PowerPoint Presentation Lecture

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media as prostheses fdm 20c introduction to
digital media lecture 29.04.2003
warren sack / film digital media department /
university of california, santa cruz
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last time

• story generation a non-ai view
• improv theater and johnstones algorithm for
  story generation
• a short introduction to ethnomethodology
• the documentary method
• latour and suchman as ethnomethodologists
• using ethnomethodology to re-examine eliza
• computers as evocative objects
• suchman writing about turkle computers as
  evocative objects raise new questions regarding
  our common sense of the distinction between
  artifacts and intelligent others
• identification and computer holding power
• more than identification
• comparing old video games with new
• e.g., how do the abstract graphics of old games
  compare to the 3D renderings of new games?

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outline

• who is marshall mcluhan?
• the video mcluhan v 1 (1958-1964)
• theses of mcluhan
• hot and cool media
• media as extensions of man
• the ratio of the senses
• the medium is the message

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hot and cool media

• Telephone is a cool medium, or one of low
  definition, because the ear is given a meager
  amount of information. And speech is a cool
  medium of low definition, because so little is
  given and so much has to be filled in by the
  listener. On the other hand, hot media do not
  leave so much to be filled in or completed by the
  audience. Hot media are, therefore, low in
  participation, and cool media are high in
  participation or completion by the audience. 
  Naturally, therefore, a hot medium ... has very
  different effects on the user from a cool
  medium...
• Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, pp. 22-23

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how did we get from here...
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...to here?
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hot or cool?

• so, are video games hot or cool media?
• compare the idea of hot and cool media to...
• ethnomethodology and the process of the
  documentary method
• psychoanalysis and the processes of
  identification and the evocative object

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oral societies and film viewing

• extract from film literacy in africa, canadian
  communications, vol. I, no. 4., summer 1961, pp.
  7-14. cited in marshall mcluhan, the guttenberg
  galaxy, pp. 36-37.
• what filling in do we do in watching a film?
• is film hot or cool?

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the end of the separation of the senses

• a related reversal occurred when the consumer of
  popular art was invited by new art forms to
  become a participant in the art process itself.
  this was the moment of transcendence of the
  Guttenberg technology. The centuries-old
  separation of senses and functions ended in a
  quite unexpected unity.
• McLuhan, The Galaxy Reconfigured

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media as extensions or prostheses

• All media are extensions of some human faculty
  -- psychic or physical.
• The wheel is an extension of the foot...
• the book is an extension of the eye...
• clothing, an extension of the skin...

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media as extensions (continued)

• from Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The
  Medium is the Massage (Penguin Press, London,
  1967, pp. 26-41)

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comparing mcluhan with wiener

• ...since the nervous sytem is not only a
  computing machine...
• (Wiener on p. 69 of the Reader)
• also, compare mcluhans proposition with douglas
  engelbarts augmenting human intellect

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ratio of the senses

• McLuhan, in Understanding Media, claims that
  every new medium institutes new ratios between
  our senses.
• McLuhan does not say that new media are
  replacements for older media.
• Instead, McLuhan's idea is that the introduction
  of new media serve as "extensions" to ourselves
  and, simultaneously, they "amputate" various
  capacities of subjectivity.
• compare this to the common and very different
  pronouncement that media are converging and the
  computer is the locus of convergence

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ratio of the senses (continued)

• What I am saying is that media as extensions of
  our senses institute new ratios, not only among
  our private senses, but among themseleves, when
  they interact among themselves. Radio changed the
  form of the news story as much as it altered the
  film image in the talkies. TV caused drastic
  changes in radio programming, and in the form of
  the thing or documentary novel. It is the poets
  and painters who react instantly to a new medium
  like radio or TV."
• from Marshall McLuhan Understanding media the
  extensions of man (New York McGraw-Hill, 1964)

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the medium is the message

• In a culture like ours, long accustomed to
  splitting and dividing things as a means of
  control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be
  reminded that, in operational and practical fact,
  the medium is the message. (from Understanding
  Media)

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the medium is the message?

• Compare this statement to statements made by
  those holding a completely different view of
  media and technology than the views espoused by
  McLuhan Many people would be disposed to say
  that it was not the machine, but what one did
  with the machine, that was its meaning or
  message. (cf., David Sarnoff quoted by McLuhan)

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the medium is the message

• examine how mcluhan distinguishes between the
  message of a medium and its content
• (p. 207 of the Reader)
• Our conventional response to all media, namely
  that it is how they are used that counts, is the
  numb stance of the technological idiot. For the
  content of a medium is like the juicy piece of
  meat carried by the burglar to distract the
  watchdog of the mind. McLuhan, p. 207

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media as mirrors versus media as prostheses

• medium as mirror
• we see ourselves in the medium
• medium as prosthesis
• we are radically altered by a medium

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next time

• donna haraways cyborg manifesto