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Marshall McLuhan’s critical look at “Technology and Political Change” in the 1952 International Journal proved to be a rather deep and dreary read. And if you haven’t already connected the irony of the topic and language therein with the publication’s title, I invite you to do so at this time.

If you haven’t already read the article, let me help shape or frame the idea that seems to center this piece. “Mental starvation in the midst of plenty is as much a feature of mass communication as of mass production.” Much of what McLuhan has to say centers on the idea that mechanical reproduction in any form—newspapers, radio, or broadcast—has made the masses slaves to ‘here and now’ and that the past is easily forgotten. He argues that newspapers, more than broadcast, have this effect on culture.  

More on Lerner

While I tend to take a lot of what Mary said about Western or American jingoism and agree with it, I couldn’t help but feel that Lerner’s (1958) definition of empathy contained nuances that are worth exploring more. Lerner picked an interesting part of the world to make his argument, but nonetheless he offered a descriptive, if biased, view of the transition from traditional society to a modern western-influenced society.

Cybernetic theory and homeostasis. Wiener's world.

Norbert Wiener delves into the world of nature, science and mathematics to find support for his cybernetics theory. A child genius, Wiener was very intelligent and was very knowledgeable in a number of different fields including mathematics, medicine, engineering and sociology. He was one of the first to see the coming of the computer age and the importance of information as it deals with not only the means for education, but also the means for social control. Here in lies the duality of the advancement of artificial intelligence; the ability for good and evil simultaneously. Wiener warned that just as the Industrial Revolution had replaced the hand in a factory with a machine, so would the next mechanical revolution replace the human mind with a machine.

Macdonald Vs. Bell: contrasting views about mass culture and mass society

             The two readings that were more interesting for me this week were #53 “The Theory of Mass Society: A Critique from Daniel Bell” (p.364) and “A Theory of Mass Culture” from Dwight Macdonald. They caught my attention because their contrasting views about mass society and mass culture. In one hand, we see Dwight McDonald totally criticizing and even condemning the creation or the origins of mass culture. It is clear the differentiation he makes between the high culture of the elites and the mass culture or kitsch. He sees this mass culture as being originated from the degradation of high culture expressions and even considers it as “cheap and vulgar”. In addition, he considers the mass culture as being numb and totally dominated by the “lords” who seek to maintain control over the mas in order to gain more profit.

             On the other hand we see a totally different perspective from Daniel Bell who criticizes the theories of mass culture and even thinks that the theory only contributes to accentuate the role of elites and their supposed hegemony over culture and the “mass”. After considering what it was presented in those readings, I tend to be more in favor of Daniel Bell thoughts. Firstly, I do not believe in this notion of “atomized, anonymous” individuals with no opinion or voice. As Bell mentioned, nowadays we see so many different organizations where communities of people are formed to fight against social injustices, raise funds to help the poor or fight against cancer. Are those examples of mass society loosing human quality? I personally don’t think so. Moreover, all these communities have such more tools and ways to promote themselves, make people join their causes that I don’t think they are “anonymous or detached”. Secondly, while MacDonald consider the idea of the “democracy of the cheap and vulgar” in which less cultivated or meaningful art it is distributed, Bell sees democracy as an expression of people having more access to cultural expression such as books, movies and concerts which give them more opportunity to have criteria, judge and share their views with other people.

            Since, those two readings are contrasting I tried to found common themes on them and made a table to illustrate how they talk about similar aspects but with a very different perspective. I am looking forward to read any comments you might have about your impressions after the reading and I hope we can expand more on this during class. 

“A Theory of Mass Culture” Dwight Macdonald	“The Theory of Mass Society: A Critique” Daniel Bell
The advancements of technology made possible more production of books, periodicals to satisfy the market and those adapted and designed for mass distribution	The notion of the mass culture as being originated by mass production and industrialization and the shift from individualistic to atomistic have long years of development. Moreover, the human creativeness and adaptive spirit has allowed the creation of different unions
Mass culture is the culture of common people and it is vulgarized version of the high culture. “There is nothing more vulgar that sophisticated kitsch”	The theory of mass society is just a “conservative defense of privilege”
The Lords of the kitsch (mass culture) are the ones who exploit the needs of the mass to make profit or to maintain hegemony over it. My understanding is that Macdonald wants to imply that masses have no voluntary control over the actions and are totally subordinated to the authority of the “Lords”.	The notion of atomized societies as a distant or isolated group of individuals with no connection between at all more than just being part of a mass, there is abundant evidence of the opposite in the U.S. There are numerous voluntary organizations, associations, clubs, societies, lodges and fraternities.
Mass culture is an instrument of culture dominance. In the U.S the mass culture is characterized by entertainment	Mass media as it shapes culture can’t be seen as just a tool for imposing ideas. It has to be valued and recognized as a way in which people can learn from events. Otherwise, how people would know about events happening? I think the author implies here that it is not only about entertainment but also about people getting better informed about events and news.
Mc Donald defines mass culture as the force that “dissolves cultural distinctions” (Peter & Simons 2004). The result of this phenomenon is “homogenized culture”. It is seen negatively as destroys values because those imply discrimination. Is “too much” democratic	How we can conceive mass culture or mass media as uniformity given that when individuals are exposed to cultural materials they react in a personal way, which is “meaningful” to this set of experiences?
Masses lose their identity and human quality	If is true that the audience of movies can be “separate, detached and anonymous” we can’t use the term mass opinion because according to Bell, individuals are not “tabula rasae”. Individuals share and discuss and have criteria of what they’ve seen with friends or colleagues. In addition, they are member of distinct social groups.
They can’t express themselves because they have lost face and they are only united by a “distant, abstract, nonhuman” reality. It is a “solitary atom, uniform and undifferentiated”. Mass culture is in the “mood of consent” Ortega y Gasset and Eliot consider mass culture as “the revolt of the masses”. Popular is equal to cheap and vulgar.	Ortega sustained also that the cultural standards have declined. However, more than ever people participate in cultural activities according to the authors. In addition, the rising levels of education, the considerable amount of money spent in concerts and books are also clues of people becoming more actives consumers of culture.
There is a clear separation between high culture and elites and mass culture and its kitsch for the author. However, the author mentions that those lines are blurred in the U.S.
Academicism and Avantgardism were the two tools high culture and elites used to defend “against” mass culture. The mass culture creates idols of consumption. Kitsch is being exemplified in movies from Hollywood hat are “bad qualitatively but impressive quantitavely”
The effects of kitsch are harmful and are exemplified in the negative effects of comics reading between adults and children. For the adults, produce a regression that enhances infantilism. For the children, it overstimulates to grow up very fast.

From Here to Where in the Future?

My original intentions were to write about Marshall McLuhan and the newspaper. How he focused on writing as a political revolution that changed the nature of social communication. That here was this huge shift from oral communication to written and the mass effects that printing brought upon society like the reproduction of textbooks and how that changed the way peopled study from live audiences to private analysis.

As I thought about the huge shift of written communication replacing oral, I kept thinking back to an earlier piece by Harold Innis, Industrialism and Cultural Values, and his critical vision that "Each civilization has its own method of suicide". As he speaks of modern civilization he goes through a brief history of cultural development in the West showing that uniqueness of culture and elements which make for duration and extension. He goes on to say that cultures will reflect their influences in terms of space and in terms of duration and that the limitation of culture are in part a result of the inability to muster the intellectual resources of a people to the point where stagnation can be avoided and boredom can be evaded.

In the beginning for many cultures, architecture and sculpture was designed to emphasize prestige. Over time though, the writing on clay became the basis for communication which lead to trade and power. Sargon of the Akkadians brought religious communities under control with writing which lead to the capital at Babylon. Assyrians brought new technological advance in warfare and then became the dominate force  until they were taken down by Persia. This goes on and on until Innis states that "Greek culture was destroyed in the growth of writing and of individualism in the latter part of the fifth century."

This got me thinking as to what could our downfall be here in America?  Will the adoption of a new form of communication ever overtake our culture and backfire because we weren't ready or it wasn't the best move? Will the internet be the death of the printed newspapers?  Will everything become digital and streamed so we won't need actual cable for television? Will this gigantic move to digital communication ever backfire on us, causing us to loose all the information that we've stored up in "the cloud?"

I found this video produced by Microsoft that displays their vision for the future. Although it's two years old, you can see a few of their predictions already come to life (face-timing, scanning a poster to make an instant donation, little things here and there) but the overall complexity of this synchronized communication is incredible and unfathomable to me.

As Lindsey asked in her post, will the newspaper ever go away? I looked in this video and could not find one trace of paper in the entire thing. I somewhat find that scary that we rely so much on electronics but maybe it truly is the way of the future. I just hope it's not the downfall of our society in centuries to come.

Kumbaya, Namaste and Lerner

What was happening in the Middle East in 1958 when Daniel Lerner wrote Modernizing Styles of Life: A Theory? A quick check of the topic on Google and you get the picture. Revolution and assassinations in Iraq, fears the chaos would spread to Lebanon and Jordan, U.S. and British troop movements, concern about the Soviet influence and, of course, oil.

Fast forward 55 years and it doesn't seem much has changed. I would think by now, if Lerner's theory of modernization is correct, our collective empathy would have resulted in world peace. Namaste.

Lerner uses the term "psychic mobility" to describe the path to the future where modernization (read westernization) helps us experience and understand the lives of others. Mass media is the tool that helps us spread the word and teach others how to behave and how to participate. Once the world has made the shift to the modern global village, (read western), we can all hold hands and sing Kumbaya.

You can probably tell there was a great of deal eye-rolling going on when I read this chapter.

Certainly, Lerner would find evidence supporting his theory in the use of Twitter as a tool used by activists who drove the Arab Spring movements in Egypt and Tunisia. In an article in Wired, correspondent Sam Gustin says social media provided a spark for the match.

"Did social media like Facebook and Twitter cause the revolution? No. But these tools did speed up the process by helping to organize the revolutionaries, transmit their message to the world and galvanize international support," writes Gustin.

Yet, even with the help of today's powerful tools of mass communication, we are far from the global understanding Lerner envisioned. Part of the reason may be that Lerner's view of modernization is just too parochial. It suggests the American model is the best one and that American communication systems are the best route to spreading modernization around the globe.

Clearly, the complexity of world politics belie Lerner's views. And modernization doesn't necessarily mean we all need to live in the same village and speak the same language. Mass communication gives us access to new ideas. But that doesn't mean western culture can be or should be the answer.

Louis Wirth makes many excellent points about mass communications in his essay Consensus and Mass Communication but it was his writings on global mass communication which I thought had a very good point, especially in an age such as today where any form of media, no matter how remote the location, can unite, inspire, mobilize or shock the world.

Wirth wrote, “The instruments of mass communications, particularly the radio, and, it seems soon, television, combining the faithful transmission of the voice with that of the visual image of the human face and gesture, are particularly well suited to supply the means of understanding across the borders of sovereign state” (pg. 252).

What is the newspaper’s role today?

In 1952’s “Technology and Political Change,” Marshall McLuhan describes the role of the newspaper in society from his perspective. He takes the newspaper from being a simple record of daily happenings to seeing the newspaper as fulfilling an “existential” mode, “metaphysically.” As someone who used to work in the newspaper industry before it was seriously struggling, I can appreciate his insightful words about the impact of the newspaper at his time (except for maybe the “gossipy” part): “Its impact is that of the very process of actualization. The entire world becomes, in this way, a laboratory in which everybody can watch the stages of an experiment. Everybody becomes a spectator of the biggest show on earth – namely, the entire human family in its most gossipy intimacy.”

In this piece, McLuhan both commends the newspaper for being a “space-binder” yet critiques it for its inflexible connection to a “date-line.” He says the newspaper “created a one-day world,” “embraced the whole planet,” and is able to juxtapose simultaneously in its columns “events from the next block with events from China and Peru”; however, it is “handicapped” by not being able to cover “not only many spaces, but many times, or history, simultaneously.” He wonders why the press is willing “to be as surrealist as possible in its handling of geography and space, while sticking rigidly to the convention of a date-line.”

Now, the newspaper is being forced into a 24-hour news cycle in order to compete with other media, and newspaper websites are therefore blurring the lines of those “date-lines.” The day a particular story was posted online doesn’t so much matter to readers on a hunt to find information; their end goal of finding the relevant article will simply correspond with a timeline they expect. Also, with newspapers not staffing reporters or editors overnight, they are essentially still sticking to their date-lines and allowing major online news sites to have the first crack at breaking news at off-hours.

I really enjoyed McLuhan’s description of the newspaper as a “laboratory in which everybody can watch the stages of an experiment” each day, and I think McLuhan would be sad to see that today the newspaper does not have as much of an impact. The Internet has essentially replaced the newspaper in that role, as people can watch and read as events unfold before their eyes. So, I ask the question: what role does the newspaper play in today’s society if it’s no longer the one medium that can serve as a “space-binder”? Many people argue that the newspaper is no longer necessary and will eventually cease to exist. Part of me hopes that is not the case, but even I don’t subscribe to any newspapers – not even the one I used to work for. For me, I think the newspaper should always exist, even if it’s just to have a hard copy record of the day’s major events. I honestly believe that obituaries are the most important part of the newspaper’s offerings to the public and that they should be printed daily.

McLuhan also discusses the major problem with communication that we have today: “all the networks of human communication are becoming so jammed that very few messages are reaching their destinations.” We hear this all of the time now – that our attention span is shorter, and there are so many advertisements coming at us that rarely any of them manage to catch our attention. If only McLuhan could see us now – I don’t think he would know what to do!

Watching the news we want to watch

The five ideals in the article A Free and Responsible Press written by the Hutchins Commission (1947) (as cited in Peters and Simonson, 2004) seemed as pertinent today as they were when the report was published. In the article the commission presents ideal requirements that responsible news media should practice to satisfy a free and informed society.  A brief summary of the ideals are that:

1. The media should be truthful and accurate. This includes separating facts from opinions.

2. The media should also publish information and ideas that are contrary to their own.

3. Social groups should be accurately represented.

4. Reporting should present a realistic depiction of events. Mass communication should be an instrument of education.

5. The citizenry should have full access to available information.

While reading this article I couldn’t help but wonder how the mass media of today fares with regard to these ideals. Do the 24 hour television news channels even meet any of these ideals? To fill 24 hours, CNN, Fox and MSNBC offer hours of punditry and news commentary. Rather than just presenting the news, it is often presented through the filter of a pundit. I think it is challenging for the average viewer to distinguish where facts end and opinions begin. Program hosts can flavor their broadcasts with whatever findings they want and to confirm their own biases. The consolidation of media ownership has also created a lot of group-think within each of these media outlets. And it is difficult to see whether such media is actually educating the population in the way the Hutchins Commission suggested. 

A study conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University found that viewers of the three main news outlets, CNN, Fox and MSNBC, were less informed about domestic and international events than listeners of NPR and viewers of Sunday talk shows. In fact viewers of The Daily Show scored higher on knowledge of current events than viewers of any of the three main 24 hours news channels. Most interesting, however, was the fact that viewers of Fox News actually scored lower on the survey than those who watched and listened to no news at all. 

The study’s survey also found that ideological news sources, like Fox and MSNBC, were mainly just speaking to one particular audience. Rather than offering countering opinions and an accurate representation of events, they were more likely to focus on presenting information in a way as to entrench their audience’s already existing views. 

 Peters, J.D. & Simonson, P. (2004) Mass Communication and American Social Thought: Key Texts, 1919-1968. Lanham, MD: Rowman Littlefield.