MEDIA TECHNOLOGY DETERMINISM

Harold Innis, a Canadian Political Economist, was one of the first scholars to systematically speculate at length about the possible linkages between communications media and the various forms of social structure found at certain points in history. He argued that the early empires of Egypt, Greece, and Rome were based on elite control of the written word.

He contrasted these empires with earlier social orders dependent on the spoken word. With the invention of paper and pen, small centrally located elites were able to gain control over and govern vast regions. New communications media made it possible to create empires. The creation of new technologies like the telephone and the telegraph permitted even more effective control by groups of elites over larger geographic areas. Thus, the development of media technology has gradually given centralized elites increased power over space and time.

Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian literary scholar, who gained worldwide prominence as someone who had a profound understanding of electronic media and its impact on both culture and society had stated that:

“changes in communication technology inevitably produce profound changes in both culture and social order”

Fascinated by the transformative power of technology, as propagated by Innis, McLuhan argued that all social, political, economic, and cultural change is inevitably based on the development and diffusion of technology. He outlined his vision of the changes that were taking place as a result of the spread of radio and television.

He proclaimed that the Medium is the Message (and the Massage), In other words, new forms of media transform (massage) our experience of ourselves and our society, and this influence is ultimately more important than the content that is transmitted in its specific messages.

McLuhan also suggested the term Global Village to refer to the new form of social organization that would inevitably emerge as instantaneous, electronic media tied the entire world into one great social, political, and cultural system.

He also proclaimed media to be the Extensions of Man and argued that media quite literally extend sight, hearing, and touch through time and space. Electronic media would open up new vistas for average people and enable us to be everywhere, instantaneously.

McLuhan also classified media into hot and cool media. He stated that the television was a cool media because it presented the viewers with vague, shadowy images (reception in 1960s was bad and the television sets were black & white), so to make sense of these electronic images, people had to work hard to fill in missing sensory information; they had to literally participate in creating fully formed images for themselves. Print, on the other hand was a hot media, as it supplied the readers with all the information they needed to make sense of things. It did the work for the readers, offering predigested descriptions of the social world, thus eliminating the participation of the reader in creating meaning. His statement given in 1960s: “hot media are out and the cool media are in”  proved accurate.

A. Gouldner, the renowned sociologist after having interpreted the key changes in modern political history in terms of communication technology connected the rise of ‘ideology’ defined as a special form of rational discourse, to printing and the newspaper on the grounds that in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, these stimulated a supply of interpretation and ideas (ideology).

He then portrays the later media of radio, film and television as having led to a decline of ideology because of the shift from ‘conceptual to iconic symbolism’ revealing a split between the ‘cultural apparatus’ which produces ideology, and the ‘consciousness industry’ which controls the new mass public. This anticipates a continuing decline in ideology as a result of the new computer based networks of information.