McLuhan and Fiore (1967)

McLuhan, M. And Fiore, Q. (1967) The Medium is the Massage. Bantam Books: New York.

This text is another one of those that everybody studying new media cites. I was struck with several things when I read it: McLuhan and Fiore call television participatory, indeed some of the assertions they make about the ‘new’ electronic media  echo what’s been said about internet based ‘new media’, much in the way that Murray (1997) and Rosenbaum (2010) and others have talked about ‘pattern recognition’ in ‘new media’, as do McLuhan and Fiore; consequently the text doesn’t date.

N.B. I made certain that I read an older text: one printed in 1967 because having seen some newer printings I didn’t want the images to have been updated at all.

N.B. Apparently ‘massage’ was a mis-print, it was supposed to be message but McLuhan urged the publisher not to correct it. And it stands in all following editions.




Main points:

Environments are spaces where communication takes place; the characteristics of the environment matter because they determine the method of communication.

McLuhan and Fiore write

“Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication… The older training of observation has become quite irrelevant in this new time, because it is based on psychological responses and concepts conditioned by the former technology— mechanisation.”

As if to emphasise this point, the authors play with the format of the book, through out by making the reader read down linearly, in mirror, upside down. They write, “Environments are invisible. Their groundrules, pervasive structure, and overall patterns elude easy perception.” In other words, we live in a world where we look for familiar patterns. Anything that is outside that is threatening.

Moreover, the way that communication environments touch each other matters: the book looks at environments of “collide-oscope of interfaced situations.”

The authors herald returning to culture and communication that is visual, they say that the more senses involved in perceiving information, the more we interact with that information.

“The alphabet is a construct of fragmented bits and parts which have no semantic meaning in themselves, and which must be strung together in a line, bead-like, an in a prescribed order. Its use fostered an encouraged the habit of perceiving all environment in visual and spatial terms…” linearity, thus “became the organising principle of life.”

“The rational man in our Western culture is a visual man… Rationality and visuality have long been interchangeable terms, but we do not live in a primarily visual world any more.”

Pre-alphabetic cultures, they say live in “boundless” sense space, integrating “time and space as one”

New media will lead to a more participatory society— namely through television.

The authors write:

“In television there occurs an extension of the sense of active, exploratory touch which involves all the senses simultaneously, …. Since, in the age of information, most transactions are managed electrically, the electric technology has meant for Western man a considerable drop in the visual component… and a corresponding increase in the activity of his other senses. Television demands participation and involvement in depth of the whole being. It will not work as a background. It engages you. Perhaps this is why so many people feel that their identity has been threatened.”

They contend that because television shows us images and has audio output as well, we empathise with others stories. We are more aware of the world around us. They say that visual media is more affecting.


Why it’s relevant for my research:

Systems create myths that self-perpetuate the systems in which they exist.

As in much of LaTour’s work (also Miller & Page 2007) actor network theory, systems don’t function independently of each other. To really understand what’s going on we have to view things systemically — that form and content cannot be separated.

They explain to us that we should be weary of myths created by systems that self perpetuate those systems. For example, the myth of the professional versus the amateur; today this is known as the disruption factor — in an idoc, the public telling their own story.

And a specific sub point: Authorship is a function of duplicable media.

McLuhan and Fiore make the point that authorship is a relatively new economic construct. They say that in the Middle Ages, authorship was often lost because scholars saw what they were doing as acting for “humble service organisations”. Printing lead to the rise of authorship as such, “mechanical multiples of the same text created a public— a reading public. The rising consumer-orientated culture became concerned with labels of authenticity and protection against theft and piracy.” (I believe we can read text as any media that’s duplicated, so the music industry fits with their point).

Everyone from Shirky to Jenkins to the editorial staff of Wired magazine have all proclaimed that the digital age cannot function with copyrights. That the collective good, the ability to co-create and in-effect to learn more (about ourselves, about a process) is dependent upon our ability to re-mix and composite. The field of interactive documentary struggles with authorship because many of us want to be inclusive in the storytelling process.  

Authorship is a function of the media, then ‘authorship’ can be understood as process authorship — much in the way that Aylett et al and Murray (1997) and others see it, as dictated by the programming and story parameter defining that’s necessary in digital media creation.

Non-linearity as a format presents a possibly more effective education tool.

The authors present a completely unscientific, but definitely compelling argument that because we are limited by the ways things have (in our perception) always been done, non-linear environments could be conduscive to self-education because we can shape application of what we learn to our (own) perceived environments.

The authors note Plato, “Listeners could memorise with greater ease what was sung than what was said. Plato attacked this method because it discouraged disputation and argument.”

Pre-alphabetic cultures, they say live in “boundless” sense space, integrating “time and space as one”. They write that media became linear, text based cultures, heavily reliant upon print media because of the way the alphabet is structured: forward in a linear fashion. (Today's authors are likely to cite the creation of the internet and HTML structure as something that functions like the way we think, non-linearly).

Curiously, they say that television changes that— it inserts images that are not our own into our environment, alters our perception (space) and thus it can and does influence our identity. Television (a ‘new media’) allows us to empathise with others because we can see their stories on TV. Therefore our identities as our media becomes non-linear.

So much in the same way that television exposed us to a new media format— non-linearity in the sense of others’ perceptions invading our own— digital social media has been said to be a new media format in that others perceptions are more readily available and we can interact with each other more quickly (Shirky, Jenkins). New media allows us to construct and deconstruct media we are exposed to as we see fit, to our perceptions (Manovich, 2001)— not necessarily non-linearly but the processes of alteration and construction especially adaptation of one’s story to our own almost implies a kind of non-linearity.
Non-linearity allows us to construct our own truth.

“Our “Age of Anxiety” is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s job with yesterday’s tools— with yesterday’s concepts.”


Some critical points of view:

This is non-scientific.

This book is the perceptions (even predictions) of two media practicioners and based on their professional experience. Their assertions cannot be taken as ‘word’ unless they are fact-checked.

New media as television and the assertions therein sound remarkably like the ‘new media’ a ‘social media’ revolution is  supposed to bring.

This isn’t a criticism of McLuhan and Fiore, in fact, less a criticism in total. Where the authors predicted an increase in the democratisation of society — it may even be possible to argue that this happened re: awareness of global issues via transmitted visual image — so do social media theorists like Jenkins and Shirky and Doctorow predict increased enfranchisement (democratic, entertainment, consumer) from ‘new media’.

From the text:

“Too many people know too much about each other. Our new environment compels commitment and participation. We have become irrevocably involved with, and responsible for, each other.”

“In television there occurs an extension of the sense of active, exploratory touch which involves all the senses simultaneously, …. Since, in the age of information, most transactions are managed electrically, the electric technology has meant for Western man a considerable drop in the visual component… and a corresponding increase in the activity of his other senses. Television demands participation and involvement in depth of the whole being. It will not work as a background. It engages you. Perhaps this is why so many people feel that their identity has been threatened.”

“The living room has become a voting booth. Participation via television in Freedom Marches, in war, revolution, pollution, and other events is changing everything.”

The pervasiveness with which McLuhan and Fiore talk about visual media, the way it will, they say, change older forms of media sounds remarkably similar to declarations made about 24 hour news channels, the globalised flow of information.

I believe the McLuhan and Fiore may be mistaking the medium for the message themselves, that is, ‘story’.

In Rose 2011, he sites a study from Italy that shows that we have the same neurological reaction when we do something as we do when we do it ourselves (that is, the same neurons fire). Turner (1998) shows us that we relate basic story forms to basic actions, which is why he contends we internalise stories. So we can say that globalisation of information or ready access to each others’ stories is perhaps the transformative paradigm. (And now I will direct you to Jenkins’ definition of convergence.)

Further, their claim that television encompasses all our senses— it doesn’t obviously (taste, smell, touch notably absent, unless it was some visual art installation that added sensory experience).

The authors write:

“The older, traditional ideas of private, isolated thoughts and actions— the patterns of mechanistic technologies— are very seriously threatened by new methods of instantaneous electric information retrieval, by the electrically computerised dossier bank— that one big gossip column that is unforgiving, unforgetful and from which there is no redemption, no erasure of early “mistakes.””

“We have had to shift our stress of attention from action to reaction….. As soon as information is acquired, it is very rapidly replaced by still newer information. Our electrically-configured world has forced us to move from the habit of data classification to the mode of pattern recognition.”

And here we have echos of what those weary of us living our lives outloud online have with social media— your thoughts are no longer your own and once made public could harm your career prospects for example. In the bigger picture it makes it harder for large institutions to lie when their communications have been put on record on electronic (digital) media.

It is also worth noting the date of writing as likely having something to do with the author’s predictions: the 1960’s in North America were a time of political social upheaval.