By Brian Smalley

Medium Theory by Joshua Meyrowitz clarifies the history of civilization from a medium-theory perspective consisting of three phases of civilization paired to three major forms of communicating: from traditional oral societies to modern print societies (via a transitional scribal phase), to an electronic global culture.

He starts off focusing on the best-known and most controversial medium theorists, Harold Adams Innis and Herbert Marshall McLuhan. Innis claims that the “bias of a culture’s dominant medium affects the degree of the culture’s stability and conservatism as well as the culture’s ability to take over a govern a large territory” (61). He uses as an example the Romans, who were able to maintain a large empire and rule distant provinces when only messaging on ‘space-biased’ papyrus, until they lost their supply from Egypt and their empire collapsed. McLuhan focuses his work on ‘sensory balance;’ investigates each communication medium as an extension of one or more of the human senses, and believes the use of different technologies affects the organization of the human senses and the structure of the culture.

In oral societies, the conservation of ideas and mores depends on the memory of people. Oral cultures are considered ‘closed’ in two senses. Orality requires a physical presence, meaning oral cultures have only few, if any, ways of interacting with others who do not physically live with them. These societies are ‘traditional’ because they work hard to preserve what they are and already have. Change is slow because survival depends on memorization; therefore creativity and newness are discouraged.

The scribal phase is where writing starts to break down tribal cohesion and the oral mode of thinking because it proposes a way to construct and conserve prose, and to program long strings of connected ideas that would be impossible for most people to memorize. It establishes the possibility for ‘literature,’ ‘science,’ and ‘philosophy.’ The modern print phase then divides the people into separate communication systems, where the poor and illiterate remain wholly dependent on verbal communication, while the upper and growing middle classes increasingly vacate to their libraries. Whereas oral nature of community united people into similar experiences and knowledge, reading and writing divide people into separate informational worlds.

The global electronic phase is last with the invention of the telegraph and telephone heralding the future age of radio, TV, etc. Like other media, electronic communication takes time to develop before having a severe impact on social structure. “It brings back a key aspect of oral societies: simultaneity of action, perception, and reaction; sensory experience again becomes a prime form of communicating. Electronic media are expansions of our sensory apparatus that attain around the planet.

When looking at the ‘Role Triad,’ the influence of information access patterns becomes more visible when you look at how practically all social roles can be described in terms of an information-network-sensitive triad of social roles. These are Group Identity, Socialization, and Hierarchy. Group identity involves roles of affiliation, socialization entails roles of transition, and hierarchy describes roles of authority. According to the text, “the introduction of new media into a culture restructures the social world in the same way as building or removing walls may either isolate people into different groups or unite them into the same environment.

Even though electronic media began to be widely used as the impact of print lead to increased attempts to isolate social spheres, the telephone, radio, and television make the limitations of social spheres now more permeable. Physical structures no longer fully mould social identity as a result. Due to electronic media, previously diverse groups share more information about society and each other. This being information that once distinguished ‘insiders’ from ‘outsiders.’ Television has blurred the line between public and private by bringing the public sphere into the home, and has lifted many of the old curtains of secrecy between adults and children, men and women, and politicians and average citizens. Meyrowitz characterizes electronic society by more adult-like children and child-like adults. He believes as we move forward, our society is spiraling backwards at the same time- the middle and upper classes have been moving towards behaviors once related with the illiterate lower class. The shared information environment created by electronic media does not lead to identical behaviors or attitudes; the electronic society incorporates all groups into a common sphere where people share not the same behaviors, but the same set of options.

By Brian Smalley

The article “The Next Room,” by Mitchell Stephens begins with an angry reader fighting for privacy while others in “the next room” are watching television, which happens to always be on. This is the beginning of Mitchell’s expertise on how television- “the form of moving images at which we have directed most of our attention and most of our criticism, the form that has conquered the world”- is becoming the most dominant form of communication media, along with the impact it brings on people and children.

Stephens analogizes this opening scenario as reading a book that looks forward to the “eclipse” of reading by the offspring of television. He begins to analyze a ninety-six second trailer for an ABC documentary with fewer than two hundred words and compares its effectiveness whereas you can read twice as many words in the same time.

As if he has never seen a television before, he actively describes what is being displayed- separate scenes, different emotions, additional images are sometimes superimposed, music plays while cameras dart all around- admitting how it manages to convey a significant amount of information in such short time. He uses this example to prove the point that fast-cut moving images along with some words and music posses the capability to communicate ‘at least’ as effectively and efficiently as printed words alone.

Stephens claims that even though moving images are gaining accountability for more and more of our communication, most of us have great difficulty accepting this, although the growth is hard to ignore. Evidence is everywhere: shifting bookshelves to “entertainment centers,” libraries to “family/ TV rooms.” Former vice president Dan Quayle, embarked on a minor movement against television, ending at a elementary school where students yelled “NO,” after being asked if they would turn their TVs off during school nights. 84% of children between four and five even said they liked TV over their fathers.

According to researchers, no medium or technology has “penetrated” our homes like the TV. IBM sold its first personal computer about 30 years after selling to businesses. Eight years after the release of a full-scale commercial television, half of Americans had one. On average, TVs are on up to eight hours daily. “We are as attached, as addicted to television as we, as a society, have been to any other invention, communications medium, art form or drug (97).” Tens and millions of people have already begun using computers and the Internet, which is impressive, but TV being less than a generation older, has already won humankind over.

Steve Jobs in 1996 was quoted about the World Wide Web saying, “It’s certainly not going to be like the first time somebody saw a television… its not going to be that profound.” An increase in TV and decrease in reading occurred the same time the amount of formal education Americans obtain increased. Stephens concludes his point stressing the video revolution being humankind’s third major communications revolution following writing and print.

There have been many updates in the communications ecosystem since 1998. It would be fare to assume that more people have TV sets in their homes and the average ‘on’ time is longer. “Media technology is important in the lives of children during the 21^st century and electronic media is always changing”(FOC). According to Future of Children, TV which once dominated the mid-90’s, now competes with cell phones, iPods, video games, social networking, etc. Usually the younger you are, the more experience and knowledge you obtain with generational technologies. My age is used to color TV and 3D gaming, while the youth is used to 3D TV and iPads. There are now a vast majority of children with access to multiple medias, and due to technological convergence, they have access to the same source from different media platforms. As a result, America’s youth spends more time using media than on any single activity other than sleep and media multi-tasking is at an all-time high. Parents are concerned with media’s impact on their children’s learning, attention, and achievement; however, there have been no casual links between electronic media and the lack such. Researchers concluded that if designed correctly, media use can enhance learning and the development of the visual spatial skills. On the other hand, the results depend on how the teachers and elders use this technology.

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