Mc luhan 1

UNDERSTANDING MEDIAKarlshochschule International UniversityKarlsruhe, December 9th, 2009Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih

Starter2 “What we know is a drop, what we don‟t know is an ocean” (Isaac Newton) Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

The ten rules of good communication3 1. Be polite! 2. Listen! 3. Know your message! 4. Know your public! 5. Offer your public a clear benefit! 6. Communicate wise and with passion! 7. Be clear and be careful! 8. Get feedback! 9. If you don‟t succeed, try again in a different way! 10. Stop communicating, if any rule is violated! Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

The ten rules of good communication4 In one sentence: Be respectful! Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Corporate Communication – the ideal5  Rationality  Strategy  Consistency  Truth  Clearness  Certainty  Simplicity  People orientation/Dialogue  “Crisis management”  Social Media  Corporate Social Responsibility/Ethics Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Corporate Communication – the ideal6 Problem: It just doesn‟t work like this. In my opinion, it turns out more and more that it in most cases doesn‟t work at all Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Corporate Communication today7  PR as a corporate function came up at the end of the 19th century together with the first large industrial organizations  In Germany, the company Krupp established its first press department in 1870  The upcoming US railway companies searched for ways to influence the politics and public in the end of the 19th century  1900 Publicity Bureau of Boston established as first public relations firm.  Since then PR departments steadily grew, because more and more specialized forms of communication and media have to be handled in a more and more professional way  Today, Corporate Communication is a billion dollar business Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Corporate Communication today8  Especially in the 1990s, Corporations and personally CEOs recognized to be more and more dependent on professional communication  PR specialists became an integral part of top management, often reporting directly to the president or CEO. Many CEOs and politicians today have “spin doctors”  A growing bulk of people deal with Corporate Communication: More than 200.000 communication experts in US and 50.000 PR experts in Germany (cautious estimation)  PR-Experts see themselves as the winner of the advertisement crisis Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

CC doesn‟t work (anymore)9  Edelman Trust Barometer 2009: • In the last decades, trust in business declined constantly and is now on an all-time-low. • Two-thirds of informed publics trust corporations less than they did a year ago; 77% say they refuse to buy products or services from a company they distrusted. 72% criticized a distrusted company to a friend or colleague. • Only 38% said they trust business to do what‟s right. • Trust in bank dropped by 33% in the US. • Trust in business magazines, stock or industry analyst reports – last year‟s leader – decreased from 57% to 44% and from 56% to 47%. • Globally, only 29% trust information about a company from a CEO – down from 36% last year. • Only 13% trust corporate or product advertising – down from 36%. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

CC doesn‟t work (anymore)10  Managers, bankers, politicians and PR experts have the worst reputation of all professions.  Gallup: Only 13% of the employees are highly dedicated to work and to the company, more than two thirds only do the necessary. 20% have already left the company psychologically (fall out syndrome).  Employees drown in a flood of internal communication which gets more and more professional: e-mails, newsletters, DVDs, videos, live streams, podcasts, employee magazines, Corporate TV etc.  Nevertheless, most of the employees say that they don‟t find in it the information they want or need (Sottong, HBM 2008). Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

CC doesn‟t work (anymore)11  Despite all propaganda of “openness” and “honesty” it has become quite normal that employees hear important information e.g. about lay-offs, bad financial results or spying scandals in their company in the external media.  Trust in institutions like Social Market Economy, Democracy and in politicians is also declining since decades.  Only 22% of the Germans today trust politicians, Only 60% trust in democracy, in the Eastern part of Germany only 44% - 31% would like to get back the old system of the GDR.  The Social Market Economy is only perceived as a good system by 48%; in the Eastern part only by a third of the population. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

CC doesn‟t work (anymore)12  People in Germany trust most in the • Police (85%) • Air traffic (75%) • TV reporting (64%) • Justice (63%) • Army (60%) • News papers (57%) • Government (38%) • Political parties (22%) Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

CC doesn‟t work (anymore)13  Outside USA: • In U.K., France and Germany, trust in Business was already at a low level of 36% among the audience of 35-64-years olds – and stayed there. • The only EU-countries where business made a notable gain in trust were Netherlands and Sweden  High and rising trust in BRIC-Economies: • In China trust climbed to 69% from 61%, trust in banks rose from 72% to 84%. • But also, 79% of Japanese, 56% of Chinese, and 49% of the Indian opinion leader say they have growing concern about business, and Korea, Mexico, and Brazil report now low levels of trust in CEOs Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

CC doesn‟t work (anymore)14 “If you make people think they‟re thinking , they‟ll love you. But if you really make them think, they‟ll hate you.” (Don Marquis, US-American author) Favorite quote of Harold Kroto (Winner of Nobel Price in Physics) What are the reasons for this mess? Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

What are the reasons?15  People? PR experts or CEOs?  Complexity?  Dynamics?  Or both? (“Dynaxity”)  Financial crisis?  Management mistakes?  Unethical behavior?  New media? Social-Web 2.0? All this is not the whole story: The erosion of the reputation of so many institutions is a constant process, which has already started in the 1960s Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Why CC doesn„t work – four theses16  The game has completely changed  Mindsets of management and the education of PR experts have to change radically.  Ethics is important and should be a goal in itself – CSR will hopefully make the world a better place, but it will never ever solve the image problem. The same is true about Social Media  Media do play an central role. But there are a lot of misconceptions about them… Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

What you need for success17 Values Knowledge Techniques Experience Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Useful Theories for Business Communication18  Biology (not only brain science!)  Anthropology/Ethnology  Psychology  Pedagogic  Social Psychology  Organization Science  Sociology  Linguistics, Discourse analysis  Philosophy  Communication/Media-theory/PR research  Management Science  System theory/cybernetics Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Theories which could explain the problem19  Neo-Institutionalism (John Meyer, Brian Rowan 1978, Nils Brunsson 2009)  System theory (Niklas Luhmann, 1927-1998)  Theory of Habitus, differentiation and markets of language by the French anthropologist and sociologist (Pierre Bourdieu 1930-2002)  Marshall McLuhan‟s thoughts on media Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980)20 “In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is not king. He is taken to be an hallucinated lunatic” Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Marshall McLuhan21  Lived from 1911-80  Canadian communications theorist and “high guru” of media culture  The most publicized English teacher in the twentieth century and arguably the most controversial.  He coined the well-known phrases of “global village” and “the medium is the message” in 1964, when no one could have predicted today‟s information-dependent planet.  “The mechanical Bride. Folklore of Industrial man (1951)”  “The Gutenberg Galaxy” (1962)  “Understanding Media.” (1964) Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Marshall McLuhan22  The “Hype”: In 1965, two fans of McLuhan and PR experts, Feigen and Gossage, organized what they called a "McLuhan festival“  McLuhan soon became a fixture of media discourse. Newsweek magazine did a cover story on him; articles appeared in Life Magazine, Harpers, Fortune, Esquire, and others. Cartoons about him appeared in The New Yorker. In 1969 Playboy magazine published a lengthy interview with him.  Sleeve note of “Understanding media”: “the most important book ever written on communication. Ignore its message at your own peril.”  You can find a lot of material about McLuhan e.g. on the website: http://www.mcluhanmedia.com Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Marshall McLuhan23  “I don’t pretend to understand it. After all, my stuff is very difficult.”  "I have no theories whatever about anything. I make observations by way of discovering contours, lines of force, and pressures. I satirize at all times, and my hyperboles are as nothing compared to the events to which they refer.“  “my purpose is to employ facts as tentative probes, as means of insight, of pattern recognition, rather than to use them in the traditional and sterile sense of classified data, categories, containers. I want to map new terrain rather than chart old landmarks. But Ive never presented such explorations as revealed truth.” Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Marshall McLuhan24  If more people had read his books, many errors could have been prevented and many of today‟s phenomenon could have been anticipated; but nowadays his thoughts don‟t play the role in media science discourse that they should deserve. He was often rejected by “Real” scientists.  He tried hard to find evidence for his thesis of “the medium is the message”, i.e.: “the medium matters not the content”. In the end, he found some evidence in experiments he conducted at General Motors. Today, brain research proves a lot of his arguments to be true.  A lot of people seemed to have big problems with his convoluted syntax, flushy metaphors and word-playful one-liners. It‟s more art than science. However, his basic theses are relatively simple and very clear. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Marshall McLuhan25  Many big companies asked him for advice, but seldom acted on it: • More than 30 years ago, General Motors paid him a handsome fee for informing them that automobiles were a thing of the past • Bell Telephones paid a lot of money for being explained by him that they didn‟t really understand the function of the telephone • Another big corporation asked him to predict – via closed-circuit televisions – what their products will be used for in the future (they didn‟t believe) Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Warning!26  The following slides are more a collage of McLuhan quotes than a presentation or lecture.  I tried to collect them in order to make his basic arguments clear  The expressions of his “theory” were not summarized in my own words as I wanted to prevent messing up the real meaning, because he partially wrote in a very poetic style  For better reading I don‟t provide the exact source, but kept the quotes in italics and my own remarks in standard font.  Small changes in the structure of the sentence were not explicitly marked. Color is added by me to emphasize important phrases  Of course I am accountable for all errors  I will concentrate mainly on presenting the theory and not on criticizing it Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Marshall McLuhan - Media27 McLuhan has a very wide definition of media as “extensions of men”  Horses  Weapons/Tools  Clothing/Housing  Drugs  Clocks  Railways  Typography  Slaves/Mechanical technologies  Media (in the usual sense, e.g. Telegraph, Radio, TV, Computers) Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Marshall McLuhan at a glance28  All Media – in and of themselves regardless of the messages they communicate – exert a compelling influence of man and society (“The media is the message”).  Prehistoric, or tribal, man existed in a balance of sense, perceiving the world equally through hearing, smell, touch, sight and taste  “Media are extensions of men”. They amplify the body and/or senses/central nervous system.  Every basic innovation of media changes the sensory balance of man – an alteration that, in turn, inexorably reshapes the society that created the technology  The influence depends on whether a “cold” or “hot” media meets a hot or cold culture Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

The media is the message29  The content of a medium is always another medium (the content of writing is speech, the written word is the content of print, print is the content of telegraph etc.).  The effect of the medium is quite independent from the content.  To those who have never studied media, this fact is quite baffling as literacy to natives, who say: “Why do you write? Can’t you remember?” Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

The media is the message30 McLuhan uses the light bulb to explain the principle:  The light bulb is a medium without content – nevertheless it created a new environment by it’s mere presence (create spaces during nighttime)  It is not the light but the content that is noticed. Whether light is being used for brain surgery or night baseball is a matter of indifference – it does not matter so much if you want to understand how it controls and scale the form of human association and action. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

The media is the message31  The railway did not introduce movement or transportation, or wheel or road into human society, but it accelerated and enlarged the scale of previous human functions, creating totally new kinds of cities and new kinds of work and leisure  Later, a print mistake led McLuhan to use the sentence “the medium is the massage”. He liked the message because it met exactly what he wanted to say: that any medium has a deep effect on the human sensorium, they “massage” the sensorium. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

The media is the message32  The content of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind  The effect of the medium is made strong and intense just because it is given another medium as “content”. The content of writing or print is speech, but the reader is almost entirely unaware either of print or speech.  The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

The „naive look“ on media33  General Sarnoff: “We are too prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for the sins of those who wield them. The products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are use that determines their value.”  McLuhan‟s comment: That is the voice of the current somnambulism. Suppose we were to say “Apple pie is in itself neither good nor bad; it is the way it is used that determines its value”. Or: “The smallpox virus is in itself neither good nor bad; it is the way it is used that determines its value.” Again, “Firearms are in themselves neither good nor bad; it is the way they are used that determines the value.”… Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

The „naive look“ on media34  General Sarnoff went on to explain his attitude to the technology of print, saying that it was true that print caused much trash to circulate, but it has also disseminated the Bible and the thoughts of seers and philosophers. It has never occurred to general Sarnoff that any technology could do anything but add itself on to what we already are.  It is true for many disciplines that we cannot understand what‟s going on if we are “caught by content”: Economists as Robert Theobald, W.W. Rostow and John Kenneth Galbraith have been explaining for years how it is that “classical economics” cannot explain change or growth (this is also why most media theory cannot explain media and most communication theory cannot explain communication CH).  Instead of asking which came first, the chicken or the egg, it suddenly seemed that a chicken was an egg’s idea for getting more eggs. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

The medium and the myth35  Every new medium or human extension creates a new myth for itself, usually associated with a major figure: Napoleon and the trauma of industrialism, Charlie Chaplin as the public conscience of the movie, Florence Nightingale as the first singer of human woe by telegraph  The artist is the only person able to encounter technology with impunity, just because he is an expert aware of the changes in sense perception Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Media as extensions36  Electronic media are the ultimate extension of senses because they involve again the whole apparatus of senses and is more and more abolishing time and space (global village) “…the simulation of consciousness when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society.” Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Why do we need „extensions“?37  The three big dreams of mankind are: • Security & love • Immortality • Almightiness Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Extensions in fantasy38 Spiderman: Organic extension Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Explosion/Implosion39  After thousand years of explosion, by means of fragmentary and mechanical technologies, the Western world is imploding. During the mechanical ages we had extended our bodies in space.  Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man – the technological simulation of consciousness.“ (1964 UM, p. 1) Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

How media affect the mind40  The mere existence of media configures our awareness and experience on a very unconscious level, as mentioned by the psychologist C.G. Jung: “Every Roman was surrounded by slaves. The slave and his psychology flooded ancient Italy, and every Roman became inwardly, and of course unwittingly, a slave. Because living constantly in the atmosphere of slaves, he became infected through the unconscious with their psychology. No one can shield himself from such an influence” (Contributions to Analytical Psychology, London 1928) Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Narcissus narcosis41  Every extension is an intensification, an amplification of an organ, sense or function, and whenever it takes place, the central nervous system appears to institute a self-protective numbing of the affected area, insulating and anesthetizing it from conscious awareness of whats happening to it. Its a process rather like that which occurs to the body under shock or stress conditions, or to the mind in line with the Freudian concept of repression.  I call this peculiar form of self-hypnosis or Narcissus narcosis, a syndrome whereby man remains as unaware of the psychic and social effects of his new technology as a fish of the water it swims in. As a result, precisely at the point where a new media-induced environment becomes all pervasive and transmogrifies our sensory balance, it also becomes invisible. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Narcissus narcosis42  People are beginning to understand the nature of their new technology, but not yet nearly enough of them - and not nearly well enough. Most people, as I indicated, still cling to what I call the rearview-mirror view of their world. By this I mean to say that because of the invisibility of any environment during the period of its innovation, man is only consciously aware of the environment that has preceded it; in other words, an environment becomes fully visible only when it has been superseded by a new environment; thus we are always one step behind in our view of the world.  Because we are benumbed by any new technology--which in turn creates a totally new environment - we tend to make the old environment more visible; we do so by turning it into an art form and by attaching ourselves to the objects and atmosphere that characterized it, just as weve done with jazz, and as were now doing with the garbage of the mechanical environment via pop art. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Narcissus Narcosis43  At the height of the mechanical age, man turned back to earlier centuries in search of "pastoral" values. The Renaissance and the Middle Ages were completely oriented toward Rome; Rome was oriented toward Greece, and the Greeks were oriented toward the pre-Homeric primitives. We reverse the old educational dictum of learning by proceeding from the familiar to the unfamiliar by going from the unfamiliar to the familiar, which is nothing more or less than the numbing mechanism that takes place whenever new media drastically extend our senses.  In the midst of the electronic age of software, of instant information movement, we still believe were living in the mechanical age of hardware. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Narcissus narcosis44  „There is no reason for any individual to have a Computer in his home“ (Ken Olsen, CEO of Digital Equipment, 1977)  This is a typical rumor; for all those quotes (also the one from IBM-CEO Thomas Watson that there is no need for more than 5 computers on earth) there are usually no hints for actual existence! Nevertheless, the quote above contains some truth – we can seldom estimate the real extent with which a new medium changes the world  For a differentiated view on the quote see: http://snopes.com/quotes/kenolsen Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

„Hot“ and „cool“ media45  Any hot medium allows of less participation than a cool one, as a lecture makes for less participation than a seminar, and a book less than a dialogue  The principle that distinguishes hot and cold media is perfectly embodied in the folk wisdom:“Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.” Glasses intensify the outward-going vision, and fill in the feminine image exceedingly. Dark glasses, on the other hand, create the inscrutable and inaccessible image that invites a great deal of participation and completion. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

„Hot“ and „Cool“ Media46 Hot CoolInfluence on •High definition •Low definitionsenses •Low participation •High participation •Enhances only one or few senses •Stimulates several sensesTraits •Don‟t have so much to be filled in or •Requires active participation completed •Perception of abstract •Analytical precision patterning •Quantitative analysis •Simultaneous comprehension •Sequential ordering of all partsExamples •Movie •TV •Photography •Comics •Radio •Abstract art •Lecture •Speech Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

The impact of hot and cold media47  It makes all the difference whether a hot medium is used in a hot or a cool culture.  The hot radio medium e.g. used in cool or nonliterate cultures has a violent effect, quite unlike its effect in England or America, where radio is felt as entertainment.  A cool or low literacy culture cannot accept hot media like movies or radio as entertainment. They are, at least, as radically upsetting for them as cool TV medium has proved to be for our literacy world Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

The impact of hot media48 Our brand is crisis (US movie, 2005)  This film is a documentation about a US PR-consulting company, which advised one of the eleven Bolivian presidential candidates in 2002 during the election. The consultants from Washington used all the art and tricks of modern American campaigning-methods  The candidate won the election but shortly after the election bloody riots occurred in the streets of La Paz.  The reason: We, in our literate, hot culture are used to broken election campaign promises on TV. We accept them as our world is fragmented Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

The impact of hot media49 AP August 9, 1962: “Nearly 100 traffic violators watched a police traffic accident film today to atone for their violations. Two had to be treated for nausea and shock…Viewers were offered a $5 reduction of fines if they agreed to see the movie. It showed twisted wreckage and mangled bodies and recorded the screams of accident victims.” The effect of hot media treatment cannot include much empathy or participation at any time. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

The impact of hot and cold media50  Saturation: When all the available resources and energies have been played up in and organism or in any structure there is some kind of reversal pattern. The spectacle of brutality used as deterrent can brutalize. Brutality used in sports may humanize under some conditions. But with regard to the bomb and retaliation as deterrent, it is obvious that numbness is the result of any prolonged terror…. The price of eternal vigilance is indifference. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

The impact of hot and cold media51 Headline for June 21, 1963: Washington-Moscow Hot line installed “The agreement to establish a direct communication line between Washington and Moscow for emergencies was signed here yesterday by Charles Stelle of the United States and Semyon Tsarapkin of the Soviet Union… The link, known a the hot line, will be opened within six days, according to U.S. officials. It will make use of leased commercials circuits, one cable and the other wireless, teleprinter equipment.” Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

The impact of hot and cold media52  McLuhan comments: “The decision, to use the hot printed medium in place of the cool, participational, telephone medium is unfortunate by extreme. No doubt, the decision was prompted by the literary bias of the Western for the printed form, on the ground that it is more impersonal than the telephone.”  Russians love the telephone which fits to their oral traditions  Invitation to monstrous misunderstandings  The Russian bugs rooms and spies by ear, finding this quite natural. He is outraged by our visual spying, however, finding this quite unnatural Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

The impact of hot and cold media53  Disruptive impact on societies of a hot technology: Australian natives were given steel axes by the missionaries. Their culture, based on the stone axe, collapsed. It has not only been scarce but also a status symbol of male importance. The missionaries provided quantities of sharp steel axes and gave them to women and children. The men had even to borrow these from the women, causing a collapse of male dignity. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Narcissus Narcosis has positive functions54  Were we to accept fully and directly every shock to our various structure of awareness, we would soon be nervous wrecks doing double-takes and pressing panic buttons every minute  The “censor” protects our central system of values, as it does our physical nervous system by simply cooling off the onset experience a great deal (McLuhan was once asked how to stop a war in a certain backward country and said it would be the best to provide everybody with a TV) Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

The Tetrad55 Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

The Tetrad56  Laws of Media (1988), published posthumously by his son Eric McLuhan summarized his ideas about media in a concise tetrad of media effects for examining the effects on society of any technology (i.e. any medium) by dividing its effects into four categories and displaying them simultaneously.  McLuhan designed the tetrad as a pedagogical tool, phrasing his laws as questions with which to consider any medium  The laws of the tetrad exist simultaneously, not successively or chronologically, and allow the questioner to explore the "grammar and syntax" of the "language" of media. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

The Tetrad57  McLuhan departs from his mentor Harold Innis in suggesting that a medium "overheats", or reverses into an opposing form, when taken to its extreme  Visually, a tetrad can be depicted as four diamonds forming an X, with the name of a medium in the center.  The two diamonds on the left of a tetrad are the Enhancement and Retrieval qualities of the medium, both Figure qualities. The two diamonds on the right of a tetrad are the Obsolescence and Reversal qualities, both Ground qualities Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

The Tetrad58  What does the medium enhance?  What does the medium make obsolete?  What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier?  What does the medium flip into when pushed to extremes? Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Example: the Radio59  Enhancement (figure): What the medium amplifies or intensifies. Radio amplifies news and music via sound.  Obsolescence (ground): What the medium drives out of prominence. Radio reduces the importance of print and the visual.  Retrieval (figure): What the medium recovers which was previously lost. Radio returns the spoken word to the forefront.  Reversal (ground): What the medium does when pushed to its limits. Acoustic radio flips into audio-visual TV. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Clothing62 Clothing and housing, as extensions of skin and heat- control mechanisms, are media of communication, first of all, in the sense that they shape and rearrange the patterns of human association and community Unclothed people use 40% more energy. Cloths enables human beings to spread themselves in unfriendly areas and to protect themselves in fights Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Housing63 It’s obvious that houses are an extension of mankind. They enable us to lead a comfortable life. The pyramids or castles also had the function to show the power of his owner. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Mirror64 The story of the mirror is a main chapter in the history of dress and manners and the sense of the self. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Mirror65 Recently and imaginative school principal in a slum area provided each student in the school with a photograph of himself. The classroom of the school were abundantly supplied with large mirrors. The result was an astounding increase of learning. The slum child has ordinarily very little visual orientation. He does not see himself as becoming something. He does not envisage distant goals and objectives. He is in his own world from day to day, and can establish no beachhead in the highly specialized sense life of visual man. The plight of the slum kid, via TV image, is increasingly extended to the entire population Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Movement66  Transportation by pack animal (mostly women)  Horseshoes and horse collars  Wheel as the architect of new human relations  Horse-drawn carts, busses and streetcars, first cities Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Movement67  But the wheel was of little use without streets (the Roman Empire was built on streets and papyrus)  After the fall of the Roman Empire, it took centuries until the streets were in a suitable condition again.  In the 15th century they were used for the first time for private postal services (Thurn & Taxis) and commercial business (Fugger Family) Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Movement68  Railway created new cities and suburbs and the first stock corporations (and the first PR departments!). PR should convince people to “Go West” an buy stocks. An important means of PR has always been entertainment business (Buffalo Bill, Circus Barnum)  Still today, our language is full of words which have to do with infrastructure of the age of Explosion: information highway, communication channels, roadmap, building bridges…  The automobile ended the pedestrian or human scale of the suburb (housewife as full-time chauffeur) Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Movement69  Later the wheel was used for mechanical devices in many forms  In the electric age, the wheel itself is obsolete  Each method of transporting commodity or information should have come into existence in a bitter competitive battle against previously existing devices. Each innovation is not only commercially disrupting, but socially and psychologically corroding  In the electric age, former media often look archaic, just outdated, they don’t “feel good”  But sometimes, old technologies have a comeback as entertainment or arts: The car as vehicle will go the way of the horse. The horse has lost its role in transportation but has made a strong comeback in entertainment. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Movement70 McLuhan wrote the following in 1964!!  “At the heart of the car industry there are men who know that the car is passing, as certainly as the cuspidor was doomed when the lady typist arrived on the business scene. What arrangements have they made to ease the automobile industry off the center of the stage? The mere obsolescence of the wheel does not mean its disappearance. It means only that, like penmanship or typography, the wheel will move into a subsidiary role in the culture.” Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

From Oral Culture to Typography71  Body language, Gestures  Narratives  Informal/”natural” hierarchy  Magic, mythical thinking  Involves all senses!  Acoustic more than visual (as in literal cultures)  Still today, many cultures that are more oral than visual oriented, e.g. the Russian  Typical for today‟s oral cultures: The Hebrew and Eastern mode of thought tackles problems and resolution, at the outset of a discussion. The entire message is then traced and retraced, again and again, on the rounds of a concentric spiral with seeming redundancy. One can stop anywhere after the first few sentences and have the full message, if on is prepared to dig it. Spiral, concentric Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Early writing72  Stone (heavy and unwieldy media) are time binders.  Iconic writing; hieroglyphs Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Early writing73  The alphabet was a drastic visual abstraction from the rich hieroglyphic culture of the Egyptians, so it also reduced and translated that culture into the great visual vortex of the Graeco-Roman world.  The alphabet was one thing when applied to clay or stone, and quite another when set down on light papyrus. The resulting leap in speed and space created the Roman Empire  The alphabet is a one-way-process of reduction of nonliterate cultures into the specialist visual fragments of our Western world (in religion setting: monistic religions) Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Phonetic writing74  All non-phonetic forms of writing are artistic modes that retain much variety of sensuous orchestration.  Phonetic writing alone, has the power of separating and fragmenting the sense and of sloughing off the semantic complexities. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Typography75  Extension of the eye (“An eye for an ear”)  The manuscript was cool, print is a hot medium Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Typography76  The alphabet, when pushed to a high degree of abstract visual intensity burst the bonds of medieval corporate guilds and monasteries, creating extreme individualistic patterns of enterprise and monopoly  Hotting-up of the medium of writing to repeatable print intensity led to nationalism and the religious wars of the 16th century (e.g. letters of indulgence; it also became fashionable by protestants to print flyers to transport religious messages). Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Typography - consequences77  Individualism and nationalism in the 16th century  Fragmentation  Specialization/Segmentation  Linear thinking  Idea of time and space as continuous measurable quantities  De-Sacralization of nature and power  Homogeneity  Repeatability  Industrialism  Mass markets  Amplification of power, energy, and aggression Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Typography78 Repeatability:  Margaret Mead has reported that when she brought several copies of the same book to a Pacific island there was great excitement. The natives had seen books, but only one copy of each, which they had assumed to be unique.  Their astonishment at the identical character of several books was a natural response to what is after all the most magical and potent aspect of print and mass production. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Typography79 Homogeneity :  De Tocqueville (1805-1859) explained in his work on the French revolution how it was the printed word that, achieving cultural saturation in the 18th century, had homogenized the French nation.  Frenchman were the same kind of people from north to south. The typographic principles of uniformity, continuity, and linearity had overlaid the complexities of ancient feudal and oral society. The revolution was carried out by the new literati and lawyers Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Typography80 Homogeneity:  De Tocqueville (1805-1859) remarked that the American Society was more homogenized by print than England and much more than Europe in general:  “In America all laws derive in a sense from the same line of thought. The whole society, so to speak, is founded upon a single fact; everything springs from a simple principle. One could compare America to a forest pierced by a multitude of straight roads all converging on the same point. One has only to find the center and everything is revealed at a glance. But in England, the paths run criss-cross, and it is only by travelling down each one of them that one can build up a picture of the whole.” Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Typography81 Homogeneity:  Homogeneity of regions and nations (“nationalism was unknown to the Western world until the Renaissance when Gutenberg made it possible to see the mother tongue in uniform dress”, e.g. Martin Luther translated the bible from Latin to German)  Homogeneity imposed pressure toward “correct” spelling, syntax and pronunciation, right interpretation of standard works and uniformity in speech and writing in general  Homogeneity in clothing and all aspects of life  William Whyte: Organization man (1951) Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Typography82 Homogeneity:  When European used to visit America before the Second War they would say “But you have communism here!” What they meant was that we not only had standardized good, but everybody had them.”  “It was easy for the retribalized Nazis to feel superior to the American consumer. The tribal man can spot the gaps in the literate mentality very easily. On the other hand, it is the special illusion of literate societies that they are highly aware and individualistic” Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Typography83 Fragmentation/Efficiency:  In the World War I an II, the U.S. accumulated enormous amounts of wealth which was the basis for big business (Fordism and Taylorism arose from the big North American plants) => first assembly lines, “efficiency craze” Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

The Gutenberg-Galaxy84 The sense of smell is not only the most subtle in that it involves the culture human sensorium more fully than any other sense. It is not surprising, therefore that highly literate societies take steps to reduce or eliminate odors from the environment. It is far too involving for our habits of detachment and specialist attention. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

The Gutenberg-Galaxy85 Reflections of the industrial age in arts:  Acrobat: the acrobat acts as a specialist, using only a limited segment of his faculties. The clown is the integral man who mimes the acrobat in an elaborate drama of incompetence  Example: Charlie Chaplin: Modern times (1936) Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Typography86  The “power” of words disseminated by print does not lie in the words “itself” but in the medium (the medium is the message)  “Das hab ich gettruckt gesechenn, das soll ein warhaytt sein” (the frequent traveler Dynoysius Dreytwein, ca.1500, source: Borst 1983, p. 558)  Inadequacy of words is never recognized by the literate man: All the words in the world cannot describe an object like a bucket, although it is possible to tell in a few words how to make a bucket Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Typography87 The invention of “work”:  Work does not exist in a nonliterate world. The primitive hunter or fisherman did not work, any more does the poet, painter, or thinker of today. Where the whole man is involved there is no work. Work begins with the division of labor and the specialization of functions and tasks in sedentary, agricultural communities. In the electric age the “job of work” yields to dedication.  To discipline workers, enormous effort was needed  Impersonality  The brain was left behind at the factory door  Leisure alone meant a life of human dignity and involvement of the whole man. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Typography88  In a highly literate society man sees others who cannot perform somewhat pathetic. Especially the child, the cripple, the woman, and the colored person appear in a world of visual and typographic technology as victims of injustices.  In a culture that assigns roles instead of jobs to people – the dwarf, the skew, the child create their own spaces, people are not expect to fit in some uniform and repeatable niche that is not their size anyway. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Typography89  Oppression of Emotions: Example: the Victorian age (1837-1901) was a period of flourishing economy but also heavy repressing of individual feelings.  In a visual and highly literate culture, when we meet person for the first time his visual appearance dims out the sound of the name, so that in self-defense we add: “How do you spell your name?” In an ear culture, the sound of a man’s name is the overwhelming fact  In the mechanical age with industrial specialism and fragmentation, any intense experience must be “forgotten”, “censored”, and reduced to a very cool state before it can be “learned” or “assimilated”. Example: The hot literary medium excludes the practical and participant aspect of the joke completely. To literary people, the practical joke with its total physical involvement is distasteful . A lot of dances were “cooled down” so that they could be danced in the Western world. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Typography90  It is typical for periods of intense mechanization, fragmentation and aggressive expansion (e.g. Colonialism, wars) that arts (theater drama etc.), gaming, hobbies, leisure activities, alcohol and paranormal events, prostitution, are flourishing  Games are a medium and a mirror of society  Play for example has the function of “cooling down” hot cultures (panem et circensis). Play cools off the hot situation of actual life by miming competitive sports, more or less brutal (Big Brother, DSDS; CH) Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Typography91  Literate man naturally dreams of visual solutions to the problems of human differences. At the end of the 19th century, this kind of dream suggested similar dress and education for both men and women. The failure of the sex-integration programs have provided the theme of much of the literature and psychoanalysis of the 20th century.  Race integration, undertaken on the basis of visual uniformity, is an extension of the same cultural strategy of literate man, for whom differences always seem to need eradication, both in sex and in space and in time. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

What European eyes see!

What European eyes see! - Chaos - - Contrast - - Confusion -

What Indian eyes see!

What Indian eyes see! - Change - - Challenge - - Confidence -

Typography – the advantages of literacy96  These typographical matters for many people are charged with controversial values. Yet in any approach to understanding print it is necessary to stand aside from the form in question if its typical pressure and life to be observed. Those who panic now about the threat of newer media and about the revolution we are forging, vaster in scope than that of Gutenberg, are obviously lacking in cool visual detachment and gratitude for that most potent gift bestowed on Western man by literacy and typography: his power to react without reaction or involvement.  It is this kind of specialization by dissociation that has created Western power and efficiency. Without this dissociation of action from feeling and emotion people are hampered and hesitant. Print taught men to say: “Damp the torpedos. Full steam ahead!” Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Money97 Robinson Crusoe (story by Daniel Defoe, 1719) frequently observes that the money he rescued from the ship is worthless on his islands, especially when compared to his tools Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Money98  Money is an institution based on beliefs  Money has reorganized the sense life of peoples just because it is an extension of our sense lives. It creates social and spiritual values, as happens even in fashions.  Money began in nonliterate cultures as a commodity, such as whales’ teeth on Fiji, were valued as luxury, and thus became a means of mediation or barter.  The existence of money is often seen as a sign of maturity (in a society): Speech comes at the end of the first year with the development of the power to let go of objects. Currency is a way of letting go of the immediate staples and commodities (Freud’s Concept of Anal Erotism) Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Money99  Nonliterate societies are quite lacking in the psychic resources to create and sustain the enormous structures of statistical information that we call markets and prices  “Money talks” because money is a metaphor, a transfer, and a bridge, Like word and language, money is a storehouse of communally achieved work, skill, and experience Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Money100  It is difficult to describe the development of money as the most powerful institution of our days  McLuhan provides an interesting historical overview of the development of money as a medium from mercantilism to modern markets  An important media for expansion and finally industrialization were interests, as most religions did at first not accept “earning money with money”. The first banks were founded in Italy to finance war and trade in the Mediterranean area. The first international corporation, the Fugger empire, was based on trade with indulgences in the name of the Pope. The Fugger family also financed the German emperor Maximilian. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Money101  I want to concentrate on some psychological and social consequences of money described by McLuhan  Money is a specialist technology like writing; as writing intensifies the visual aspect of speech and order, and the clock visually separates time from space  Like writing, money has an enormous power to separate functions, it translates and reduces one kind of work to another.  In a highly literate, fragmented society, “Time is money”, and money is the store of other people’s time and effort. Even in the Electronic age it has lost none of its power Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Money102  “The penetration of the money economy (in Japan) caused a slow, but irresistible revolution, culminating in the breakdown of feudal government and the resumption of intercourse with foreign countries after more than two hundred years of seclusion.” (G.B. Sansom, In Japan 1931)  Which senses get numbed by money? Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Money103  One of the inevitable results of acceleration of information movement and of the translating power of money is the opportunity of enrichment for those who can anticipate this transformation by a few hours or years, as the case may be. We are particularly familiar today with examples of enrichment by means of advance information in stocks and bonds and real estate.  In the past, when wealth was not so obviously related information, and entire class could monopolize the wealth resulting from a casual shift in technology.” Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Money104  The dynamics which is basic to crowds is the urge to rapid an unlimited growth. The same power dynamic is characteristic of large concentration of wealth or treasure.  With the increase of money in a few hands also the breed uneasiness is growing that goes with wealth about disintegration and deflation. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Clocks106  Writing on Communication in Africa, Leonard Doob observes. „The turban, the sword and nowadays the alarm clock are worn or carried to signify high rank.“ Presumably it will be rather long before the African will watch the clock in order to be punctual.  Just as a great revolution in mathematics came when positional, tandem numbers were discovered (302 instead of 32), so great cultural changes occurred in the West when it was found possible to fix time as something that happens between two points. From this application of visual, abstract, and uniform units came our Western feeling for time as duration Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Clocks107  A sense of impatience when we cannot endure the delay between events, is unknown among nonliterate cultures.  The clock preceded the printing press in the influence on the mechanization of society: In the medieval ages, the communal clock extended to the bell permitted high coordination of energies in small communities Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Clocks108 It was the world of the medieval monasteries, with their need for a rule and for synchronized order to guide communal life, that the clock got started on its modern developments. Time measured not by the uniqueness of private experience but by abstract uniform units gradually pervades all sense life, much as does the technology of writing and printing. Not only work, but also eating and sleeping, came to accommodate themselves to the clock rather than to organic needs. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Clocks109 As a piece of technology, the clock is a machine that produces seconds, minutes, and hours on an assembly- line pattern. Processed in this uniform way, time is separated from the rhythms of human experience. The mechanical clock, in short, helps to create the image of a numerically quantified and mechanically powered universe. Clock in/out Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Clocks110 Travelers today have the daily experience of being at one hour in a culture that is still 3000 B.C. and the next hour in a culture that is 1900 A.D. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Clocks111 In the Electronic age:  Time and space interpenetrate each other totally in a space-time-world (ugly word:“real-time”)  In the space-time world of electronic technology, the older mechanical time begins to feel unacceptable, if only because it is uniform. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Space112 Our literate, Western Concept of space is very different than that of the natives. In fact, ours is a “rational” space:  Nigerians studying in American universities are sometimes asked to identify spatial relations. Confronted with objects in sunshine, they are often unable to indicate in which direction shadows will fall, for this involves casting into three-dimensional perspective. Thus sun, objects, and observer are experienced separately and regarded as independent of one another. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Space113 An anthropological film showed a Melanesian carver cutting out a drum which such skill, coordination, and ease that the audience several times broke into applause – it became a song, a ballet. But when the anthropologist asked the tribe to build crates to ship these carvings in, they struggled unsuccessfully for three days to make two planks intersect a 90-degree angle, then gave up in frustration. They couldn’t crate what they had created Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Space114 In the low definition world of the medieval woodcut, each object created its own space, and there was no rational connected space into which it must fit. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Space115  A the retinal impression is intensified, objects cease to cohere in a space of their own making, and instead, become “contained” in a uniform, continuous, and “rational” space.  Relativity theory in 1905 announced the dissolution of uniform Newtonian space as an illusion or fiction, however useful. Einstein pronounced the doom of continuous or “rational” space, and the way was made clear for Picasso, the Marx Brothers and MAD Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Radio116  “The Tribal drum”  Radio is an extension not only of the ear but of the central nervous system (of the aural, high-fidelity photography of the visual) and a hot medium Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Radio117 The Eye is cool and detached. The Ear is hypersensible. The ear turns man over to universal panic while the eye, extended by literacy and mechanical time, leaves some gaps and some islands free from the unremitting pressure and reverberation Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Radio118 The case of Orson Wells famous “The War of the Worlds” (broadcasted on 30.10.1938)  Some listeners heard only a portion of the broadcast, and in the atmosphere of tension and anxiety leading to World War II, took it to be a news broadcast. Newspapers reported that panic ensued, people fleeing the area, others thinking they could smell poison gas or could see flashes of lightning in the distance.  Richard J. Hand cites studies by unnamed historians who "calculate[d] that some six million heard the CBS broadcast; 1.7 million believed it to be true, and 1.2 million were genuinely frightened". While Welles and company were heard by a comparatively small audience (in the same period, NBCs audience was an estimated 30 million), the uproar was anything but minute: within a month, there were 12,500 newspaper articles about the broadcast or its impact, while Adolf Hitler cited the panic, as Hand writes, as "evidence of the decadence and corrupt condition of democracy.“  Later studies suggested this "panic" was less widespread than newspapers suggested. During this period, many newspapers were concerned that radio, a new medium, would make them defunct. In addition, this was a time of yellow journalism, and as a result, journalists took this opportunity to demonstrate the dangers of broadcast by embellishing the story, and the panic that ensued, greatly. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Radio119  In a radio speech in Munich, March 14, 1936, Hitler said, “I go my way with the assurance of a somnambulist.” His victims and critics have been equally somnambulistic  That Hitler came into political existence at all is directly owing to radio. This is not to say that this media relayed his thoughts effectively to the German people. His thoughts were of little consequence. Radio provided the first massive experience of electronic implosion, that reversal of the entire direction and meaning of literate Western Civilization. Public address system (Volksempfänger) Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Radio120 For tribal peoples, for those whose entire social existence is an extension of family life, radio will continue to be a violent experience. Highly literate societies, that have long subordinated family life to individualistic stress in business and politics, have managed to absorb and to neutralize the radio implosion without revolution. Not so, those communities that have only brief or superficial experience of literacy. For them, radio is utterly explosive. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Radio121  Radio has an enormous power to retribalize man.  It affects most people intimately, person-to-person, offering a world of unspoken between writer-speaker and the listener. That is the immediate aspect of radio. A private experience. The subliminal depths of radio are charged with the resonating echoes of tribal horns and antique drums. This is inherent in the very nature of this medium with its power to turn the psyche and society into a single echo. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Radio122 Just prior 1914, the Germans had become obsessed with the menace of “encirclement”. Their neighbors had all developed elaborate railway systems that facilitated mobilization of manpower resource. Encirclement is a highly visual image that had great novelty for this newly industrialized nation. In the 1930s, by contrast, the German obsession was with Lebensraum. This is not a visual concern, at all. It is a claustrophobia, engendered by the radio implosion and compression of space. The German defeat had thrust them back from visual obsession into brooding upon the resonating within. The tribal past has never ceased to be a reality for the German psyche. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Radio123  It was the ready access of the German and middle-European world to the rich nonvisual resources of auditory and tactile form that enabled them to enrich the world of music and dance and sculpture. Above all their tribal mode gave them easy access to the new nonvisual world of subatomic physics, in which long- literate and long-industrialized societies are decidedly handicapped. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Radio124 The power to retribalize mankind, its almost instant reversal of individualism into collectivism, Fascist, or Marxist, has gone unnoticed. So extraordinary is this unawareness that it is what needs to be explained. The transforming power of media is easy to explain, but the ignoring of this power is not at all easy to explain. It goes without saying that the universal ignoring of the psychic action of technology bespeaks some inherent function, some essential numbing of consciousness such as occurs under stress and shock conditions. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Radio125  The Teenagers in the 1950s began to manifest many of the tribal stigmata Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Radio126  For Africa, India, China, and even Russia, radio is a profound archaic force, a time bond with the most ancient past and long-forgotten experience  If we sit and talk in a dark room, words suddenly acquire new meanings and different textures. They become richer, even, than architecture which Le Corbusier rightly said can be best felt at night  All those gestural qualities that the printed page strips from language come back in the dark, and on the radio. Given only the sound of a play, we have to fill in all of the sense, not just the sight of the action. (as a cool medium, radio has mystic qualities) Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Radio127 The impact of Radio/TV on political careers: It was no accident that Senator McCarthy lasted such a very short time when he switched to TV. Soon the press decided, “He isn’t news any more”. Neither McCarthy nor the press ever knew what had happened. TV is a cool medium. It rejects hot figures and hot issues and people. Had TV occurred on a large scale during Hitler’s reign, he would have vanished quickly. When Khrushchev appeared on American TV he was more acceptable than Nixon, as a clown and a lovable sort of old boy. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Radio128 The impact of Radio/TV on political careers: In the Kennedy-Nixon debates (1960), those who heard them on radio received an overwhelming idea of Nixon’s superiority. It was Nixon’s fate to provide a sharp, high-definition image and action for the cool TV that translated that sharp image into the impression of a phony. I suppose “phony” is something that resonates wrong, that doesn’t ring true Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Radio129  The Radio was invented by amateurs and just like the telegraph, which was used for lotteries and games in general without any commercial interests existed in isolation from any commercial commitment.  There was reluctance and opposition from the world of press, which, in England led to the formation of BBC and the firm shackling of radio by newspaper and advertising interests. The restrictive pressure by the press on radio and TV is still a hot issue in Britain and Canada  With radio came great changes to press, to advertising, to drama and poetry. Radio offered a new scope to practical jokers, created the disc jockey. For commercial interests, the radio had to settle more and more for “entertainment” as a strategy of neutrality Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Radio130 While radio contracts the world to village size, and creates insatiable village tastes for gossip, rumor, and personal malice, it hasn’t the effect of homogenizing the village quarters. Quite the contrary. In India, where radio is the supreme form of communication, there are more than a dozen official languages and the same number of radio networks. The effect of radio as a reviver of archaism and ancient memories is not limited to Hitler’s Germany. Ireland, Scotland and Wales have undergone resurgence of their ancient tongues since the coming of radio, and the Israeli present an even more extreme instance of linguistic revival. They now speak a language which has been dead in books for centuries. Dr. Cornelia Hegele-Raih: Understanding Media

Mc luhan 1

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