The Communication Studies - Essay Example

Name: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Institution: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Course: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Tutor: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx © 2010 Introduction to Communication Studies This essay outlines Marshall McLuhan’s theory of ‘medium’ and ‘medium of the message’ explaining the pace, scale and pattern of human affairs. The essay also looks at medium that has brought with it effects on the culture and societies and puts it in the context of McLuhan’s views about medium. ‘Medium is the message’ is an expression that was hypothesized by Marshall McLuhan with the implication that the type of a medium embeds itself in the message to create a symbiotic connection by which the medium affects how the message is perceived. He introduced the phrase in his book, Understanding Media: The extension of Man, published in 1964.He proposes that: [1] a medium itself should be the focus of study and not the message it carries (McLuhan, 1964). For example, he argued that all media has uniqueness that involves the viewer in various ways. Such as, a paragraph in a book can be re-read at will, but a movie must be reviewed wholly in order to study any specific part of it. So, the type of medium affects a person’s understanding on a certain piece of information. Some media, like movies, stress on one single sense, which is sight, hence, one does not need much effort to contemplate its meaning. McLuhan compared this with TV which demands much effort from the viewer to contemplate its intended meaning and comics as portrayed by cartoonists. According to McLuhan, a movie is ‘’hot’’ (increasing one single sense) and ‘’high definition’’ (demanding total concentration of a viewer), and a comic book is “cool” and “low definition” (require a great deal of conscious involvement by the reader to extract value. (McLuhan, 1964). The focus on the medium and how it passes content is the heart of “the medium is the message”. McLuhan said that specific content may little influence the society. For instance, whether a TV broadcasts entertainment shows or violent programming, its effect on the people would be alike and reflective (Jeffrey, R., 1964). McLuhan viewed ‘medium’ in an expansive approach. He branded a light bulb as a clear expression of the concept of ‘the medium is the message’. The bulb may lack content like in newspapers or TV programs, but it has a social impact. That is, it helps people to create space at night that would else be filled with darkness. He sees it as a medium without any content. McLuhan gives a description of the ‘content’ of specific medium being a “juicy piece of meat carried by a thief to distract watchdog of mind”. This implies that people tend to concentrate on the obvious that is content, to give us important information (McLuhan, 1964). According to McLuhan, a medium is an extension of ourselves. Every extension of the human body enables him to do more than he could merely by his own body. For example, McLuhan says that an extension of our legs and feet are wheels and in extension it could be said vehicles. A vehicle enables a person to travel faster that one would by walking thus it is an extension of the feet. Human thoughts are extended from within him through the medium of language following the example of the car. Since human thoughts result from individual experiences, speech becomes the outering of his senses (McLuhan, 1964). Human senses take the world into his senses and similarly speech takes humans sensorial shaped minds to the world. McLuhan thought of medium in a growing sense thus change should keep emerging for something to be a medium. Therefore, human ideals and ideas can be termed as media in McLuhan’s sense because from everything human minds create or conceive his inventions and innovations brings a change (Benson, 1992). From the McLuhan view of the medium we can derive the meaning of his assertion that the medium is the message. By the virtue of the non obvious and unnoticed changes, a human can understand the characteristics and nature of anything his mind conceives or creates. According to McLuhan, the content of the medium tends to get people distracted although in most cases this content is a distinct medium in its own right (McLuhan, 1964). He says that it is typical for people to be blinded as to the character of the medium by its content. Mediums or extensions of ourselves have social or personal consequences resulting from new scales introduced into people’s affairs by every extensions of humans or new technology (Dennis & Wartella, 1996). This understanding of the medium is the message is particularly important to people because people notice changes even the slight ones but unfortunately discount them in significance. According to McLuhan’s the medium is the message, when people notice changes in their societies and cultural conditions, what the change indicates is the presence of a new message meaning the effect of a new medium (McLuhan, 1964). Thus it is possible to identify and characterise new mediums before they become obvious to everyone. McLuhan continues to say that when it is discovered that a new medium brings along effects that are potentially detrimental to the society or culture, people have at their disposal the ability to influence the evolution and development of new innovations before their effects become pervasive. According to McLuhan, to control change, we need to move ahead of the change but not with the change because when e\we anticipate something we are better placed to control and deflect the force (McLuhan, 1964). To test the McLuhan idea about medium is the message, it is important to look at the impact computers have on the society. Prior to 1993, the world wide web was more of an obscure academic, technical text tool but for a period of five years that is from 1993 to 1998, the world wide web grew to a multimedia force with immense cultural impact and today, the number of blogs is quadrupling every two years (McLuhan, 1964). One of McLuhan’s main concerns was how we tend to ignore the negative impacts of the medium. Computers have had effect on all aspects of human life be it economic, cultural, political and religious. Religious extremism has taken new aspects with the extremist groups running websites to spread their ideals (McLuhan, 1964). Computers have changed so many things about how life was just a few years ago and their impact is a subject that has tonnes of material and more keep turning up every other day as scholars and researchers take on the subject. The changes that have come as a result of the digital revolution are clearly visible and have not taken decades or centuries for their impact to be seen. This technology has changed things from how we do business to how we communicate and basically, it has touched on almost every facet of life (McLuhan, 1964).The development of the internet and growth in electronic innovation through the sixties to the eighties gave rise to a more efficient network and ideas of businesses exploring ways of doing business online. It is in the 90s however that the online enterprise really took off, with investments amounting to US $100B. Thousands of businesses invested in the online enterprise and especially the last bit of the decade (between 1997 and 2000) is a period that can be referred to as the “boom” of the online enterprise. This period saw the popularity of the dotcom soaring and attracting investments in the online enterprise (McLuhan, 1964). The early part of the last decade saw a bust in online enterprise where thousands of businesses were adversely affected. There was an economic downturn with low sales records in the first three years of the 2000s. Despite the low sales and economic downturn, the online enterprise was moving gradually to the giant it is today where businesses around the world have embraced it. 2003 marked the rebirth of the online enterprise. Investments and innovation in the online enterprise has risen and revenues for online businesses. Improvement of the already existing areas of business and constant developments have affected all sectors of enterprising (McLuhan, 1964). There exist a diversity chances for any businesses ranging from services providers to retailers and the availability. The online enterprise sector is growing with new businesses joining in to access a market share. The use of growth of internet usage all over the world and especially the developing countries means more opportunities and it can only be predicted that online enterprise is expanding and is going to expand further. The internet, a result of computers is something that businesses today can not do without as it has completely overhauled how corporations did business barely two decades ago (Hardt, 1992). On the social front, computers have changed the way people communicate and share ideas. Computers have aided innovations in the communication world with blogs, chats, social network sites, email and the likes. So what are the effects? The positive ones are the efficiency with which we can now convey messages and express ourselves. The negative ones include the fact that the ease has taken away some of the bottlenecks that made communicating intense in the past. Snail mailing a letter halfway around the world and waiting for the reply would consist of days of anticipation and waiting. Today communicating and getting feedback is instantaneous (German, 2007). McLuhan’s theory applies to the computer innovation in that the computer has accelerated how people do things and it is just an extension of human functions. The fact that it has become an excellent medium of trade does not mean that trading started with computers. It is an activity that man has indulged in for as long as he has existed and computers and the internet have just made it better. Communication did not start with computers either. But the fact that it has been enhanced by the developments and innovation of communicating means over the internet can not be denied. Materials available on the internet also affects people’s culture and the transmission of materials spontaneously to make them accessible to millions of people has been used for both positive and negative causes (Carbondale & Craig, 1990). Militant groups have been known to transmit materials over the internet and changing even a negative thing like terrorism to higher levels of sophistication. Even in the political world change has come due to this technology. The last US presidential election is a good example of just how much influence the computer technology has had and its use can capture the imagination of the electorate. Candidates had websites as a campaign tool and it cannot entirely be said that the blogging culture didn’t have an effect on that election (Benson, 1985). There are scholars who hold different views from those of Marshall McLuhan and looking at the impact and innovation the computer has stimulated in this digital revolution, it can be said that as much as the computer is a medium, an extension of our selves according to McLuhan, there are limits as to how far those views can hold. No doubt is left that computers have influenced and will continue to influence societies and cultures within the world. McLuhan argued that people have a propensity to pay no attention to negative innovations effects that they are exposed to. For example all the fatal accidents that occur due to our extension of our feet by way of the wheel are brushed aside as a necessary cost to the advantage of the ease of mobility. In the same breath, spam, viruses and other negative aspects of the computer communication age are ignored as a necessary cost to the efficiency in communication ushered in by computers. In conclusion, we find that the philosophy of Marshal McLuhan about the medium and the way he would interchange the words to at some point bringing a whole new phrase as a result of a typing error is a refreshing way of looking at innovation and the transformation it brings to society. We also find that looking at these cultural and social changes through the prism of McLuhan’s thoughts has a limit as we cannot entirely base all the technological marvels that have happened in such a short time on the views of medium being an extension of humans. Bibliography Benson, T. , 1992, “Communication and the circle of learning”, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 78, 238-254 Benson, T., 1985, Speech communication in the twentieth century, Edwardsville, Southern Illinois University Press. Carbondale & Craig, R., 1990, “The speech tradition”, Communication Monographs, 57, 310-314. Dennis, E., & Wartella, E., 1996, American Communication Research, NJ, Erlbaum. German, K., 2007, “The link between speech art and speech science”, Communication Education., 31, 333-338. Hardt, H., 1992, Critical communication studies, London & New York: Routledge. Jeffrey, R., 1964, “History of the Speech Association of America”, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 50, 432-444. McLuhan, M., 1964, "The Medium is the Message" Understanding Media: The Extension of Man, London: Routhledge, pp.7-13" Read More