During the introduction to Joshua Meyrowitz's book "No Sense of Place", the author describes the scenario that faced him upon returning from a trip backpacking across Europe. His international journey had inevitably left him with dozens of interesting stories, but he faced a situation with which I'm sure you all are familiar with - he found himself subconsciously telling different stories to different people. Meyrowitz explains, "I did not give everyone I spoke to exactly the same account of my trip. My parents heard about the safe and clean hotels in which I stayed... (while) in contrast, my friends heard an account filled with danger, adventure, and a little romance" (Meyrowitz, pg. 1). He goes on that he is neither lying to his audiences, nor even stretching the truth of his trip to Europe: he is merely selecting which truths to convey to which people.But why does Meyrowitz - or any of us for that matter - ever behave in such a way? He goes on to explain that certain activities and audiences require different behavior (on page 2 he compares sitting in church, where it is polite to be silent and passive, to eating dinner at a friends house, where it is not). This is pretty straightforward and logical, but something that often slips through our strains of consciousness nonetheless.
Throughout the rest of the introduction, Meyrowitz introduces other famous media theorists, among them Marschall McLuhan. He says "McLuhan describes media as extensions of the senses, and he claims that the introduction of a new medium to a culture, therefore, changes the 'sensory balance' of the people in that culture and alters their consciousness" (page 3. In other words, he is building upon his prior claim that we all alter our behavior for different audiences by saying that the media helps determine specifically how we judge our audience, and how our behavior changes accordingly. To further support this statement he explains how the perception of gender roles changed as a result of media events that occurred, on television and radio, during the 1960's.
But although Meyrowitz gives props to McLuhan in this reading, he regrets to note an important connection that exists between the idea of altering behavior based on audience, and with another of McLuhan's work. In "Media Hot and Cold", Marshall McLuhan breaks down the various forms of media technology that existed at the time into two distinct categories: Hot and Cold. Hot media technology he describes as being "high definition", and "extending on single sense" (McLuhan, page 22). Going further, he helps categorize a hot medium as one that is detached and rustic, and its examples include writing, photography, and radio. In contrast, a cold medium is one that is interwoven and modern, and includes the telephone, tv, and speech.
Why are these two distinctions important, or at least relevant to Meyrowitz? We can use the medium type to determine whether or not we will alter the information that we convey. In the initial example, Meyrowitz clearly demonstrates how through speech the audience interacts directly with the audience, and therefore acts accordingly. This is also the case when talking over the telephone - the audience is known, and both parties will cater their dialogue specifically towards whom they are talking. What do both of these mediums have in come? McLuhan categorizes them as Cold.
Conversely, with Hot mediums, it becomes impossible to directly cater to a specific audience. In writing or photography or film or radio, the author or the media has no idea who will view their work. As a result, it becomes inevitable that the burden of the interpretation of the work relies almost entirely upon the audience. They ultimately craft their own meaning and emotional responses using the tools given by the author.
This is just an interesting connection that I made when re-doing the readings, it is interesting that someone as well versed as Meyrowitz in McLuhan's work failed to touch upon "Media Hot and Cold". It enables us not only to categorize the various media technologies, but also to predict how we will convey ideas across a wide range of medium.
And what of media that allows for mixed audiences? What are the dangers of mixing public and private spheres and diminished audience separation? What would McLuhan say about the Internet?
ReplyDeleteThe idea of creating media for a mixture of public and private spheres, for example through the internet, presents an interesting conundrum as the media is often available to anyone on the internet. As a result, McLuhan would most likely argue that we do not know our exact audience, and, as a result, will self-censor what we say online accordingly. In this case, McLuhan would probably categorize the internet as a Hot medium, at least initially. I say initially because McLuhan (being the media genius that he is) would quickly realize that social media outlets present a very interesting antithesis. This is because on places like facebook or myspace, you may write a comment to one of your friends, which is a situation where the direct audience is clear and you can adjust what you say accordingly (traits of McLuhan’s Cold media). But at the same time, your comments can be read by anyone who looks at your profile, meaning that there is actually a second unknown audience (which would be a trait of Hot media). As a result of these conflicting traits of social media, I would think that McLuhan might see the need to create a third category that encompasses social media sites (or maybe even the internet as a whole). Lukewarm media perhaps?
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