Technological Change & Cultural

Transformation

Is free will a subject of the imagination? Does communication media drive

human behaviour? Is human culture merely a technological construct? Or, do humans

have the ability to think for themselves? According to communication theorists, Harold

Innis and Marshall McLuhan, communication media shape human culture. Their

argument omits the idea that individuals have the power to act and think for themselves.

Innis was the first to justify this theory by analyzing society before and after electronic

communication media. In doing so, he discovered that every new electronic technology

has the ability to re-shape society. McLuhan explained that cultural change occurs

because different qualities exist between communication technologies. McLuhan

identified and compared the qualities of the television to previous communication

technologies such as books and radio. As a result, he discovered that television had new

qualities that could re-shape culture. This led McLuhan to confirm that every new

communication media will cause cultural change. This theory continues to be supported

today. Had Innis and McLuhan lived through the present day, they would have viewed

the World Wide Web (WWW) as the next communication medium to re-shape culture.

By exploring the evidence behind Innis and McLuhan’s theory concerning technological

control over human culture, one can predict that today’s society is driven by the values

and principles encouraged by the WWW.

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Innis was the first to claim that communication media have the ability to shape a

society. Innis argued “structures of consciousness parallel structures of

communication” (1951). Here, Innis claims that a new culture is brought into existence

with every new communication technology. To illustrate this, he formed two cultural

biases: temporal and spatial. A temporally biased culture signified the society of the

tribal age, while a spatially biased culture represented a society driven by electronic

communication media. These two biases represented the two human cultures that were

divided by different communication media: traditional vs. electronic. The temporal

culture was driven by traditional means of communication media such as speech, drums,

canoes, and dance. It was a time-based society characterized by small, personal, and

close-knit communities. With the rise in electronic communication media, the value of

community declined as technologies such as books and newspapers promoted a new

importance of individual activity and a greater focus on the self. This radical shift is what

made Innis discover the diversity of technological influence (Carey 1989).

Innis’ discovery of the cultural shift helped him to confirm that every new

communication medium has the ability to physically re-shape the human culture. To

further prove that the medium shapes the minds of its users, McLuhan went into depth

about how this occurs. McLuhan argued, “the medium is the message” (41). Here, he

reinforces Innis’ claim that communication media have the ability to transform a

message. He outlines that when a message is sent via a medium, a process of mediation

occurs which reshapes the message. Mediation allows transmission and the exchange of

information in the process of sending and receiving. Thus, the message is changed via

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technological control. To exemplify this theory, McLuhan suggested how the media used

by artists such as drawing/painting tools and or colours have control over the significance

of an artwork. As drawings and paintings create different forms, and colours signify

different moods, a variety of messages transpire (McLuhan 2001).

Since Innis and McLuhan lived in different time periods, they analyzed different

cultural shifts. Whereas Innis compared the culture of the acoustic age (temporal culture)

to the print culture (spatial culture), McLuhan compared the print culture to the television

age. McLuhan attempted to prove that television supports the idea of technological

determinism (1984). Like Innis, McLuhan used the spatial society as one of his

variables, though he re-names the culture in his own terms. He refers to Innis’ spatial

society as the literate culture (print culture), to illustrate that it was an age of reading and

writing. Following the age of print, he believed the television shaped a new electronic

oral/aural culture (television culture).

McLuhan’s television culture may seem like an attempt to construct a third

culture to Innis’ cultural biases, however, he argued that the television culture is rather a

step back to the values and traditions of a temporally biased society (Griffin 1997). He

discovered that the television culture is shaped by similar values as the communication

media that shaped Innis’ temporal culture, as it also valued participation and community.

Unlike, Innis’ spatial culture where individual activity and one’s self were of high

importance, McLuhan explained that the television culture was marked by a renewed

value of tribalism and group activity. He stated, “we are re-tribalizing, involuntarily

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we are getting rid of individualism…we are no longer so concerned with self

definition…we are most concerned about what the group knows” (1960). McLuhan

explains how television culture will move human kind away from the individual human

being shaped by print culture and back to a new tribal human being. As the print culture

valued privacy, the television culture would open up a new world of greater social

interaction.

McLuhan was able to distinguish the temporal and television cultures from print

culture by the differences between their communication media. He outlined that there are

two categories of communication media: hot and cold. He used the words hot and cold

in order to signify the opposite. He described hot media as technologies that hone-in on

one sense, promote individual activity, and are information intense. These media

represented technologies such as newspapers and radio that shaped the spatial culture.

For example, newspapers hone-in on the eye, and are information intense because they

give out lots of information and are experienced alone. In contrast to hot media,

McLuhan explained that cold media hone-in on all of the senses, promote group activity,

and are less information intense because they are experienced with others. Cold

communication media represented the stories and canoes of the temporal culture, and the

television of the oral/aural culture (McLuhan 2000).

Innis’ temporal culture and McLuhan’s oral/aural culture are similar societies

because cold communication media drives them both. Both the traditional technologies

of the temporal culture and the electronic technologies of the oral/aural culture promoted

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community and participation. The only exception is that the medium of television of the

oral/aural age expanded the ways people can see the world. McLuhan argued that the

television allowed people to see the world without travelling far distances. He theorized

that electronic media transformed the world into a global village: a place where time and

space barriers have been broken down allowing for communication over far distances in

less time (1960). He said, “the new electronic independence re-creates the world in

the image of a global village” (Griffin 344). Thus, electronic communication media

have shrunk the world to the size of a small community.

Not only did McLuhan discover that electronic communication media could make

the world smaller, but that it could re-shape the definition of community. With the

television, communities were no longer limited to small groups where common messages

remained private. McLuhan argued that the television shaped massive groups through

public promotion of standardized messages (Wolfe 1968). McLuhan stated “the world is

now like a continually sounding tribal drum, where everybody gets the message, all

the time, a princess gets married in England, and boom, boom, boom, go the drums,

we all hear about it, an earthquake in North Africa, a Hollywood star gets drunk,

away go the drums again” (1960). The television’s promotion of standardized

messages led to the formation of immeasurable communities on local, national, and

international levels.

Today, McLuhan’s theory of technological determinism continues to be

supported. The World Wide Web (WWW) is the latest electronic communication

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medium to transform culture. Society has transformed from a television-based culture to

a computer culture. One could attempt to categorize computer culture as McLuhan’s

forth period of human history. The WWW supports McLuhan’s idea that technological

influence shapes a society. As the television culture evolved from the literate culture, the

WWW has evolved out of television culture. The difficult relationships that arise

between today’s parents and children can help to prove that the television and the WWW

divided culture. Today’s parents, who grew up during the television culture, have

difficulty understanding their children because children today are shaped by the values of

computer culture. This same conflict occurred between today’s parents and their parents

as they experienced the conflicts that existed between literate culture and television

culture.

Had McLuhan experienced the WWW, one could predict that he would have

recognized it as the next communication medium to have the ability to change human

experience. He stated, “inventions in technology invariably cause cultural change”

(Griffin 343). Also, by understanding McLuhan’s notion of hot and cold media, one may

presume that he would have defined the WWW as a medium with the qualities of both

hot and cold media. It is difficult to define the WWW as hot or cold as it combines both

literacy (a quality of a hot media) and visual imagery (a quality of cold media). It is a

neutral media: not too hot and not too cold. The WWW is a medium with high and low

information intensity and more or less participation. It is information intense because it

is loaded with an immeasurable amount of web pages. However, it becomes less intense

when one knows what they are searching for. Also, the WWW requires less participation

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because it hones-in on one sense (the eye), though since one has to search and read in

order to attain information it becomes highly participatory. Lastly, the WWW shapes

individual and group experiences. Searching on the WWW is usually an individual

experience, though when users participate in interactive online games, a communal

activity is formed.

As it is difficult to justify the WWW as a hot or cold medium, it is confirmed that

it has the qualities to transform every aspect of human experience. McLuhan once said,

“family life, the workplace, schools, health care, friendship, religious worship,

recreation, politics – nothing remains untouched by communication technology”

(Griffin 343). The WWW supports this notion because it has re-shaped human behaviour,

transformed the way people communicate, and changed how institutions are run.

Nowadays almost anything can be found by the click of a mouse. The WWW is speeding

up society. It has also changed the value of traditional friendships and relationships.

Now, our society builds virtual friendships and relationships through means of online

communication. Instant messaging services (msn, aol), email, facebook, discussion

boards, and chat rooms are some of many modes of communication made available by

the WWW. These media have decreased the value of face-to-face interaction and

increased virtual interaction. Nowadays, corporations have business conferences and

perform business transactions over the WWW. Plus, certain conventions of the

educational system have changed. Student courses are now available online, and email

has become a key way for students to interact with their instructors. These are just some

of many ways computer technology has modernized society.

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While the WWW has enhanced the way people communicate, in this process it

has made the world appear smaller. The WWW confirms that electronic communication

media have the ability to shrink the globe into the size of a global village. Like the

television, barriers in human communication do not restrict the WWW. Though, what

sets the WWW apart from television technology is that it shrinks the globe even further.

It does not only break apart time and space barriers but it gets rid of them for good. The

WWW has transformed the world into a global home. People no longer have to leave

their homes to survive. The WWW allows one to shop for food, buy clothing, be

educated, entertained, do business, and build friendships and relationships. Nowadays,

one can survive with mere shelter and the WWW.

By understanding McLuhan’s theories concerning electronic media, one can

predict that he would have viewed the WWW as a positive advancement. Since

McLuhan was astonished by television’s power to allow people to see the world, one

could predict that he would have valued the WWW’s ability to take people even further.

Plus, McLuhan’s value of the communal experience continues to be encouraged by the

WWW. Even though the WWW promotes an indirect method of communication, online

communication media encourages users to participate in group activities.

The relationship that exists between communication media and cultural change

confirms that the WWW will transform culture. Innis’ analysis of cultural change and

McLuhan’s discovery of the differences that exist between communication media helped

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to prove that every new technology drives societal change. Three stages of human

history have transpired as a result of technological innovation: acoustic, literate, and

oral/aural culture. As different communication media drove each, they become cultural

divisions. Now, with the WWW, a computer culture is the latest age in human history to

emerge. As the WWW promotes different values than the communication media of the

past, it will shape a new culture. The WWW has already changed the way people

communicate and how institutions are run. It is the latest medium to govern the way

human culture acts and thinks. The WWW will continue to shape society until the next

electronic communication medium emerges and a new human culture is shaped. The

world will forever be a continuous cycle of technological innovation and cultural change.

Monday, December 4 th /2006

By: Kelly Foss

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