Carmack 1
Works Cited
Jeremy Carmack
Professor Mandell
ENG 495E
12/10/02
Throughout the course, many questions have been raised concerning information and what makes up information. A wide range of topics have been discussed including the effect of media on thought, oral culture versus a written culture, and the history of information. While the course is structured in order to facilitate discussion on these questions concerning various types of media and their impacts on communication, it is also important that the student think critically about these issues himself/herself. In relation to communication, it is useful to examine the following texts: “Orality and the Problem of Memory” (an excerpt from Information Ages: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Computer Revolution,) Speaking Into The Air by John Durham Peters, and “The Medium Is The Message” by Marshall McLuhan. Specifically, all of these works contribute to the history of communication and how present day “information” has been affected by early information ages. More importantly, there are a number of key terms from these works that demand a further discussion in relation to communication. These key terms include memory, dissemination, and medium. However, it is also useful to analyze the concepts that correspond with each term in order to facilitate a thorough understanding of each term. With that said, the major concepts include commemoration, communication, and the idea that the medium is the message. While these terms might be difficult to understand, they are important in deconstructing the authors’ ideas about information and communication.
To begin, in the chapter “Orality and the Problem of Memory,” Hobart and Schiffman discuss the difference between the oral world and literate world’s conceptions of memory. While the literate world views memory as a container, holding information inside, the oral world sees memory as the act of commemoration:
The commemorative act looks not so much to the past as the present and future. It
provides the community a way of continually redefining itself and its aspirations
amid ever-changing circumstances. Commemoration binds the community together
as a living entity rather than passively storing information about it. Indeed, the very
concreteness of the act, rooted in the here-and-now of face-to-face communication,
undercuts the possibility that songs like the Iliad systematically preserved
information (Hobart and Schiffman 15)
The act of commemoration, then, is clearly an active process that differs from storing information. Hobart and Schiffman, in essence, see the act of storing information as passive, whereas the act of commemoration is rooted in the face-to-face communication that exists in the oral culture. Furthermore, the act of commemoration, in and of itself, is a clear difference for the oral and literate cultures. For example, a book can convey information to its reader in a literate culture provided that an individual is literate. Also, communication can exist between the author and the reader that does not demand face-to-face communication. For example, the words on the page of a novel can communicate an idea to the reader without a face-to-face interaction occurring between the author and the reader. In contrast to the literate culture, books did not exist in the oral culture so communication occurred through one-on-one conversations between people. Another difference between the oral and literate culture is the two-way communication itself. In the oral culture, face-to-face communication makes it difficult to distinguish the experience from the content. For example, the Greeks singing songs is representative of a ritual that embodies the content with the act of singing. More specifically, the experience and the content mesh together.
While Hobart and Schiffman clearly draw a contrast between the oral and literate world, they also define commemoration in relation to practices, or rituals. For example, practices that are prevalent do not require preservation because they are widely used. Furthermore, when the practices pass out of regular use they are forgotten:
In a purely oral culture, knowledge, values, and beliefs exist not as information but
as practices whose preservation is a by-product of repeated usage...Practices
prevalent in the community did not need to be preserved in the epics because they
were everywhere in use. And when they passed out of use, they were
forgotten...Far more than simply the stored knowledge of an oral culture, “social
memory” is the act of commemorating, which proceeds not simply by the means of
words, but, more so, by means of the visual images and acoustic patterns that the
words preserve and evoke. (Hobart and Schiffman 18-20)
For the oral world, commemoration embodies more than just using words to preserve
information. Visual images and sound accompany the words that are being communicated
to the people. For example, an individual who hears a song is going to produce images in
his/her mind that reflect the words of the song. The song is not simply sung, but it
produces ideas and thoughts in the listener’s mind. An individual is able to make meaning
out of the words that comprise the song. The idea of making meaning out words is part of
the activity of commemoration. Since commemoration is not passive, it requires the
individual to actively engage with the information that is presented by the communicator.
In his philosophical book Speaking Into The Air, John Durham Peters explains the history of communication by drawing upon several important figures from the beginning information age including John Locke, Plato, and Augustine. Peters begins his argument by comparing dialogue (a form of communication) to other communications including newspapers, radio, and television. Specifically, Peters argues that books are one-sided compared to other forms of communication including radio and television. For example, when an individual is viewing a television screen, he/she is losing the “inner experience” (33) of communication. The conversation that takes place between the viewer and the screen is one-sided. While the viewer is able to internalize thoughts, he/she is not able to verbally respond to the screen. In much the same way, a book does not allow its reader to directly engage with the author or dialogue presented in the text. Again, the communication is one-sided because the book is incapable of producing verbal language in order to interact with the reader. Also, Peters mentions the distortions of dialogue in relation to various cultures. For example, an individual may utilize electronic mail to communicate with a distant loved one. Since this type of communication is not face-to-face, the dialogue is distorted. Neither party hears what the other party says; therefore a gap is formed in the dialogue. One might interpret the tone of an email to be ‘sarcastic’ when the other communicator, in fact, is writing in a ‘serious’ tone.
Peter’s uses the term “dissemination” when speaking about dialogue, but does not give the reader of the text a precise definition. “Dissemination,” generally speaking, is the act of being dispersed of diffused. For Peters, communication between two or more parties
can exist through the dispersion of signs:
The strenuous standard of dialogue, especially if it means reciprocal speech acts between live communicators who are present to each other in some way...Much of culture consists of signs in general dispersion, and felicitous communication in the sense of creating just community between two or more creatures...Dialogue, to be sure, is one precious part of our tool-kit as talking animals, but it ought not to be elevated to sole supreme status. (Peters 34)
Peters explains that dialogue should not be thought of as the ‘supreme’ means for
communication between live communicators. The problem, then, arises when
nonreciprocal actions (e.g., a shrug, sigh, etc.) occur between communicators who
are engaged in dialogue (i.e., reciprocal speech acts between two live communicators.)
Also, he explains that dissemination, in and of itself, allows for communication between
“two or more creatures.” (34) In relation to dissemination, Jesus and the Gospels provide
another important idea about communication in the twentieth century. For Jesus, the
sender of the information has no control over the outcome of what is being sent (e.g., seeds harvesting) and, therefore, facilitates a “looseness” of any communicative interaction:
Jesus is represented in all three synoptic Gospels...A sower, he says, goes forth to
sow, broadcasting seed everywhere, so that it lands on all kinds of ground. Most of
the seeds never bear fruit. Some sprout quickly (in the equivalent of gardens of
Adonis?) only to be scorched by the sun or overcome by weeds...Only a rare few
land on perceptive soil, take root, and bring forth fruit abundantly...Those who have
ears to hear, let them hear! (Peters 51)
Jesus says that while many seeds are disseminated, not all seeds will bear fruit. The idea that the seeds land “on all kinds of ground” represents the idea of interpretations by the individual. For example, an individual who reads a text might think about the text differently than another individual who reads the same text. The fact that both parties cannot have the exact same thoughts illustrates the idea of dissemination.
While Peters attempts to offer a history of communication, Marshall McLuhan tackles a different issue in “The Medium Is The Message.” The key term is “medium,” and it is
defined as “any extension of ourselves” (129) which could include the computer, airplane, or any other mode of technology. Specifically, McLuhan discusses the machine (i.e., old technology) in comparison with automation (new technology) as a medium:
Thus, with automation, for example, the new patterns of human association tend to
eliminate jobs, it is true. That is the negative result. Positively, automation creates
roles for people, which is to say depth of involvement in their work and human
association that our preceding mechanical technology had destroyed...The
restructuring of human work and association was shaped by the technique of
fragmentation that is the essence of machine technology (McLuhan 129)
In essence, McLuhan critiques automation and explains that automation, in relation to human beings, has both positive and negative aspects. For example, an automated banking machine takes the place of a human bank teller. In this respect, people lose jobs to machines which is clearly negative. Not only does McLuhan criticize automation, he also addresses the idea of fragmentation that is representative of automation. The fact that an automated banking machine is able to perform transactions in the place of a human being proves that the automation is implicitly fragmented because the individual is not face-to-face with another human being. Instead, an individual is interacting with a machine that performs the functions that, normally, a human being performs.
In order to exemplify the idea of the medium in the message, McLuhan makes mention, first, of a medium without a message in order to underscore the relationship between the media and its message. For example, the railway signifies a medium without a message. McLuhan writes:
The railway did not introduce movement or transportation or wheel or road into
human society, but it accelerated and enlarged the scale of previous human
functions, creating totally new kinds of cities and new kinds of work and leisure.
This happened whether the railway functioned in a tropical or a northern
environment, and is quite independent of the freight or content of the railway
medium. (McLuhan 130)
The railway has clearly changed the pace of human functions by creating faster transportation and higher efficiency compared to earlier forms of transportation like horse-drawn wagons or buggies. In McLuhan’s example, the railway is just the medium because the freight, or content, is independent of the railway itself (as a medium.) While McLuhan utilizes the railway in order to further his argument, he also uses the electric light in order to examine the medium as the message. First, the reader sees the electric light as a medium without a message. For example, a light shining in a hallway is pure information. There is no message being communicated through the light because it exists purely as light. However, McLuhan also argues that electric light is a medium with a message. For example, a football stadium uses thousands of lights in order to light up the stadium for a Friday night football game. Here, the light might be representative of a medium with a message because the football game is the center of the light’s focus and no football fan would be able to see the football game (content) without the light.
While the history of information, defining what information is, and how media affects
communication and information will continue to be the subject of much literary and
cultural studies, the works of Peters, McLuhan, and Hobart and Schiffman attempt to
reach a conclusion in relation to these ideas. By defining such terms as memory,
dissemination, and medium, the authors work to understand the beginnings of
information in relation to present day forms of communication. While the concept of ‘the
medium is the message’ is different from the idea of the oral world versus the literate
world, the concepts themselves work together to provide an explanation of the effects of
media on thought as well as the types of selves that current modes of communication will
produce.
Durham, Peters John. Speaking Into The Air. London: University of Chicago Press,
1999.
Hobart, Michael E., Schiffman, Zachary S. Information Ages: Literacy, Numeracy, and
the Computer Revolution. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1998.
McLuhan, Marshall. “The Medium Is The Message.” Media and Cultural Studies
Keyworks. Ed. Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas M. Kellner. Malden:
Blackwell Publishers, 2001.