McLuhan was critical of social observers who analyzed the Western world but bypassed the effects of symbolic environments, be they oral, print, or electronic. He specifically accused modern scholars of being “ostrichlike” in refusing to acknowledge the revolutionary impact of electronic media on the sensory experience of contemporary society.
1. The Tribal Age: An Acoustic Place in History According to McLuhan, the tribal village was an acoustic place where the senses of hearing, touch, taste, and smell were developed far beyond the ability to visualize. In untamed settings, hearing is more valuable than seeing because it allows you toconstantly be shared and reiterated and passed down. The ethereal quality of speech doesn’t allow for detached analysis. In a tribal age, hearing is believing. McLuhan claimed that “primitive” people led richer and more complex lives than their literate descendants because the ear, unlike the eye, encourages a more holistic sense of the world. There is a deeper feeling of community and greater awareness of the surrounding existence. The acoustic environment also fosters more passion and spontaneity. In that world of surround sound, everything is more immediate, more present, and more actual. Then someone invented the alphabet.
McLuhan divided all human history into four periods, or epochs—a tribal age, a literate age, a print age, and an electronic age. According to McLuhan, the crucial inventions that changed life on this planet were the phonetic alphabet, the printing press, and the telegraph. In each case the world was wrenched from one era into the next because of new developments in media technology. Those who were born in the twentieth century are living through one of those turbulent transitions—from the tail end of the print age to the very beginning of the electronic age. McLuhan believed the transitions (shaded in gray in Figure 25–1) take 300 to 400 years to complete. While you might think you’re living in the electronic age right now, you’re not there yet. The full transition will take another two centuries.
2. The Age of Literacy: A Visual Point of View Turning sounds into visible objects radically altered the symbolic environment. Suddenly, the eye became the heir apparent. Hearing diminished in value and quality. To disagree with this assessment merely illustrates McLuhan’s belief that a private, left-brain “point of view” becomes possible in a world that encourages the visual practice of reading texts. Words fixed on a page detach meaning from the immediacy of context. In an acoustic environment, taking something out of context is nearly impossible. In the age of literacy, it’s a reality. Both writer and reader are always separate from the text. Words are no longer alive and immediate. They can be read and reread. They can be thoroughly analyzed. Hearing no longer becomes trustworthy. “Seeing it in writing” becomes proof that it’s true. Literacy also jarred people out of collective tribal involvement into “civilized” private detachment. Reading words, instead of hearing them, transforms group members into individuals. Even though the words may be the same, the act of reading a text is an individual one. It requires singular focus. A tribe no longer needs to come together to get information. Proximity becomes less important. McLuhan also claimed that the phonetic alphabet established the line as the organizing principle in life. In writing, letter follows letter in a connected, orderly line. Logic is modeled on that step-by-step, linear progression. According to
McLuhan, when literate people say, “I don’t follow you,” they mean, “I don’t think you are logical.” He alleged that the invention of the alphabet fostered the sudden emergence of mathematics, science, and philosophy in ancient Greece. He cited the political upheaval in colonial Africa as twentieth-century evidence that literacy triggers an ear-to-eye switch that isolates the reader. When oppressed people learned to read, they became independent thinkers.
3. The Print Age: Prototype of the Industrial Revolution If the phonetic alphabet made visual dependence possible, the printing press made it widespread. In The gutenberg galaxy, McLuhan argued that the most important aspect of movable type was its ability to reproduce the same text over and over again, and a press run of 100,000 copies of Understanding Media suggests he was right. Because the print revolution demonstrated mass production of identical products, McLuhan called it the forerunner of the industrial revolution. He saw other unintended side effects of Gutenberg’s invention. The homogenization of fluid regional tongues into a fixed national language was followed closely by the rise of nationalism. Concurring with this new sense of unification was a countering sense of separation and aloneness.
Printing, a ditto device, confirmed and extended the new visual stress. It created the portable book, which men could read in privacy and in isolation from others.8
Many libraries have the words “The truth will set you free” carved in stone above the main entrance.9 From McLuhan’s perspective, libraries provide readers with the freedom to be alienated from others and from the immediacy of their surroundings.
4. The Electronic Age: The Rise of the Global Village With the tap-tap-tap of the telegraph, the power of the printed word lost its bearings. Of course, Samuel Morse’s invention was only the first of the new electronic media devices that would make the local Best Buy seem, to previous generations, like a magic shop. Telegraph Radio Telephone Film projector Phonograph TV Photocopier Tape recorder Answering machine VCR Computer Fax CD DVD Cell phone GPS Video game MP3 Internet Laptop Smartphone Tablet Touchscreen McLuhan insisted that electronic media are retribalizing the human race. Instant communication has returned us to a pre-alphabetic oral tradition where sound and touch are more important than sight. We’ve gone “back to the future” to become a village unlike any other previous village. We’re now a global village. Electronic media bring us in contact with everyone, everywhere, instantaneously. Whereas the book extended the eye, electronic circuitry extends the central nervous system.10 Constant contact with the world becomes a daily reality. All-at-once-ness is our state of being. Closed human systems no longer exist. The rumble of empty stomachs in Bangladesh and of roadside bombs in Baghdad vibrate in the living rooms of Boston. For us, the first postliterate generation, privacy is either a luxury or a curse of the past. The planet is like a general store where nosy people keep track of everyone else’s business—a 12-way party line or an “Ask Amy” column writ large. “The new tribalism is one where everyone’s business is everyone else’s and where we all are somewhat testy.”11 Citizens of the world are back in acoustic space. Linear logic is useless in the electronic society McLuhan described. Acoustic people no longer inquire, “Do you see my point?” Instead we ask, “How does that grab you?” What we feel is more important than what we think.
5. The Digital Age? A Wireless Global Village When Wired, a magazine on digital culture, was launched in 1992, the editors declared Marshall McLuhan the magazine’s “patron saint.” There was a sense that another revolution was looming, even though digital technology is wholly electronic. There’s no doubt that the introduction of digital technology is altering the electronic environment. The mass age of electronic media is becoming increasingly personalized. Instead of one unified electronic tribe, we have a growing number of digital tribes forming around the most specialized ideas, beliefs, values, interests, and fetishes. Instead of mass consciousness, which McLuhan viewed rather favorably, we have the emergence of a tribal warfare mentality. Twitter is a recent example of a digital creation that now shapes our communication environment. Texas Tech University media scholar Brian Ott claims are three inherent features of the app that have altered the nature of public discourse.12 First, the 140-character limit demands simplicity. There’s no room for complex ideas, subtle nuances, or evidence to support a claim. Second, Twitter promotes impulsivity. The ease of sending a quick tweet from any place whenever a thought crosses the brain pan almost guarantees a lack of reflection or consideration of consequences. Finally, Twitter fosters incivility. The lack of formality and intimacy encourages negative zingers that demean others. If Ott is right, President Trump’s famous reliance on this form of social media may be changing the world’s social ecology just as much as scientists attribute climate change to global warming. 312-317
1. The Tribal Age: An Acoustic Place in History According to McLuhan, the tribal village was an acoustic place where the senses of hearing, touch, taste, and smell were developed far beyond the ability to visualize. In untamed settings, hearing is more valuable than seeing because it allows you toconstantly be shared and reiterated and passed down. The ethereal quality of speech doesn’t allow for detached analysis. In a tribal age, hearing is believing. McLuhan claimed that “primitive” people led richer and more complex lives than their literate descendants because the ear, unlike the eye, encourages a more holistic sense of the world. There is a deeper feeling of community and greater awareness of the surrounding existence. The acoustic environment also fosters more passion and spontaneity. In that world of surround sound, everything is more immediate, more present, and more actual. Then someone invented the alphabet.
2. The Age of Literacy: A Visual Point of View Turning sounds into visible objects radically altered the symbolic environment. Suddenly, the eye became the heir apparent. Hearing diminished in value and quality. To disagree with this assessment merely illustrates McLuhan’s belief that a private, left-brain “point of view” becomes possible in a world that encourages the visual practice of reading texts. Words fixed on a page detach meaning from the immediacy of context. In an acoustic environment, taking something out of context is nearly impossible. In the age of literacy, it’s a reality. Both writer and reader are always separate from the text. Words are no longer alive and immediate. They can be read and reread. They can be thoroughly analyzed. Hearing no longer becomes trustworthy. “Seeing it in writing” becomes proof that it’s true. Literacy also jarred people out of collective tribal involvement into “civilized” private detachment. Reading words, instead of hearing them, transforms group members into individuals. Even though the words may be the same, the act of reading a text is an individual one. It requires singular focus. A tribe no longer needs to come together to get information. Proximity becomes less important. McLuhan also claimed that the phonetic alphabet established the line as the organizing principle in life. In writing, letter follows letter in a connected, orderly line. Logic is modeled on that step-by-step, linear progression. According to
McLuhan, when literate people say, “I don’t follow you,” they mean, “I don’t think you are logical.” He alleged that the invention of the alphabet fostered the sudden emergence of mathematics, science, and philosophy in ancient Greece. He cited the political upheaval in colonial Africa as twentieth-century evidence that literacy triggers an ear-to-eye switch that isolates the reader. When oppressed people learned to read, they became independent thinkers.
3. The Print Age: Prototype of the Industrial Revolution If the phonetic alphabet made visual dependence possible, the printing press made it widespread. In The gutenberg galaxy, McLuhan argued that the most important aspect of movable type was its ability to reproduce the same text over and over again, and a press run of 100,000 copies of Understanding Media suggests he was right. Because the print revolution demonstrated mass production of identical products, McLuhan called it the forerunner of the industrial revolution. He saw other unintended side effects of Gutenberg’s invention. The homogenization of fluid regional tongues into a fixed national language was followed closely by the rise of nationalism. Concurring with this new sense of unification was a countering sense of separation and aloneness.
Printing, a ditto device, confirmed and extended the new visual stress. It created the portable book, which men could read in privacy and in isolation from others.8
Many libraries have the words “The truth will set you free” carved in stone above the main entrance.9 From McLuhan’s perspective, libraries provide readers with the freedom to be alienated from others and from the immediacy of their surroundings.
4. The Electronic Age: The Rise of the Global Village With the tap-tap-tap of the telegraph, the power of the printed word lost its bearings. Of course, Samuel Morse’s invention was only the first of the new electronic media devices that would make the local Best Buy seem, to previous generations, like a magic shop. Telegraph Radio Telephone Film projector Phonograph TV Photocopier Tape recorder Answering machine VCR Computer Fax CD DVD Cell phone GPS Video game MP3 Internet Laptop Smartphone Tablet Touchscreen McLuhan insisted that electronic media are retribalizing the human race. Instant communication has returned us to a pre-alphabetic oral tradition where sound and touch are more important than sight. We’ve gone “back to the future” to become a village unlike any other previous village. We’re now a global village. Electronic media bring us in contact with everyone, everywhere, instantaneously. Whereas the book extended the eye, electronic circuitry extends the central nervous system.10 Constant contact with the world becomes a daily reality. All-at-once-ness is our state of being. Closed human systems no longer exist. The rumble of empty stomachs in Bangladesh and of roadside bombs in Baghdad vibrate in the living rooms of Boston. For us, the first postliterate generation, privacy is either a luxury or a curse of the past. The planet is like a general store where nosy people keep track of everyone else’s business—a 12-way party line or an “Ask Amy” column writ large. “The new tribalism is one where everyone’s business is everyone else’s and where we all are somewhat testy.”11 Citizens of the world are back in acoustic space. Linear logic is useless in the electronic society McLuhan described. Acoustic people no longer inquire, “Do you see my point?” Instead we ask, “How does that grab you?” What we feel is more important than what we think.
5. The Digital Age? A Wireless Global Village When Wired, a magazine on digital culture, was launched in 1992, the editors declared Marshall McLuhan the magazine’s “patron saint.” There was a sense that another revolution was looming, even though digital technology is wholly electronic. There’s no doubt that the introduction of digital technology is altering the electronic environment. The mass age of electronic media is becoming increasingly personalized. Instead of one unified electronic tribe, we have a growing number of digital tribes forming around the most specialized ideas, beliefs, values, interests, and fetishes. Instead of mass consciousness, which McLuhan viewed rather favorably, we have the emergence of a tribal warfare mentality. Twitter is a recent example of a digital creation that now shapes our communication environment. Texas Tech University media scholar Brian Ott claims are three inherent features of the app that have altered the nature of public discourse.12 First, the 140-character limit demands simplicity. There’s no room for complex ideas, subtle nuances, or evidence to support a claim. Second, Twitter promotes impulsivity. The ease of sending a quick tweet from any place whenever a thought crosses the brain pan almost guarantees a lack of reflection or consideration of consequences. Finally, Twitter fosters incivility. The lack of formality and intimacy encourages negative zingers that demean others. If Ott is right, President Trump’s famous reliance on this form of social media may be changing the world’s social ecology just as much as scientists attribute climate change to global warming. 312-317
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