4 laws of media vortex

8/3/2019 4 Laws of Media Vortex

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HOW IS CULTURE LIKE AN INESCAPABLE

VORTEX?

In what sense are we

swept away by the

effects of technological

innovations?

How does the maelstrom

metaphor relate to

recent theories

concerning chaos andcomplexity?


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CHAOS THEORY: A BRIEF

INTRODUCTION

What exactly is chaos? Thename "chaos theory" comesfrom the fact that thesystems that the theory

describes are apparentlydisordered, but chaostheory is really about findingthe underlying order inapparently random data.

When was chaos firstdiscovered? The first trueexperimenter in chaos was ameteorologist, named

Edward Lorenz. In 1960, hewas working on the problemof weather prediction. He hada computer set up, with a setof twelve equations to model

the weather. It didn't predictthe weather itself. Howeverthis computer program didtheoretically predict what theweather might be.


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THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT.

The amount ofdifference in thestarting points ofthe two curves isso small that it is

comparable to abutterfly flappingits wings.

The flapping of a single butterfly's wingtoday produces a tiny change in thestate of the atmosphere. Over a periodof time, what the atmosphere actually

does diverges from what it would havedone. So, in a month's time, a tornadothat would have devastated theIndonesian coast doesn't happen. Ormaybe one that wasn't going to happen,does. (Ian Stewart, Does God PlayDice?

The Mathematics of Chaos, pg. 141)


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SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH SHOWS THAT THE BRAIN NEEDS THE

STIMULATION OF CHAOTIC DISEQUILIBRIUM IN ORDER TO

COMMUNICATE COMPLEX MEANING. But Electric

mediasuppress the

brain's abilityto do this,producing aresponse ofunfocusedfeelings andinattention todetail.

Under electric conditionsprint becomes a self-organizing structure that

continually governs theroles of all other mediathrough adjustments tocultural feedback.

Frank Zingrone http://projects.chass.utoronto.ca/mcluhan-studies/v1_iss3/1_3art3.htm


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We often ignore our environments, allowing them to fade into

the background and become invisible. How did McLuhan learn

to pay attention to the invisible environment of communication,

culture and technology?

How successful was he in teaching others to be aware of their

media environment?

The sailor in Poes story escapes from the maelstrom by using

his powers of observation, recognizing an orderly pattern

emerging from the turmoil of the whirlpool.

Can we do the same?


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1. ENHANCE/EXTEND

What human trait or

experience does the

medium enhance?

What is the intendedfunction of the medium or

technology? What does

it improve or make more

efficient? Does it extendpart of the human

body? One or more of the

senses?

Does it extend an aspect of

the human mind, such as

memory? Does it amplify

some human capabilityor augment some form of

human action? Does it

extend the individual,

the group or society?


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2. OBSOLESCE

What pre-existingtechnology, method,system, or medium

does this mediumobsolesce?

What older technologydoes the new medium

replace?W

hat does itrender unnecessary?What procedures does itshort-circuit or bypass?

What happens to the oldmedium that is renderedobsolescent? Does it

disappear entirely,become an art object, orfind a new niche?


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RETRIEVE

What technology, method,system or medium thatwas previouslyobsolesced or abandoned

does this mediumretrieve?

What archaic elementsare made relevant again?What previously

marginalized or repressedideas, practices orartifacts are brought to

the fore?

What aspects of the

prehistoric, ancient,medieval or early

modern world are revived?


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REVERSE

When fully utilized or

pushed to its extreme,

what will the medium

reverse into?

What effects will the

medium create that are

opposite to what was

originally intended?

What are the

contradictions inherent

in the technology? What

is the ecological impact?


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TELEVISION

Television enhances our ability to see and hear

across time and space, obsolesces older media

like radio (forcing them to reinvent themselves),

retrieves the hearth and campfire as the centre

for communal entertainment and reverses into

new forms of individual and societal isolation


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THE AUTOMOBILE

The automobile enhances our mobility, makes

the horse and buggy obsolescent, retrieves the

knight in armor and reverses into the traffic

jam.


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WORD PROCESSING

Word processingenhances our ability to

produce printed text, obsolesces the typewriter,

retrieves the scroll and the manuscript as open,

changeable text and reverses into oral

communication through word recognition and

speech synthesis software.


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enhances our ability to

obsolesces the

retrieves the

and reverses into

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THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE?

McLuhan is especially insistent that an analysis of media

content is meaningless--misses the point--since it is the

medium which carries the lions share of the

communication. Simply put, the medium affects the body

and the psyche in relatively unconscious ways; thus it is

more powerful than the message, which largely appeals to

the conscious mind. In their Introduction to the EssentialMcLuhan, Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone write:

The perception of reality now depends upon the structure

of information. The form of each medium is associated with

a different arrangement, or ratio, among the senses, which

creates new forms of awareness. These perceptual

transformations, the new ways of experiencing that each

medium creates, occur in the user regardless of the

program content. This is what the paradox, "the medium is

the message," means. (3)


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Speaking of paradoxes, McLuhan was untroubled by them.

He reveled in paradox, much to the annoyance of his

critics. His method as a media critic was to launch what he

called "probes" and hope that when they landed they

would generate more light than heat. For example,

McLuhan illustrates the concept "the medium is the

message" as follows inU

nderstanding Media:The instance of the electric light may prove illuminating in

this connection. The electric light is pure information. It is

a medium without a message, as it were, unless it is used

to spell out some verbal ad or name. This fact,

characteristic of all media, means that the "content" of anymedium is always another medium. The content of writing

is speech, just as the written word is the content of print,

and print is the content of the telegraph. (151)

4 laws of media vortex

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