The Electric Age
August 28, 2009I have been trying to synthesize a definition for McLuhan’s “New Media.” I don’t pretend to actually have an authoritative definition, but my own mental processes demands that I strive for one that can apply for discussion.
McLuhan references all different types of new media throughout the book, but in spite of this, there seems to be a category of media advances that he places above all the others. Throughout especially the first part, McLuhan stresses the importance of the advancement of electricity. Electricity for him is key to modern media advances. He sets this advance in opposition to advances in mechanization and print.
This is a concept I have spent quite a bit of time trying to understand. What is it that makes electricity such an important form for McLuhan? As he puts it, “Concern with effect rather than meaning is a basic change of our electric time, for effect involves the total situation, and not a single level of information movement” (26). He posits that it is the first time we could see truly that the content of a medium is clearly another medium. The electric light in of itself contains no message, but rather is used to contain another medium (say text) (8).
At various points he mentions the instantaneous nature of the electric age. Having the entire “picture” in an instant makes media that have grown out of the electric age fundamentally different from those that came out of the mechanical age. The mechanical age was about the process. Moveable type as a new medium changed the way text was presented from the tribal (perhaps cold?) methods of illuminated, or hand copied manuscripts to a more factory-like, specialized (hot?) method of the mechanized press. Electricity brought both the telephone (cold) and the radio (hot) as new media, but more importantly it allowed instant access. By allowing information and media to pass instantaneously, electricity has reorganized our society.
Perhaps this is McLuhan’s point about what is considered “New Media” today. It is new in relation to the mechanized age that came prior to electricity. Is radio still a new medium? Perhaps not, but his classifications can and should be extended to include media that had not yet been invented, media like the internet. I am still trying to figure out if it is hot or cold. Perhaps certain aspects are one and others are the other.
