The Medium Is Not The Message–The Digital Cornucopia, McLuhan, And Us

There’s a lot of fuss and worry going around about computers.  In particular, the internet and all the crazy new forms of communication it is making available to us.

The net is changing, many argue, not just how we live, or behave, but how we think.  It’s rewiring our brains, making us shallow, superficial, constantly distracted, unable to focus, to think, to dig deep.  It’s making us drive off the road, walk into light poles, fall off our bicycles and stumble over curbs.  It’s controlling us, it’s an insidious force taking over our minds, our hearts, our children, even our relationships.

Damn, it’s even ruining dinner (no talk, no eating, just surreptitious checking of one’s smart phone under the table linens).

And that, of course, is the last straw.

Down with the net!  Down with digital forms of so-called talk!  Let’s all write letters again!  (Say what?  When did average, everyday, hard-working Americans ever write scads of letters?)

Hold on, you say, let’s back up here.  Where is all this vitriolic digital scribbling coming from?

Here are four sources of my thoughts on the matter.  I’m sure you can come up with countless others.

The esteemed Christian Science Monitor (a news source I respect) ran several articles this summer debating (and largely decrying) the effect of the net on our lives.  (See,  http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Tech/2010/0724/Are-iPads-smartphones-and-the-Mobile-Web-rewiring-the-way-we-think)

And, tech authority Wired.com ran this opinion piece recently (which I happen to agree with) on dwindling phone calling:  http://m.wired.com/magazine/2010/07/st_thompson_deadphone/

And, here on WordPress.com, a thoughtful blogger, frustrated over the level of responsiveness she has encountered to her emails and such (I can relate),  just ran this popular post:  http://agatha82.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/whatever-happened-to-two-way-conversations/

Then, finally, there is Claude.  Claude (‘not his real name’) is a relative, a close one.  As I have many relatives, his anonymity is protected (well, sort of).  But, when you hear what Claude said to me about my sending to him a link to my blog post on our recent trip abroad, you–blog readers and internet appreciators–will, I hope, understand my upset.

Some of you might recall this post on Rome, La Dolce Vita–Italian Sojourn.  (See, http://pamelanmartin.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/la-dolce-vita-italian-sojourn/)

Despite it taking many hours to create, and being lovingly constructed, well-crafted, informative, and, I hope, fun, Claude refuses to look at it.

Why?

Because, he doesn’t want to be ‘directed to some website’, sent ‘elsewhere’ if you will, to view family photos.  He wants the photos sent directly to him, as an attachment or in email jpg files.  Or, impliedly, in print form.  It’s too impersonal otherwise.

Impersonal?

Now, mind you, Claude and I do talk on the phone, email, exchange gifts and letters, and visit one another (despite living hundreds of miles apart).  So there is personal contact–a lot.  And, I have never received one photo in the mail from this person.  I have received, via email, four jpg files.

I don’t know about you, but I have happy memories of my grandparents, laden with photo slides, sitting my family down on Sunday afternoons, and subjecting us–in a family group–to what then felt like interminable slideshows of their most recent trip.  Can you imagine me complaining that I wanted to hear about the trip alone, personally, one on one, and objecting to be treated as a mere ‘member’ of the family?

This is how I’m hearing Claude’s complaints.

What is impersonal?  Sending news of one’s trip via a blog?  Or the recipient refusing to read it because the blog was sent to others besides him?

Is this ridiculous, or what?

Have we really come to this place, where we are blessed–like kids in a candy store–with a digital cornucopia of new ways to share, talk, message, and communicate with one another (while keeping the older forms as well) and yet so many of us are complaining.

It’s too impersonal.  Too distracting.  Too superficial.

As if that isn’t our responsibility.  As if the computer, or the cell phone, the smart phone, the IM button, the text function is somehow inexorably willing our hands to move, our minds to cease thinking, and turning us into robots.

In the words of my really smart (and educated and kind) father: nitwits!

Communication, digital or not, is communication.  The medium is NOT the message:  the message is the message.

And what we do with the medium is our choice and responsibility.

(For more on thinker and writer Marshall McLuhan, see, http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/main.html, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan)

Many thinkers throughout history, even Socrates (so I’ve read), decried new forms of information and communication technology.  But it is all, in the end, just talk, just communication.  What matters is whether it’s meaningful.

Not what form, or what technology, it arrives in.

Do our brains operate, or ‘look’, differently when we use different technologies?  It’d be very strange if they did not.

Should we worry about this?  No.  This is what one’s brain is designed, and has evolved, to do:  to keep adapting to what is before it, and to, in turn, be both changed by what is outside it, and to change what is outside it.

I’d like to make several proposals.

The first is that we relax, at least a bit.  We are in the midst of rapid-fire communication technological change.  Not since the turn of the last century, has the pace of change felt so overwhelming.  People, organizations, and corporations–all are reacting differently to to the fire-storm of change we are riding,  Some–like Claude–are backing off, retreating from what is happening.  Others, like the proverbial kids in candy stores, are happily playing with all of it, firing off missives in any and all forms, and then wondering ‘why they are not hearing back’.   But, most of us, like myself, lie somewhere in between:  exploring, testing, trying it out, but taking our time.

Next, I believe that many of us are well beyond our capacity to respond to the stream of information and messages coming our way.  This is not a new problem:  every new device in history has triggered outcries of ‘it’s too distracting!’  With time, we’ll become better at triaging our messages (both received and sent).

But for the time being, we need to not take personally failures to receive replies from others to our sent messages, and to realize that, for many of us, our ability to send information outstrips our ability to respond intelligently to that which we receive.

Most important, I think we must take seriously our personal responsibility.  Sure, each new technology lends itself to, or encourages, certain behaviors.  This has been true since man discovered the first tool (a rock to dig with?).

But, just as a caveman couldn’t blame the rock for ‘making him’ throw it–despite rocks being deliciously throwable–so we should not keep blaming our computers, phones, and the net for the kooky stuff we’re doing with them.

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