CRD701: History and Theory of Communication Technology

I have known about the medium being the message for a while now, but I am not sure I knew exactly what McLuhan (1964) was talking about. Pointing to the electric light, he argues that light is pure information ? a medium without a message. ?This fact, characteristic of all media, means that the ?content? of any medium is always another medium, The content of writing is speech, just as the written word is the content of print, and print is the content of the telegraph? (p. 203). I think I get what McLuhan is talking about, but then he lays into David Sarnoff (former president of RCA, if you remember from last week) after Sarnoff says, ?We are too prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for the sins of those who wield them. The products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value? (p. 204). I agree smallpox is inherently bad and apple pie is generally awesome, but I cannot help but call shenanigans on his utter dismissal of Sarnoff?s ?guns don?t kill people, people with guns kill people? argument. The way we use a gun (or a knife, or anything else) DOES matter. If it is the medium, rather than its content or users, ?that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action? then do all media have a pre-determined value, or do they have no value (p. 203, with nod to Jim Andrews)? By continuing to claim, ?It is only too typical that the ?content? of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium,? does he mean the gun as a medium is inherently evil (p. 203)? If the umbrella is naturally good because it protects us from rain, but I use an umbrella to poke someone?s eye out ? does that mean I as the user am evil and the umbrella is innocent?

I think the New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy explains McLuhan better than McLuhan: ?the form of a message (print, visual, musical, etc.) determines the ways in which that message will be perceived. McLuhan argued that modern electronic communications (including radio, television, films, and computers) would have far-reaching sociological, aesthetic, and philosophical consequences, to the point of actually altering the ways in which we experience the world.? I was a speech geek in college (shocking!) and wrote a rhetorical critique of an apology Dr. Laura Schlessinger published in Variety magazine after she said homosexuals were deviant and biological errors. The whole thing smacked of insincerity (I am sorry you were offended only means you would prefer others agreed with your viewpoint), but the medium she used hurt her cause. Printing a full-page apology in The Advocate (an LGBT newsmagazine) would allow its intended audience to see it. By putting the apology in Variety, Dr. Laura ensured important Hollywood people would see it. Her choice of medium showed she was not regretful, regardless of the actual text of her so-called apology.

Benjamin wrote ?The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction? in 1936. Even then, he recognized the degradation of the original and its relegation to ancient history, musing, ?From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the ?authentic? print makes no sense? (p. 224). The negative was the original, not the print. Today one could argue with automatic image adjustment a digital photograph has no original, as the image is manipulated from the start. Digital technology allows us to make clones ? perfect replicas of text with no degradation ? further shattering any myth of the authentic.

Benjamin also makes an interesting comment about reader-turned-writer, beginning with the newspaper letter to the editor. ?Today there is hardly a gainfully employed European who could not, in principle, find an opportunity to publish somewhere or other comments on his work, grievances, documentary reports, or that sort of thing?. At any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer? (p. 232). If he felt this way in the 1930s, he would probably have a heart attack at today?s state of citizen journalism. People do not even need their own blog to be Internet authors; they can easily create a body of work by submitting online reviews or being a regular participant in an online forum.

Turning to Adorno and Horkheimer (1944), the authors argue, ?All mass culture under monopoly is identical? (p. 42). Today?s media are technically an oligopoly, increasingly owned by fewer voices. As early as the 1930s, five major companies (Paramount, MGM, Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century Fox and RKO) were vertically integrated, meaning they controlled the production, distribution and exhibition of the film industry. The Supreme Court case United States v. Paramount Pictures (1948) eventually found the companies were violating anti-trust laws by holding exclusivity rights on which theatres could show their films. Reagan-era deregulation and the lift of ownership caps by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 made a bad situation even worse. McClatchy, for example, owns newspapers in 15 states ? including The News & Observer (Raleigh) and Charlotte Observer dailies and The Cary News, The Chapel Hill News, Eastern Wake News and The Herald (Smithfield) non-dailies. Indeed, ?Those in charge no longer take much trouble to conceal the structure, the power of which increases the more bluntly its existence is admitted? (p. 42).

Popular culture is formulaic. ?Not only do hit songs, stars, and soap operas conform to types recurring cyclically as rigid invariants, but the specific content of productions, the seemingly variable element, is itself derived from those types. The details become interchangeable,? write Adorno and Horkheimer (p. 44). In late 2004/early 2005, a Canadian college student played two Nickelback songs on top of each other and discovered they were fundamentally the exact same song (hear it for yourself; the music starts at 1:45). Even when something is truly original, it does not stay that way for long. People known as ?cool hunters? seek to find truly underground ideas and mass market them, thus sucking any coolness away. Budapest is the new Prague, now that tourists overrun the city. While writing this blog, I came across an article on MSN.com touting the ?10 Best Places You Haven?t Heard Of.? How long will it take before Gaziantep, Turkey is the new Budapest?

In the ?Information, Education, Entertainment? chapter of Briggs and Burke (2002), the authors chronicle the growth of radio and television in America, Britain and across the world. The authors offer a little nostalgia for the golden days of radio, writing, ?Everywhere it was 'a good companion', consoling as well as entertaining, informing and educating, and everywhere it carried with it unique blessings for the blind, the sick, the lonely and the housebound. In retrospect, at least, the pictures it evoked linger as much as the words offered on it? (p. 186). Radio is indeed a very intimate medium, able to be with its audience in the most private situations ? once during an on-air fundraiser I had a listener call in and say she showered with the Morning Edition host.

In debates of content and what is appropriate for children, it is amusing to think the longest continuously running program is the soap opera Guiding Light (it started on the radio in 1937 and moved to television in 1952). Luckily, the V-chip has arrived and can block out anything above a certain rating, provided parents know how and actually use it. Briggs and Burke are correct in saying the V-chip was a mandate from the Communications Decency Act (CDA, part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996), but they mislead the reader to think the entire CDA was overturned because the V-chip suppressed free speech. The Supreme Court did rule part of the CDA unconstitutional because it violated the First Amendment, but not the part involving the V-chip (p. 198).