions of media as extensions of the human body, and of electronic media, in particular, as extensions of the nervous system, imposing, like poetry, their own assumptions on the psyche of the user.

Media as an Extension of Man

McLuhan’s greatest accomplishments seems to be in the area of discussing how media has actually become an extension of man and actually changes who s/he is. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964) is Mcluhan’s most widely known work. It is a pioneering study in media theory in which he proposed that media themselves, not the content they carry, should be the focus of study—popularly quoted as “the medium is the message”. McLuhan’s insight was that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not by the content delivered over the medium, but by the characteristics of the medium itself. McLuhan pointed to the light bulb as a clear demonstration of this concept. A light bulb does not have content in the way that a newspaper has articles or a television has programs, yet it is a medium that has a social effect; that is, a light bulb enables people to create spaces during nighttime that would otherwise be enveloped by darkness. He describes the light bulb as a medium without any content. McLuhan states that “a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence.” More controversially, he postulated that content had little effect on society—in other words, it did not matter if television broadcasts children’s shows or violent programming, to illustrate one example—the effect of television on society would be identical. He noted that all media have characteristics that engage the viewer in different ways; for instance, a passage in a book could be reread at will, but a movie had to be screened again in its entirety to study any individual part of it.

Throughout, McLuhan identifies the ways in which new forms of media change the perceptions of societies, with specific focus on the effects of each medium (as opposed to the content that is transmitted by each medium). McLuhan categories media as “hot” and “cool”. This terminology does not refer to the temperature or emotional intensity, or some kind of classification, but to the degree of participation of its users. Cool media are those that require high participation from users, due to their low definition (the receiver/user must fill in missing information). Since many senses may be used, they foster detachment. Conversely, hot media are low in audience participation due to their high resolution or definition. Film, for example, is defined as a hot medium, since in the context of a dark movie theater, the viewer is completely captivated, and one primary sense—visual—is filled in high definition. In contrast, television is a cool medium, since it many other things may be going on and the viewer has to integrate all of the sounds and sights in the context.

McLuhan uses the words medium, media and technology all interchangeably. A medium is “an extension of ourselves”. In addition to forms such as newspapers, television and radio, McLuhan includes the light bulb, cars, speech and language in his definition of “media”: all of these, as technologies, mediate our communication (and therefore, our understanding of that content).

Conventional pronouncements fail to properly study the effects of media because they pay attention to the content and not the social effects. All media/technology “amplifies or accelerates existing processes”, introduces a “change of scale or pace or shape or pattern into human association, affairs, and action”, resulting in “psychic, and social consequences”.

To quote myself:

So, in a classroom situation, we are suggesting (as you will see in later readings) that the mixing of hot media (i.e., digital media) with story creates a duo/combo that is without peer in its ability to motivate/change individuals. to a story. This is basically the meaning of “the medium is the message”… each media “adds itself on to what we already are”, realizing “amputations and extensions” to our senses and bodies, shaping them in a new technical form. So, your task is to now think about how media can ‘mediate’ (i.e., change) the content of a story and how the same story can be interpreted differently based on how that story is communicated.

The Gutenberg Galaxy

The Making of Typographic Man is a pioneering study in the fields of oral culture, print culture, cultural studies, and media ecology (which is a perfect segue to Walter Ong). Throughout this book, McLuhan takes pains to reveal how communication technology (alphabetic writing, the printing press, and the electronic media) affects cognitive organization.

Walter Ong was a student of McLuhan’s at St. Louis University and later a colleague and close friend. The Reverend Ong, an American Jesuit priest, was a professor of English literature, cultural, and a religious historian and philosopher. His major interest was in exploring how the transition from an oral culture to a literate one influenced and changed humans view of the world. Throughout history, culture has been described as emerging though various cultural changes. One of those periods (the oral cultures period) mankind lived by the spoken which entailed individuals recalling specific details. During that time it was said that if a man had to write something down to remember it, that it was a falsehood, giving forth the concept of a man’s ‘word’ being his bond. Written contracts were looked upon with disdain. It can be easily understood why and how oral storytelling was one of the tools that individuals utilized to recall information retelling moral stories (Aesop’s fables etc.)

Ong observed that during the Information Age (which emerged during the late 1960-80s) was what he deemed to be a period of ‘secondary orality’. While there were certainly considerable similarities to the earlier oral cultures his ideas were not only contrary to the time (the information age gave way to the idea that story was something that the illiterate used and/or was infantile… and a person needed to grow out of that line of thinking and become more ‘rational’.). slightly different.

In his book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, Ong contrasts oral and literate cultures. The phrase ‘secondary orality’ describes “a more deliberate and self-conscious orality, based permanently on the use of writing and print”. I other words, print media changed the conceptual design of the oral culture (whereas McLuhan felt it was television, a visual medium that changed mankind). Secondary orality is not primary orality of pre-literate cultures. In oral societies memory and memorization were of greater importance, increasing the amount of copiousness and redundancy (and basis for story as a knowledge acquisition construct). Oral cultures were situational and participatory, whereas literate cultures were abstract and distant. Media and technology were bringing back in new profound ways the participatory nature of civilization (vis a vis social media, which came about after he died). But because of mediated communicative forms (television, radio, the Internet) secondary orality is not as repetitive or redundant. But shorthand was prevalent in primitive oral cultures and is making a comeback in current cultures.

A Glimpse of the World using Ong’s own Words

We offer here a digital version of Ong’s work.. it is worth at least a perusal so you can see why he is being presented here as one who gives us insights as to the meaning or oral cultures and how it has played such a huge role in humans’ natural longing for story. In a later module we will further define these concepts looking at the role Gutenberg played in the development of story.

Download Link: https://emeclasses.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/ong_orality_and_literacy.pdf

ong_orality_and_literacy

Eric Havelock was a professor at the University of Toronto. Although he was trained in the turn-of-the-20th-century Oxbridge tradition of classical studies, much of Havelock’s work was devoted to addressing a single thesis: that all of Western thought is informed by a profound shift in the kinds of ideas available to the human mind at the point that Greek philosophy converted from an oral to a literate form. The idea has been very controversial in classical studies, and has been rejected outright both by many of Havelock’s contemporaries and modern classicists. Havelock and his ideas have nonetheless had far-reaching influence, both in classical studies and other academic areas. He and Walter Ong essentially founded the field that studies transitions from orality to literacy, and Havelock has been one of the most frequently cited theorists in that field; as an account of communication, his work profoundly affected the media theories of Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan.

While reading about Havelock, you may notice he does tend to go off on what we may think are tangents… meaning he (like many others in the movement) tends to take a more political view. Keep in mind, we are studying these folks in order to ‘cherry pick’ their intellectual thoughts on media to help us make decisions about how they will influence our decisions with regards to teaching and learning.

With that in mind the following are offered to help you dig deeper into Havelock’s works.

Digging Deeper

1. Believe it or not a great place to start digging into Havelock’s ideas is none other than wikipedia.
2. Havelick on Orality and Literacy
3. A short biography

Neil Postman was introduced to Marshall McLuhan while studying language and communications at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College in New York. McLuhan was often invited to Columbia to lecture. Postman wrote about McLuhan’s relevance for English education in the 1960’s in a book: Television and the Teaching of English.  Note how the fears/cautions about television have been replaced by the same with regards to the Internet and video games. We wonder rhetorically what next? 

As noted, Postman is considered the ‘father of media ecology” (or at least, he was the one who first coined the term). in the book:

Postman advocated language education as an alternative to traditional approaches to grade school English : grammar, spelling, etc. He likened these to being a part of the so-called ‘elite’ culture. His works often reflected McLuhan’s criticism of print-based schooling as outmoded and obsolete and called for new modes of education better suited to the age of (television based) electronic media. (Notice any tends evolving here?). Language is not merely a vehicle of expression but it is also the driver and that which we learn and perceive is a function of our language processes. (Note the ties to the medium not only affecting the message but the ‘perceiver’ and the sender). Postman is most noted for his works on 1970’s education reform in general (Teaching as a Subversive Activity).

Postman is known to have taken Mcluhan’s ideas further to emphasize linguistics semantics, and the study of interpersonal communications. Postman is well-known as a media critic (notice the continued connections between communications, understanding, learning and media). Postman concluded that schools need to counter the effects of television and the electronic media by preserving the values and methods associated with pro\int based literacy. He further argued that schools and television were competing forms of education.

In his book The Disappearance of Childhood, Postman argued that the concept of an extended childhood is a construction of print culture that has been destroyed by the leveling effect of the television image. His most cited work is Amusing Ourselves to Death in which he further argued that our image culture trivialized serious discourse … he extended the media is the message perspective to the medium is the metaphor and media epistemology.

For the remainder of his career Postman became known as a neo-luddite who distinguished between three types of culture: tool-using where technology is limited; technocracy where technology is on the rise but still in competition with other social institutions, and technopoly where technology monopolizes the culture. (Remember THIS IS ALL PRE INTERNET). Finally, Postman argued that we mostly tend to consider only what innovations are supposed to do, not the negative consequences.

Here are a couple videos of Postman explaining his ideas on education and media

Part 1:

Part 2:

Digging Deeper

• Neil Postman information page
• Amusing ourselves to death Page
• Study Guides for Postman’s Books

Harold Innis strongly influenced McLuhan.


Innis was a colleague of McLuhan’s at the University of Toronto. Innis was an economist who earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago and only turned to commutations /media late in his career. Some consider him to be the first ecology scholar and is certainly the first to focus on what is commonly referred to as media (versus technology). Innis is the one who influenced McLuhan to change his terminology from technology to media. McLuhan, however, moved away from Innis’ implication that media was a materialistic representation of the world. Innis distinguished between heavy media (durable but difficult to transport) and light media (portable but perishable). Examples of heavy media are clay tablets (used as writing surfaces in ancient Mesopotamia). Light media: papyrus sheets and scrolls used in ancient Egypt. These differences have their roots in Innis’ earlier research into economic staples, such as fur, fish, and timber.

In the late 1940’s Innis produced a series of essays that outlined a sweeping theory about the role of media in world history: “sudden extensions of communication are reflected in cultural disturbances”. Innis argued that media are used to communicate over time as well as over space, and that physical properties of different media determine their effectiveness at preserving knowledge and/or transmitting information over distances. Depending on the type of media that a given society has at its disposal it may remain time-biased, as all societies are, or become space biased and driven towards territorial expansion.

Innis also argued that media differ in terms of their scarcity and/or abundance, the complexity of the symbol systems employed, and the degree to which they make information accessible and all of those factors that may contribute to the development of a monopoly (or democratization) of knowledge.

Others (such as James Carey, among others) became concerned about Innis’ views of the transportability aspect of media as the preservation of local communities and cultures and the dangers of too much homogeneity. It is important to note that, while Innis did not mean to make a political statement, some have inferred that his thoughts did, indeed have political overtones.

Digging Deeper

• Innis’ ideas on communication and culture
• On the Bias of Communications and Monopolies of Power
• Old messages and new media: The legacy of Innis and McLuhan

Lewis Mumford has been called the first futurist of the media ecology movement. Many believe that Mumford, along with Innis carried the most influence on McLuhan. Mumford did not refer directly to media or communications in his writings. Nor did he ignore them as he addressed topics such as such as culture, art, and architecture, and technology.

These parallels provide the basis for considering Mumford as a media theorist. Add to that, Mumford had a lot to say about ecology and environments and described his work as ‘ecological history’. Mumford’s founding work Technics and Civilization (1934) has been very influential in setting the stage for subsequent media ecology inquiry. It is a pioneering work on the history of technology. He puts forth a theory of history in which different eras or epochs are defined by different technological ecologies.

Mumford organized the evolution of the machine and machine civilization into phases. Each phase is defined by its characteristic tools, techniques, materials, and sources of energy:

1. Eotechic Phase (A.D. 1000 to 1750 +/-) -water and wood complex, during which machine technology did not upset the ecological balance, while allowing for a relatively high degree of creativity, versatility, and autonomy among craftsmen.
2. Paleotechnic Phase (from 1750 to the 20th Century) – a coal and iron complex , during which the industrial revolution caused major ecological damage and created the most inhumane working conditions. Workers were transformed into interchangeable human parts of the machine.
3. Neotechnic Phase (beginning 20th Century – mid) – Electricity and alloy complex. Caution optimism about its potential to restore ecological balance and reversal of previous phase. Mumford wrote about electricity’s decentralizing characteristics, its organic nature and with the possibility of machines ability to serve man (original ideas about robots???).

Overall, he viewed history of technology as one in which a mechanical ideology had replaced an organic one and would hopefully be replaced in turn by a retrieval or reversal back into ideology via electricity.

Mumford also traced the evolution of machines-technology-media

In studying technology we tend to focus on tools, weapons, etc, and overlook the container as technology, and liken them to genders. The agricultural revolution is a revolution in container technology that led to further advancements in human dwellings and settlements, and eventually to the city. The first machines were organic, consisting of a centralized organization and coordination of human labor, only later would their fallible and fragile human parts be replaced by more reliable artificial ones (i.e the robot of the future??). Mumford also used the term mega-machine to refer to the invisible machine based on the control and coordination of human activity in the ancient world, under the direction of an autocratic ruler and achieved through the use of communication technology.

Digging Deeper

• Mumford in wikipedia
• Biography
• Lewis Mumford Quotes

Jacques Ellul rarely addressed the effects of individual technologies but rather focused on technology at the highest level of abstraction… as a system a worldwide view (la technique).

He argued that during the 1970’s and 1980’s we entered into a historical phase in which we had given up control over human affairs to technology and the technological imperative. Accordingly, technology has become autonomous and automatic, self-augmenting and expanding at an ever-increasing rate and encompassing every sector of human society. It has dominated the natural world and has replaced religion and science as our governing ideology. The exception to this thinking s that technology is not really an ideology because it represents no set of ideas or values (a container???) Efficiency is the only thing that matters and all other considerations are subordinated to it. Ellul argues in The Technological System (1980) that technology is an environment (i.e., ecology) and critiques computers and computer networks.

Ellul focuses on propaganda as a particular type of technology whose aim is to control human behavior and to integrate humans into the technological system.

The different types of propaganda are:

• integration – aims a keeping the individual satisfied with the status quo
• agitation – purpose is to move the individual to action
• sociological – works through entertainment, advertising, schools, the arts, etc
• political – this is most obvious form
• horizontal – peer groups
• vertical – from authorities

Ellul notes that literacy and mass communications are vital to propaganda. He also suggests that the need to maintain the illusion that public opinion controls political decision making in order to maintain legitimacy. He further argues that audio-visual technologies have given rise to contribute to a technological society and a degradation of the human condition by undermining the role of verbal communication. Like Postman he defends the word against the image and criticized the loss of rational discourse (i.e., does this mean that no rational discourse can take place in a digital world???)

Digging Deeper

• Backgound
• Jacques Ellul Society
• Confronting the Technological Society

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For certain there have been many others who have profoundly influenced the media ecology movement. Most can be found on the media ecology site. One thing you should notice is that media ecology has its historical roots in communications studies. A second thought is that most of these scholars take a very deep theoretical view of media… sometimes too deep for our purposes. That is why we have taken the time and effort to synthesize all of this for you rather than having you purchase one of the many books published on the topic (ones that have served to influence the content of this course).

One book in particular that has been used in this lesson is listed below. While it is very useful, you MAY find it too esoteric for your own interests. Just as we have done in this lesson, we will continue to bring things back to a more practical implementation with a goal of helping to inform your media decisions in designing instruction.

Strate, L. (2006). Echoes and reflections: On media ecology as a field of study. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.