This post is in response to my challenge to Bob McDaniel on identifying
events or facts that would indicate our society is at a point of change. I
had been looking forward to your answer and I have not been disappointed
and with your permission, perhaps we can extend this conversation for
awhile. Somedays, God is good, I went to the library last week and behold,
two new McLuhan books, one, a very comprehensive biography entitled Marshall
McLuhan by W. Terrance Gordon and the other titled ON McLuhan by Paul
Benedetti and Nancy DeHart who identify themselves as being involved in a CD
Rom production on McLuhan's ideas - what a feast. Surely my cup
overfloweth, along with that I picked up The Web of Life by Fritjof Capra.
Bob said:
The Tofflers (and others of their ilk) have been telling us for years their
answers to these questions1 I take it that you don't believe them. McLuhan
observed that what we're experiencing isn't a breakdown, but rather a
breakthrough (presumably to something better).
Thomas:
Not only do I believe them, I've being doing my best to understand them.
The fact that you know of them belies your caustic tone. McLuhan's basic
insight on which all of his later development flowed was the understanding
that different media effect us in different ways creating different
histories. How do the effect us? Certain media's are easier for humans to
perceive with one sensory modality more than the others. For example, you
can see print and a big invention was when the blind could feel print, but
we haven't been able to hear print yet. Therefore McLuhan would say that
print created a societal sensory bias towards viewing the world visually.
When Guttenburg invented the printing press, making print available to
everyone, what was really happening, according to McLuhan was that a whole
period of time was reorienting their sensorial basis. And as that happened,
the world was perceived in a different way and certain things became
obvious. We now call them scientific discoveries. However, reason, logic,
mathematics, statistics, the straight line, perspective, efficiency all
became important and led to changes in how cities existed, money and trade,
law and punishment, in other words when Western Europe changed sensorial
basis - everything changed.
Now, as to your insightful comment re "breakthrough", I take that to mean
that society is not breaking down, but is breaking through and if I can
follow your unspoken thought "into a new sensorial basis".
Bob said:
How would we know? After the fact archaeologists/historians have attempted
to explain other shifts: hunting/gathering to agriculture, agriculture to
industry, church to nation-state, woman as property to woman as person,
USSR to CIS, etc.. I suppose that in every case the dominant paradigm simply
became irrelevant. A few prescient individuals at the time, viewing things
holistically, might have perceived the pattern in events. McLuhan thought
that to be the role of artists of various stripes (societal radar
operators!). Unfortunately their insights were usually recognized post
facto.
Thomas
HOW WOULD WE KNOW? This is absolutely the right question. One way, as you
identify, is to try and go back in history and make assumptions about why
they changed and how would you identify the results of that change. Another
way is try and find those individuals that are able to view/feel/hear the
same world as we do but identify it differently. I choose to believe that
McLuhan was one of those individuals. McLuhan, being modest, assigned that
task to "Artists" and because we have a nice visually based society,
everyone ran around looking at paintings. It's not the medium that makes
the artist, it is the artist being able to express in a medium that makes
art. McLuhan said all our creative people (artists?) are in advertising.
Bob said:
I rather like the notion that we are moving from an electromechanical
pattern of livelihood towards a bioelectronic pattern. This motivates me to
look around for biological models (explanations) of what may be happening.
The evolutionary process that has produced the individual human being may
be moving on to incorporate the environment. Internally our physiological
processes are highly automated and do not greatly concern us, under normal
conditions. Each cell receives its logically necessary entitlement. As I
see developments in biology and electronics converging on information it
has occurred to me that we may be seeing the externalization of these
internal processes.
Thomas
So, after the generalizations comes your best guess. I like it and I like
your explanation. In a technical sense you are alluding to the possibility
that we may be "cells" in an environment and that "Each cell receives its
logically necessary entitlement." IE The basic income could be one way if
that is what is decided is the necessary entitlement?
Bob said:
Books by Beniger (The Control Revolution) and Kelly (Out of Control)
suggest, to me, the popularization of the ideas of cybernetics
(communication and control). Absorption by the general populace of such
ideas, reflected in current art (drugs and music (forms of control!)), may
inspire the changes in consciousness that you seek.
Thomas said:
"Absorption by the general populace of such ideas may inspire the changes in
consciousness you seek." Let me try a McLuhan metaphor. He said that TV
will change a whole generation of children from visual predominance to
auditory/tactile predominance because of the nature of presenting electronic
information in binary code. Let's say for practical purposes the TV did not
start changing significant numbers until 1960, and that we are now
approaching a generation of scientists, politicians, thinkers who are
influencing the critical mass of visual sensorial based people. Many of
those are dying or retiring and the first generation of TV watchers is
beginning to see the world and describe the world in a different way than
could have been accepted in a visual world.
If we were looking for signs of that, we would look for those areas of
stress and tension where there is a conflict. One of the places we are
finding that stress is in our economy. No matter what we do, we do not seem
to be able to make the corrections which would make the economy stable and
satisfactory. What changes have been significant? One of the last changes
was from a gold standard which reflected the old feudal tactile values which
has hung on as an anachronism for 500 extra years. We jumped from that into
a numerical system in which the value of the economy is not expressed in
gold but in dollar value against other currency. In other words the value
is visual. But the problems we seem to be having are relationship ones.
What do we use as a standard to establish a relationship value with other
currencies. Currently we are using the American Dollar, but if for any
reason, faith was lost in that, there is no other standard.
Reading the Web of Life, has presented to me a major conflict in our
scientific world. Though I had known of it before, it is the combination of
your answer and this book and two McLuhan books that have given me the
insight. If we are looking for signs of change and we accept McLuhans
hypothesis that it is sensorial, then we should start to see signs, dim at
first, just like Galileo stood out by himself in his time, of the shape of a
new emerging way of seeing the world. And yes, those who learned the old
truths and have found their niche in the old society will find it very
difficult to even learn there is a new way of seeing the world. The
Bookmen returneth.
System Theory is a way of looking at the world that can use and make sense
of new findings like chaos theory. It is a way of thinking that looks at
life as relationships and levels, at wholes rather than parts. It's history
is out of biology rather than physics. Physics is the epitome of visual
thought.
Listen to some of the descriptions McLuhan gives for the conditions that
develop an auditory predominance.
The new environment of simultaneous and diversified information creates
acoustic man. He is surrounded by sound - from behind, from the side, from
above. His environment is made up of information in all kinds of
simultaneous forms, and he puts on this electrical environment as we put on
clothes, or as a fish puts on water.
or
Acoustic space is created by our ability to hear from all directions at
once. Thus, in effect, acoustic environments were created by the telegraph
and began to show up in the press in mosaics of juxtaposed and discontinuous
items all under dateline. Acoustic space is all touch and interplay, all
resonance and sympathy. Acoustic space is like the relationship of mother
and child,
or
With electronics, any marginal area can become center, and marginal
experiences can be had at any center. Perhaps the city (is) needed to
coordinate and concert (as in draw together) the distracted sense programs
of (the people) in the global village (and) will have to be built by
computers (virtual cities) in the (same) way a big airport has to coordinate
multiple flights.
or
We (have) take(n) the print culture for granted for over two thousand years,
and then suddenly it all ended with our abrupt entry into an electric world
of circuitry in which all of the careful organization and continuos and
connected patterns (of the visual culture, i.e. nation states) were suddenly
interrupted by instant circuits that involved us not just in ourselves, but
in everybody. (else)
So, to summarize this lengthy essay, I concur with your observations and I
hope my interpretation is similar to the meanings you meant to convey. The
beginnings of an outline are becoming apparent. Whether there is a quick
and dramatic shift or whether it is going to take several more generations
is unknown at this moment. One of the distinguishing features may be the
item in today's Ottawa Citizen, I'll type it in because I want it
electronically.
Ottawa Group to create speedier Internet
(subtitle) 'We are going to blow everyone away,' project director says by
Tod Mohamd.
Article from Ottawa Citizen, Page A5 March 1, 1998
Canada could be King of the Internet by the beginning of next year.
An Ottawa-based high technology group has been given the go-ahead to build a
"Next generation network" up to a million times faster than the current
commercial Internet service.
"Canada is going to be a world leader. We are going to blow everyone away,"
said Bill St.. Arnaud, director of network projects for the Ottawa-based
Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry and Education
(CANARIE). The group is leading the creation of the blisteringly fast
"third-generation Internet."
"But this is the Internet - things move quickly, and the Americans could
come along with something a dozen times better," he added.
The federal government announced $55 million in funding for the next
generation network project - tentatively dubbed CA*net3 - in Tuesday's
budget.
Those who haven't even heard of the second generation Internet can be
forgiven. Just last June, CANARIE and a host of university, business and
government partners launched CA*net2, a so-called second generation Internet
that links about 40 research institutions across the country.
CA*net2, like its American counterpart known as Internet 2, is a project
designed to take the Internet concepts back to its roots as a research tool.
It's a response to feelings that the Net's research potential was being lost
as the so-called "Information superhighway" became clogged with millions of
commercial users.
"On the commercial Internet, it's always rush hour. On the new network
there's no rush hour and there are thousands of lanes," said Mr.. St.
Arnaud.
CA*net2, and now CA*net3, will make possible new applications that couldn't
be done on the commercial Internet."
When completed, CA*net3 will be the first Internet run solely on fiber optic
cables. Andrew Bjerring, president of CANARIE, said the system will make use
of "Wave division multiplexing networks" - jargon for using multiple colored
lasers to pump more information along a given fiber optic wire. Technology
like that isn't being applied to the commercial Internet Right now, but the
idea is that it will eventually "seep" into commercial networks, experts
say.
"Roughly speaking... We are aiming for many a factor of a thousand over what
CA*net2 is - speeds a million times faster than what people have at home,"
said Mr. Bjerring.
In practical terms, that means "if you want to download a whole movie... on
a commercial Internet connection, it would take you a couple of hours; on
CA*net2, it would take five minutes. With CA*net3, it would take you maybe
half a second," Mr. St. Arnaud said.
"The capacity we're talking about for CA*net3 could equal the combined
capacity of all existing Internets. That's our target; we'll see if it's
possible."
The high speed network will make all kinds of real-time multi-media
applications possible, including sophisticated medical diagnostic techniques
where patient and doctor are thousands of kilometers apart.
Mr.. St.. Arnaud said CA*net3 will put Canada at least six months ahead of
Internet 2 project in the U. S., which is still not completed.
"Somebody has to be first," said Raymond Neff at Case Western Reserve
University, one of the partners of the Internet 2 project. "The competition
is wonderful."
There are plans to link up the new Canadian super Internet with Internet 2
via a junction near Chicago.
But some researchers are still wondering when all the next generation
Internet will benefit them.
"At the moment we are not officially using see CA*net2, although it could
still be used somewhere on the campus," said Carleton University's new
information chief, Sally Hansen.
"And hooking up to CAnet2, and eventually CA*net3 could also be
prohibitively expensive," said Carlton Prof. David Coll
Pretty interesting stuff, eh!.
