The safety of books

If at this point, you would like to return to the safety of printed works, here are the texts referred to in the main body of the blog:
McLuhan, M. 1964. Understanding Media. London. Routledge.
Castells, M. 2001. The Internet Galaxy. Oxford. Oxford University Press.
Bejamin, W. 1984. Illuminations. Translated by Harcourt, Brace & World. Suffolk. The Chaucer Press.
McLuhan, M. 1997. ‘Is it Natural That One Medium Should Appropriate and Exploit Another’ in Essential McLuhan. London. Routledge.

An Organic Frankenstein's Monster

If this were a printed work, of course, it would require an ending, and perhaps here would be as good a point as any. Here is yet another example of the unique nature of electronic media, this needn’t be good bye, more like bon voyage. I consider this an appropriate resting point, perhaps for good, but who knows? Previously I have referred to this blog as being in gestation, if one could consider an exploration such as this to be a pregnancy, then it is one with no birth as such, just an infinitely long and extremely public period of gestation. After all, the growth of this baby I have created is no longer in my hands, comments can be added, communities started, without any further input from me. All it would take is one comment with a link to another blog or message board, and the community can grow exponentially. I have created a potential 'Frankenstein’s Monster', comprised of millions of people across the globe with access to this blog. It is the first medium that is entirely in the hands of the people.

Putting it into some sort of context

So to put that into some sort of context for the electronic age, it would seem that the Internet has the power to shape the content that it provides to its own set of rules and assumptions. It is not the content that is important, but the medium that provides it. Take, for instance, this blog itself. The very fact that it is a blog discussing blogs, rather than a book or a set of photographs, changes the implications of what is being said. It can be assumed, given my familiarity with the medium, that I am talking from some sort of position of authority. These issues that are being discussed, such as the fact that this is on the public domain, visible at any time during its gestation, are real issues that have affected its production, the comments already visible on several of the entries are proof of a communal creation, one that, unlike any medium before it, goes beyond the dichotomy of writer and reader.

I've said it before, I'll say it again, the medium is the message

Maybe you’re right, it’s media, but not as we could have possibly envisaged it. I’m sure when the printing press appeared, for a long time its utility was not fully grasped. People could only consider it in terms of what they know. The important thing to take away from these discussions is the importance of the transformation of the medium in terms of shaping its message and its function. As I believe I have mentioned in several of my books, the medium really is the message (the title of a chapter in Understanding Media). In Understanding Media, I believe I put in a nutshell the discussions that we have had thus far on the range and utility of this new medium, by saying “the medium…shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action” (p.9). Furthermore, I also said “any medium has the power of imposing its own assumption on the unwary” (p.15).

A medium thats off the temperature scale

I appreciate what you’re saying Marsh, but I’ve just been flicking through Understanding Media, and it seems that one could describe new electronic media as boiling hot as well. After all, the Internet contains a phenomenally high density of data, much more than any other previous medium. The amount of information available is simply unprecedented. Much as I’m loath to disagree with your analysis, I think that it’s possible that the Internet is beyond classification in terms of hot and cold media, for precisely the reasons that you yourself outlined in Is It Natural that One Medium Should Appropriate and Exploit Another? That is to say that a new media cannot be defined within the parameters of its predecessors. Most importantly, in my view, is that the Internet does not comply with the notion outlined that Understanding Media that there must be a creator and an audience, for example a speaker and a listener, or a journalist and a reader. The community of the Internet entirely redefines such rigid roles, casting off the shackles of the traditional hierarchical dialogue. In this sense it is like nothing that has gone before, a medium without any distinction between the creators and the receivers.

The Freezing Medium

Yes, it truly is a genuinely interactive medium. In this sense, it is what I described in Understanding Media as a ‘cool medium’. That is to say that, like speech, “so much has to be filled in or completed by the audience”. In fact, one could go so far to say that the electronic medium was freezing; such is the importance of participation by the audience.

The Site-meter

That’s a great point Manuel. To prove the fact that the Internet, and especially blog sites like this, are a real (and, of course, virtual) community, I have added a ‘site-meter’ to count the number of visitors to our blog, at the time of writing this, there have been ten visitors, although expect the number as you read this to have risen. While the results aren’t staggering in their immensity, it does show that a public domain such as this can provide a space for people of common interests to congregate, no matter what their location or social status. This fact again shows the huge potential, a potential that is already being rapidly realised, of electronic media.

Communites, and people whose names begin with the letter 'J'

If this is the case, and this issue can only be discussed in its own context, rather than drawing from previous media transformations, then perhaps I can be of service. Being of a younger age than the rest of you, my work has been directly involved with the question of the Internet and its ramifications, in particular my book The Internet Galaxy. In this book I bring forth the idea of “self-directed networking” (p.55), and that the Internet is “self-publishing, self-organizing, and self-networking” (p.55). Perhaps it is in this sense that it is entirely different from previous media. Rather than being regulated by conglomerates, like television companies and newspaper groups, it is the most international form of free speech. It is entirely self-regulating, for better and for worse, and in this sense, it seems that these communities hark backwards, as well as forwards, to the days of village communities and oral culture. The Internet really is the word of mouth for the global village. Communities are formed by the World Wide Web in a way that no previous medium could manage. In these networks, there is “the capacity for anyone to find his or her own destination on the Net” (p.55). For instance, there is no way that a person could find a community of people discussing the kind of things discussed on these pages, without the exclusivity of a university course or the receipt of an isolated journal with no room for dialogue, without the Internet community set up right here. From its very early stages, as well as being uniquely far reaching, the Internet has been a beacon for creating communities of minorities, so one could say that, as well as being infinite in its reproduction, it is hugely varied in its locale. It is as once, far more available than the world’s largest newspaper, and far more personal than the most specific journal. Where else could a community of people whose name begins with the letter 'J' come together, other than the Internet.

New Parameters and Objectives

If I could just make a point; the problem we are encountering here is that we are limited in our discussions of a new medium, because it is framed entirely in the parameters of its predecessors. I explained this problem in an essay entitled, Is It Natural That One Medium Should Appropriate and Exploit Another. I believe I explained, “the objectives of new media have tended, fatally, to be set in terms of the parameters and frames of older media.” (p.180 of ). Furthermore, “all media testing has been done within the parameters of older media – especially of speech and print” (p.180). One can see that, in Walter and George’s discussion thus far, this media transformation has been seen entirely as a matter of how electronic media can expand and improve on its predecessors. The assumptions upon which the print or speech media are based must now be cast aside, and replaced with a new set of objectives that are specific to new media. George perhaps touched on this by talking about the entirely new way that electronic media is reproduced instantly, and with no recourse to physical reproduction. I also mentioned in the aforementioned essay that “the electronic age…substitutes all-at-once-ness for one-thing-at-a-time-ness” (p.180). That is to say that the information provided by media is no longer linear or narrative, rather it happens simultaneously, all over the world. If the very direction, or one could even describe it as the dimension, in which media operates has changed, then the objectives of the new medium must be wholly different from anything from which it has sprung. As people still stuck within the age where print is the predominant form of media, it is almost impossible to conceive of the parameters of the new electronic age.

Instant reproduction

I see what you’re saying Walt. It is a vastly accelerated form of previous methods of reproduction, but there is more to it than that. The notion of an original and of a copy is no longer valid on this type of media. There are at least two good reasons for that; firstly once it is online it is technically in the public sphere, with equal access rights and no purchase costs. This blog belongs no more to me than my television belongs to John Logie Baird. We merely create for public consumption. In this sense, it is unlike any media that has preceded it, as its relation to television, for instance, proves very quickly. Should I wish to watch a programme on the BBC, that is fine, but I must pay a licence fee, and I am dictated to as to when I watch. I could, of course, buy a DVD and watch that when I choose, but then I must purchase a specific copy, one of only a finite number, thereby removing one of a finite number of reproductions from public access. Online, the information is already there, reproduced at the touch of button. Secondly, it would be perfectly possible to set this page up as a ‘wiki’ page, where anybody can add and edit a post, as is the case with the excellent encyclopaedia, Wikipedia. This means that content delivered through the medium of an online ‘wiki’, belongs to, and is created by, everybody who has been on the site. Surely that is incomparable to the notion that Walter has discussed previously.

The Importance of reproducibility

Hi George, glad to here I’m still considered to be esteemed after all these years. You see, the phenomenon that we are in the process of witnessing with regards to the Internet, and electronic media in general, is not without precedent. The World Wide Web provides an instantaneous form of a notion that I considered in my essay, The Work of Art in a Mechanical Age, that of reproducibility. As I explained, “in principle a work of art has always been reproducible” (p.220 in the aforementioned work), it is merely that the techniques of reproduction have improved greatly, from the founding and stamping that allowed the ancient Greeks to produce large quantities of coins, to the woodcut that allowed the mechanical reproduction of graphic art, and most famously of all, the printing press, which allowed text to be mass produced. I mentioned the importance of photographs, the development of which, in then nineteenth century, meant that reproduction could keep pace with the speed at which the eye views the original image. It seems to me that a blog such as this allows almost infinite reproduction, at the same speed at which the original is produced.

A traditional introduction

Welcome to this weblog, or as we in the electronic age say, blog. This means of communication would have been almost unimaginable just twenty years ago. Perhaps more importantly, an essay such as this, produced on paper and formally completed and handed in, would have little chance of being read by more than merely the pupil and tutor. It is undeniably the case that if I were writing this with the intention of having it viewed in an exclusive minority of two, and if I were constantly conscious of this exploration as a finite and self contained entity, the style would be far removed from that in which I am writing right now. For example, a book or printed essay is only considered as a whole on the moment of its publication or submission; little thought is given to the events that could have had huge effects on the text during its gestation. Below is a link to the previous week's news headlines, as can be seen, any number of these articles could have had an effect on my musings here. Perhaps I am writing in a public place in Scotland, so desperately craving a cigarette that I cannot focus properly, perhaps I have an elderly relative in dire need of hospital treatment, and am too concerned by its low priority in last week's budget to concern myself with media transformations. In a book such events would have been long forgotten by the time had gone through the publication process.
These are no more than practical differences between the slow release of the written word as a complete whole, and the immediate deluge of information that a blog such as this can provide. My esteemed colleagues on this project, all of whom are considered to be authorities on media and its ramifications, may well have more to say on the intrinsic value and inherent changes that surround a major media transformation. Make no mistake when reading this, the importance of transforming the medium through which content is relayed must not be underestimated. In fact, as Marshall McLuhan will no doubt tell you on these very pages in the coming weeks, the medium is the message (see McLuhan’s seminal work Understanding Media for further information, or click here for a very illuminating article on the subject).


The Scottish smoking ban

The Budget