McLuhan

The major distinction between McLuhan and Innis - Innis concentrated upon whole civilisations. McLuhan's work looked more to the psyche of the individual.

McLuhan - Renaissance shift from a primarily oral/aural way of perceiving the world to a primarily visual one.

Shift in 'sense ratios' in the 'human sensorium' due to spread of printing.

'With the advent of the printed word, the visual modalities of Western life increased beyond anything experienced in any previous society'

McLuhan - human experience mediated through the senses

Most effective means of communication are those that utilise the most of these senses (e.g. speech)

Writing breaks "organic unity" of the senses, imposed domination of the visual on human experience.

Literate human is logical, visual, linear anti literal.

Writing regiments the mind, submerges imagination and creativity

Modern, electronic media re- emphasise the rich totality of human experience.

McLuhan - "phonocentric" favoured oral culture over a literate one.

Orality - 'natural'; writing - 'artificial'.

Some dichotomies of the ear and eye

McLuhan - hot and cool.

Hot medium requires little audience participation

Speech, a cool medium because - so little is given and so much has to be filled in by the listener

Medieval manuscript culture - manuscripts were meant to be read aloud to an audience.

Oral, or manuscript culture, allowed all the senses to function at once

Punctuation allowed writing mimic speech - separating the eye from the ear.

McLuhan (and Postman) - logical thought a direct consequence of a print culture.

`literate man undergoes much separation of his imaginative, emotional and sense life'.

Separation permits more analytical and logical thought

"no accident that the Age of Reason was coexistent with the growth of a print culture" (Postman).

'In a culture dominated by print, public discourse tends to be characterised by a coherent, orderly arrangement of facts and ideas' (Postman).

Legal- system -in a print-based culture lawyers are 'well-educated, devoted to reason, and capable of impressive expositional argument' (Postman)

McLuhan - Technology of print communication promotes individualism and uniformity.

Print: `the technology of individualism' - began the practice of silent reading

Book intended to be read alone and silently -develops sense of privacy

Uniformity? Print allowed an increase in governmental control

`by making the vernacular a mass medium print created a new instrument of political centralism previously unknown' (McLuhan)

Unified regional dialects - nationalisation.

Maps - visual appreciation of the nation.

Ideological impact of technological determinism

If technology is an external force, like nature, it cannot easily be subjected to social control.