Theory Lecture Notes : McLuhan & Harold Innis

Understanding McLuhan : The Medium is the Message 

"The medium is the message" is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived."(The medium is the message, 2015)

"An implosion in which everybody is involved with everyone. The age of co-presence of all individuals is the age of communication- the ages of instant humans. Computer data banks dissolve the human image. Love thy label as thyself."

We gain a an insight. Not data. Today we live in a digital data age. Mc Luhan gives us wisdom, timeless information. We appreciate the power of visual culture, and gives us an insight into technological age. Touches topics on how society has changed by both ideas and tools and how this has altered human behaviour and our mental attitudes.

Key Ideas & Thinkers: 

• Harold Innis- The Bias of Communication - "  time and space biases Monopolies knowledge"
• Neil Postman- Technopoly - " Media Ecology 
• Douglas Rushkoff - Program or be Programmed - " Programming Culture"  
• Marshall McLunhan - Understanding Media - The Global Village, Media as Message Media as extension Senses"

Harold Innis- ( 1894-1952) Historian Theorist from Canada 

 "Neutrality is never neutral as it appears"  (Slavoj Zizek, The Pervert's Guide to Cinema) 

nothing is neutral, everything is pre disposed. Everything that has been designed carries some baggage from the creator.  Anything that has been designed leaves a design legacy, whether it's intended. This legacy could be a good or bad outcome. Everything is pre dispositioned or biased.     

"Most writers are occupied in providing accounts of the content of philosophy, science, libraries, empires, and religions. Innis invites us instead to consider the formalities of power exerted by these structures in their mutual interaction. He approaches each of these forms of organized power as exercising a particular kind of force upon each of the other components in the complex."(other publications, no date)

Innis basic belief is the idea"relative stability of cultures depends on the balance and proportion of their media"(other publications, no date) . He bases his thery of three questions: 

1. How do specific communication technologies operate?

2. What assumptions do they take from and contribute to society?

3. What forms of power do they encourage?

The key to  soical change is dependant on the development of communication media. "Any empire or society is generally concerned with duration over time and extension in space." 

Time Biased Media: "Time-biased media facilitate the development of social hierarchies, as archetypally exemplified by ancient Egypt. For Innis, speech is a time-biased medium."

Space Biased: "They are associated with secular and territorial societies; they facilitate the expansion of empire over space"

David Godfrey summarises Innis’ distinction as follows:

"For Innis, the organisation of empires seems to follow two major models. The first model is militaristic and concerned with the conquest of space. The second model is religious and concerned with the conquest of time. Comparatively, the media that have supported the military conquering of space have been lighter, so that the constraints of long distances could be lessened. Those media that supported theocratic empires had relative durability as a major characteristic so that they could support the concepts of eternal life and endless dynasties. ((other publications, no date)"

Marshell Mcluhan:

 

(mywebcowtube, 2011)

Programming the Environment:  'Technological change is neither additive nor subtractive. it is ecological'  . We see the world in a digital terms, this network, but what we don't realise that it is physical. There are servers and cables which create this vulnerability. Technology has a physicality. digital technology is programmed. this makes it biased towards those with the capacity to write the code. We are part of the digital age. We are fish in the digital world.  We are being used we are not users.  You will never be a master, you can only gain an insight to gain an exposure to the truth of the digital era.  Art and design can be thought of as a different sort of Programming. We don't necessarily have to be constrained to the digital tools.

All Designers are , thinkers - generating ideas, builders- making ideas into reality , Improvers- taking existing work and making it better and producers- executing repeatable processes t a high standard. .  Art and design as a type of programming. 

Bibliography

The medium is the message (2015) in Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message (Accessed: 23 October 2015).

other publications (no date) Available at: http://www.media-studies.ca/articles/innis.htm (Accessed: 23 October 2015).

mywebcowtube (2011) Marshall Mcluhan Full lecture: The medium is the message - 1977 part 1 v 3. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImaH51F4HBw (Accessed: 23 October 2015).