Newmedia on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 21:28:29 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> No Soap! Radio? |
Folks: One of the least understood *distinctions* drawn by Marshall McLuhan was the one he made between HOT and COOL media. In simplest terms, this refers to the broad differences between behaviors and attitudes in an environment saturated with radio (HOT) and with one saturated by television (COOL). A handy way of considering this in terms of "politics" would be to consider the sort of environment that *shaped* the rise of a Hitler or a Stalin or a Mao or a Kim Il Sung -- all radio-based (HOT) -- and the sort of an environment that gave us an Obama or an Angela Merkle or a Gorbachev or a Tony Blair -- all television-based (COOL). Much of the frustration felt by today's *activists* about how whatever they try to do it just seems to be "commodified" and absorbed by "late-stage capitalism" is the result of trying to apply radio-era tactics in an age dominated by television sensibility. If you don't *understand* media, then you are doomed to make the same mistake over-and-over! The last time there was a *concerted* effort to understand the impact of "media environments," the focus was RADIO (i.e. in the 1930s/40s) -- which involved some of the most "respected" social scientists at the time (organized out of Columbia and Princeton, including Lazarfield, Cantril and Adorno) and which produced today's "opinion research" industry as well as fields like Social Psychology and Communications Research. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Project There were some fascinating studies done about the relative "propaganda" deficiency of TELEVISION (compared with radio) -- resulting in the complaints of FCC head Newton Minow about a "vast wasteland" and Fred Friendly's efforts to start "public television" -- which produced at least one PhD about how TV could *not* be used to "teach" anything (by Tavistock-related Marilyn Emery) and, indeed, the 1953 Ford Foundation funding that launched McLuhan's own career studying "Changing Patterns of Language and Behavior in the New Media of Communication" (i.e. television.) And, if you don't understand the differences between RADIO and TELEVISION as *environments*, then you will really be confused about the Internet -- which is fundamentally different from either of these. First, despite all the efforts by Facebook, Google et al to harness the INTERNET as the successor to *television* advertising (e.g. the design of their business models and the "demographic" data collection their systems are organized to try to sell to advertisers), these businesses cannot succeed! Second, consider the widespread *hair-on-fire* reaction of those committed to television-era mass-media "rationality" -- particularly to the "values" of democracy/tolerance/non-discrimination/equality/globalism -- to what the INTERNET has done to their cherished ability to "curate the news." Today, the NYTimes foreign affairs columnist, Tom Friedman, takes aim at the Internet-based "radicalization" of the Boston Marathon bombers. He reminds his readers, "That's why, when the Internet first emerged and you had to connect with a modem, I used to urge that modems sold in America come with a warning label from the surgeon general like cigarettes. It would read: 'Attention: Judgement not included.'" http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/opinion/sunday/friedman-judgment-not-inclu ded.html?ref=thomaslfriedman&_r=0 The NYTimes is a part of the dying *television* environment (having previously been a part of the *radio* environment), so it cannot comprehend what has happened -- as the ENVIRONMENT has once again shifted to something quite different. This past week, Eric Schmidt's publisher printed 150,000 copies of his "The New Digital Age" -- an attempt to bring the Council on Foreign Relations (among others) into the INTERNET era. The first words of the book are "The Internet is among the few things humans have built that they truly don't understand." The heuristic he uses to drive home this distinction is the notion that we now live in two worlds -- one physical and another that is "virtual." Let's see how well the television-saturated "policy" audience he's aiming at deals with his claims. So far the term used to describe the book, which many presumed to be another expression of Californian "libertarian" tech-utopianism, seems to be "sobering"! Not HOT (like radio, although with many similar qualities) and not COOL (like television, against which it is most directly opposed), the INTERNET brings with it a new set of behaviors and attitudes. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY P.S. For those unfamiliar with the history of the phrase "No soap, radio," the Internet provides some guidance -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_soap_radio P.P.S. There are many commonplace distinctions that can help you to distinguish between the RADIO and TELEVISION expressions of the same urges -- such as the distinction between Aleister Crowley and his protege L. Ron Hubbard or the distinction between Erector Sets and LEGO. As an exercise, try to imagine what synthetic-gnostic-religion or a build-a-bridge-toy would look like in the *digital* age. P.P.P.S. For those interested in how NEW MEDIA can be compared with those mediums that came before, the best approach is still "The Laws of Media: The New Science" by Marshall and Eric McLuhan (a work that is apparently largely unknown in Europe, due to the way that McLuhan was mis-represented on the Continent.) # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org