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= The Laws of Media = |
Towards the end of his life, McLuhan and his son Eric embarked on a project to update the 1964 ''Understanding Media;'' the unexpected result was ''Laws of Media: The New Science'' (1988), published after McLuhan’s death (in 1980) by his son. ''Laws of Media'' seeks to answer the following questions: |
* What statements can we make about media that anyone can test--prove or disprove? |
* What do all media have in common? |
* What do they do? |
These questions resulted in the formulation of the following four laws of media: |
# '''<no>Extension/Enhancement</no>:''' Every technology extends or amplifies some organ or faculty of the user. What does the medium enhance or intensify?<p> |
# '''<no>Closure/Obsolescence</no>:''' Because there is equilibrium in sensibility, when one area of experience is heightened or intensified, another is diminished or numbed. What is pushed aside or obsolesced by the new medium?<p> |
# '''Reversal:''' Every form, pushed to the limit of its potential, reverses its characteristics.<p> |
# '''Retrieval:''' The content of any medium is an older medium.<p> |
This tetrad of the effects of technologies is not sequential, but rather simultaneous. All four aspects are inherent from the start, and all four aspects are complementary. |
== Printed Word == |
# Amplifies private ownership, the competitive goal-oriented individual. |
# Obsolesces slang, dialects, and group identity, separates composition and performance, divorce of eye and ear. |
# Retrieves tribal elitism, charmed circle |
# With flip from manuscript into mass production via print comes the corporate reading public and the "historical sense" |
== Electric Media == |
# Amplification of scope of simultaneity and service environment as information. |
# Obsolesces the segmented visual, connected, and logical. |
# Retrieves the subliminal, audile-tactile dialogue |
# Etherialization: the sender gets sent. |
== Telephone == |
# Enlarges the impact and speed of the private voice. |
# Erodes the body as hardware; creates the disembodied consciousness. |
# Retrieves sense of telepathy. |
# Reverses into the party-line; omnipresence, like the conference call or teleconferencing. |
== Radio-Television == |
# Improves simultaneous access to entire planet--everybody: "On the air you're everywhere" |
# Obsolesces wires, cables and physical bodies |
# Retrieves tribal ecological environments: echo, trauma, paranoia, and also brings back primacy of the spatial, musical, and acoustic. |
# Reverses into global village theater (Orson Welles's Invasion From Mars: no spectators, only actors). |
== Cable TV == |
# Amplifies quality and diversity of signal pickup. |
# Obsoleces diffusion broadcasting. |
# Retrieves early transmission broadcast pattern point-to-point (ship to shore). |
# Reversal is flip to home broadcasting. |
== Teletext == |
# Printed radio; enhances headline service, like early radio. |
# Obsolesces prolonged TV watching; viewer uses service selectively for short intervals. |
# Retrieves silent film dialogue card, pictograph or pun style; teletype format. |
# Reverses into interactive video-text; qualitative data filter, via data bank. |
== Computer == |
# Accelerates logical sequential calculations to speed of light. |
# Erodes or bypasses mechanical processes and human logic in all sequential operations. |
# Highlights "numbers is all" philosophy, and reduces numbering to body count by touch. |
# Flips into the simultaneous from the sequential; accentuates acoustic over visual space to produce pattern recognition. |
== Global Media Networking == |
# Instantaneous diverse media transmission on global basis; simultaneous planetary feed and counter-feed. |
# [Deoxy:videx/stupid Erodes human ability to code and decode in real time.] |
# Brings back the [Find:babel Tower of Babel]: group voice in the ether. |
# Reverses into loss of specialism; [Deoxy:audio/mcluhan_natureisover.m3u programmed earth]. |