Mindless Self-Indulgence

UNDERSTANDING MEDIA

“Am I the only human being that finds people who text 24/7 annoying? What is so goddamn important that you have to have your head buried in your phone?” T.I.R.E.D

“The medium is the message.” Marshall McLuhan (Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man,” 1964)

T.I.R.E.D. is annoyed. He wants to know what is so goddamn important about people who have their heads buried in their phones. For him such behavior is a “mindless self-indulgence.” But is that true? Not according to Marshall McLuhan whose famous aphorism suggests that T.I.R.E.D.’s day is done, that technology has passed him by. But what does McLuhan’s aphorism mean?

It means that it is not so much the content of any particular communication which is important but rather it is the manner in which that communication is conveyed. In other words, the content – the message – IS the medium. There is no remainder after one understands the nature of that medium through which that content has been conveyed. So what does that mean? Two points.

As the title of his book suggests, media for McLuhan were not technologically external to man but rather were his natural extensions. In other words, his mind was shaped – was identified with – the media in which his ideas were conveyed. They were inseparable. The development of writing and printing, having supplanted the oral media culture of the nomadic food-gatherers, rendered him a specialist in separating the roles of knowledge and action. Books were the paradigmatic artifact of McLuhan’s “The Gutenberg Galaxy,” named after the inventor of the mechanical press. “Gutenberg Man,” as I call him, was sedentary, specialized, isolated and introverted. His mind was structured in terms of what McLuhan termed “hot” media.

McLuhan categorized all media into “hot” and “cool” and the categorization itself was continuously moving with the invention of new media technology. A hot medium was characterized as being “high definition, low participation” where “definition” was to be understood as any content whatsoever. Definition was the message. The higher the concentration of content the hotter the medium resulting in low participation on the part of the reader/viewer/listener. In contrast, a cool medium was characterized by “low definition, high participation,” one in which the equation was reversed. The importance of the message was minimal but the participation of the reader/viewer/listener was maximal.

With the advent of new technology what has been hot and what has been cool have changed over time. “As the machine and the motor car released the horse and projected it onto the plane of entertainment,” McLuhan pointed out, “so does automation with men. We are suddenly threatened with a liberation that taxes our inner resources of self-employment and imaginative participation in society. This would seem to be a fate that calls men to the role of artist in society.” (p.358)

And so it is with T.I.R.E.D. He is annoyed to find people who text 24/7. He is annoyed because, having been shaped by hot print media he is now faced with a cool IT medium of low definition and high participation. He feels threatened by a new liberation that taxes his inner resources and imaginative participation in society. Like the toiling horse before the advent of the motor car, his day has passed. He has failed to understand the new media. He belongs on the junk heap of history.

That will be $10 please.

A pleasure as always.

Cheerio!