1Adam

I've long maintained that communication online is 'talking' not writing. As you've explained, It's the real-timeness coupled with multimedia-ness that makes it accoustic in nature. Some may think that typed words means writing, but if you were to have a conversation of tapped dots and dashes (morse), or gestured shapes and motions (sign language) you would summarize that experience as having just 'talked' to someone not 'written' to someone (though you have indeed just 'written' information onto a medium even if it were only air). The real-timeness, the wideness of bandwidth to stimulate multiple senses, that's what makes it talking regardless of the tool being used.

The expectation of audience response in blog comments make the act of blogging an instantiation of a 'talking' conversation. That is what's being enacted: a call and response. Essay-style blog posts don't take this mode and are writing rather than talking because they have a broad audience *not* in mind, that is to say, there is no expectation that any one or few individuals will reply in a near-time frame, so what is written is not directed at them to respond to. There is a distinct lack of conversational hooks (exclusiveness). In the same way, a speech to a large audience isn't a conversation and thus isn't actually talking, it's 'writing' into the minds of those listening. This sounds strange because it is surely an accoustic experience. But that it to forget that it is an accoustic in high-definition, ie, one source of information, all ears and ears on the speaker. True accoustic experiences, in the high bandwidth sense, are of multiple lo-definition sources of information. They are immersive because the senses are assaulted on all sides, but crucially, in lo-definition such that the body can register them all. McLuhan described these two effects as hypnosis (hi-definition) and psychosis (lo-definition) to give us a greater understanding of the register of certain media which simply 'mediate' echoes of pure information much like a prism can reveal the spectral echoes of light.

It's doubtful the brain would have been able to develop as it did if its resources were constantly directed to pondering what it is and what's doing at any time. Perhaps that's why it'll never be fully understood, or more likely, that when full understanding is close (by what criteria?), it has been achieved through a simulation that is somehow more compelling to our collective imagination than the original.

For the brain to understand itself it must model itself outside of itself. Hence man's endless tinkering with tools, computers and internets, etc. And so enamored the brain becomes with its own (self)creation, it takes these as its new frames of reference, its metaphors, its objects-to-think-with (Sherry Turkle).

But in its lust to see what is similar, what is kin to the old meat-brain, it is forever doomed to be looking back in rear-view mirror and miss the true changes the new brain has brought about. And this is why we never trully understand new technologies -- in their time -- because we always looking to fit them to our most recent metaphor.

"We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us."

March 23, 2009

2Charles

I'm not sure how long it takes before an individual can be labeled a prophet but McLuhan qualifies as one for me.

There were probably five or so people on his level back in the day but maybe there are a hundred thousand or whatever now, because of the abundance of information.

I'm always struck by McLuhan's definition of light being the first media which brings me neatly onto something I welcomed learning from an old friend last night who shared with me that Carl Rogers pointed out that people are fundamentally good because even a potato in the dark grows towards the light.

There's so much ground covered in this post and Adams awesome comment that I'd only add a common thread between the two of you on the nature of comprehension and perception.

Johnnie Moore memorably shared with me a comment Nicolas Taleb wrote in his book (which I think Noah was the first to point out in the Plannersphere) on how we view history backwards but actually live it forwards which seems to help me resolve some of the things thoughts that come up here.

Good to see McLuhan being discussed. All media has influence but that doesn't mean the business has a divine right to it which is often how we look at any engagement platform.

Probably not a useful comment but I've always assumed I'm just chatting on the net even though it's amazing how many opportunities to connect are lost by bloggers who think they are writers and thus must remain aloof.

Which is not applicable to either of you even if you don't feel compelled to say YO! Right after this :)

March 25, 2009

3barbara

YO Charles! You inspired me to add my comments here, 1 - because the link to engagement/ education is irresistible and 2 - because my site's not up :) Anyway, I thought I'd share the quote from McLuhan Noah shared with me from the same day's reading:
"Before print the community at large was the centre of education. Today, information- flow and educational impact outside the classroom is so far in excess of anything occurring inside the classroom that we must reconsider the education process itself.

The classroom is now a place of detention, not attention. Attention is elsewhere."

The fact that that was written 53 years ago is pretty scary. It's tempting to say McLuhan was ahead of his time, but in this case, I'm not sure he was ... pretty sad, on so many levels

... and another reason for the end of American dominance ...

Obama actually raised that in his speech last night, which I thought was quite interesting. I have serious concerns about the amount of money being thrown at education, given the fact that system has generally proven itself archaic for so, so long.

March 25, 2009

4Charles

YO Barbera. Awesome response. Incredibly coincidental too because I got sucked into an explanation of the Military Industrial Complex on an economics blog, which I had no need of but will recover shortly because of it's timeliness.

It just went on and on about lost money in education and which as I think you point out is wrong.

One area where American will live on forever is the notion of ideas as power because whatever the future. America's place in world history is both welcome and will shine forever. Even if the furniture isn't as shiny as it was say post II world war in the last century.

It Gives hope knowing that Obama grasps a lot of what is going on for many of us though :)

March 26, 2009

5Adam

More McLuhanizing... on a recent telephone chat, I found myself quoting his thought about people stepping into newspapers every morning, rather than reading them. Something about the fashion of being seen to be immersed in information such that it becomes a kind of armour: forewarned is forearmed.

Not sure I pulled that one off!

March 27, 2009

6Michael Meikson

Just reading a McLuhan essay and happened upon a quote that speaks directly to Adam's comment:

"Electronic culture accepts the simultaneous as a reconquest of auditory space. Since the ear picks up sound from all directions at once, thus creating a spherical field of experience, it is natural that electronically moved information should also assume this spherelike pattern." (from "Myth and Mass Media," 1959)

It's ironic that online communication, powered by the most sophisticated of technologies, actually reverts humans back to our most primitive mode of communication: pre-linguistic auditory communication, like caveman grunts.

Sure, it's Babel 2.0 out there. The web is a mess of blogs, tweets, wikis, etc. (Interesting that even the names of these new forms sound like baby-talk or babble.)

But this time it's all being documented and improved upon in real time. Conventions -- both formal and informal -- are emerging. It seems like a Darwinian process is talking place, and the whole planet is involved.

I wonder if the Web has the potential to break the rear-view mirror paradox Adam describes.

April 6, 2009