McLuhan and Autoamputation

Or: how could you miss the blooming obvious?

It’s heartbreaking to realize that so few people seem to take McLuhan’s work seriously, or at least, serious enough to actually analyze what the man is saying.

Most of his readers and fellow media theorists seem to be completely lodged on the idea of content-less media, and completely ignored McLuhan’s broader point: technology has a greater effect on mankind than who uses it. In the case of media, the existence of the media has a greater effect than what the media portrays. As with the written word, thus with television.

And thus with social media.

So many of McLuhan’s critics and detractors hyperfocus on the absurdity of CONTENT being unimportant, and obsesses over McLuhan’s statements about societies being unequal when it comes to how technology is received. Rarely do I see anyone discussing McLuhan’s broader points: the changes in the ratio of the senses that technology causes, and how this applies to television vs radio. Or, even more importantly, electric technology vs. the written word.

In truth, the same people who reject the thesis that media itself is more formative than content have, as McLuhan points out in Understanding Media, have disregarded how their own minds are shaped by media. Moralizers, be they left wing or right wing, lack the insight to realize that their own propriety is based on societies which have been built by the literary. Censorship and the obsession with content is ultimately an attempt to restrict modernity to the literary age: but electric technology despises centralization. It is social entropy, an explosive force that bursts outward technologically while causing a social implosion. The instantaneous nature of electric communication and entertainment ensure a sense of both interconnectedness and individuality that previously did not exist.

It is unfortunate that even today, media critics and theorists seem unable to fully cope with the actual effects of automation, instantaneous communication, and the projection of the central nervous system outward. So many analysts only see media as a means of communication, and they want it to communicate THEIR message and THEIR social values. What escapes them is that the VERY EXISTENCE OF ELECTRIC MEDIA REORGANIZES SOCIETY IN NEW WAYS. The fact that THERE CAN BE A CNN is more important than what IS COMMUNICATED BY CNN. Television is the beginning of new social developments and rapid changes in not only WHAT media portrays, but HOW it is interpreted. The effect that undergirds electric media is often attributed to content: in fact, something much greater is going on.

And that of course leads us to McLuhan’s ideas about what media DOES. Gadgetry and technology are NOT mere tools: they are extensions of the human body. They are, in essence, a part of us. Similarly, they evolve in their use just as human societies do. But the changes enacted BY TECHNOLOGY ON HUMAN SOCIETY and ON TECHNOLOGY BY HUMAN SOCIETY often become blurred. Man builds machines but machines also builds man.

And this gets to the meat of things: changes in the ratio of the senses. Technology exists to extend certain ratios in human sense perception while dulling others. McLuhan refers to this process as “autoamputation”: we heighten some senses and dull others in response to social irritants. In many cases, the irritants are unconscious, but pervasive. Ultimately, these alteration in the ratios results in changes in human perception, INCLUDING THE PERCEPTION OF TECHNOLOGY. Originally, the phonograph was seen as a tool for specialists and researchers: soon, it became a means of entertainment and distributing music. Television was originally a tool developed for use by the government: now it has became our major means of receiving both entertainment and news about the outside world. Computers, once little more than oversized calculators and data storage machines, have consolidated all other forms of technology into individualized tools of personalized communication.

But of course, in modernity, we take not only the effects of previous generations of technology (for example, the written word, automation, the telegraph, and even radio) for granted, but we have thoroughly failed to correctly understand the effects of more recent technological advances. The continuous obsession with the Joe Friday “just the facts, mam” approach to both censorship and social media content proves that most professionals, even in the world of media, have failed to learn anything from the last sixty or seventy years of rapid development. In some senses, it is precisely because of this rapidity that we are still attributing the effects of media merely to its content, and not to its form. The idea that the structure of media affects not only the viewer but how the media itself is portrayed seems to fly over the heads of journalists, scientists, artists, and even media personalities.

In modern news media, for example, the ads are the “good” news according to McLuhan: and thus, why the rest of it must be so negative and focused on doom and gloom. Strange that communists have scarcely noticed that in a consumer society, the ads are the gospel and the rest of the news doom and hellfire. But perhaps their blindspot is the result of their own complete dependence upon media and print propaganda. After all, a bit of McLuhan and Baudrillard makes one realize that seizing the means of production is neither a utopian dream nor an impossibility, but a blatant misunderstanding of the realities of technology: one does not seize the means of production, but rather they seize us. Communism is a reaction to automation, a last gasp of hierarchical enlightenment thinking in the face of the coming electric age. And with electricity comes postmodernism and the endless field of “theories” and “studies” destined to usurp leftist propaganda.

And here we can see the effect of electronic media on the world of academia. TV, after all, is a “cold” media, and one can argue that social media is even colder yet. Increasingly, electronic entertainment demands constant participation in a world of interconnectedness and lateral relationships. Videogames, Netflix series, Facebook, Twitter, all involve investment from the viewer, and create a feedback loop of viewership and commentary, creating a world of constant participation and loose identities. McLuhan says cold technology rejects a “hot” personality, as seen by Nixon vs. Kennedy. Nixon was an old dog, a grumpy stoop-backed specialist who was far too consolidated in his role as a long-time political force to be appealing on the television screen. He looked a cropper next to the smooth, loose, and open personality of Kennedy. TV demands a personality that is a process, not a product. If someone gives the vibe of being a doctor, a lawyer, a plumber, a trucker, and an artist all at once, he is perfect for TV.

What better form of academia for such a subzero world is one of diffuse, loosely defined specialties? Academia is, after all, the byproduct of the literary world, the world of hierarchies and compartmentalization created by the printing press and the written word. But electronic media resists specialization, and automation resists centralization. TV and social media have only accelerated the disintegration of the literary world and the hierarchies of specialization that it depended on. We now see a transition away from defined specialties and towards loosely defined fields of study whose necessity is often vague, yet ubiquitous. Perfect for the post-electric age.

Academics, of all people, ought to be able to trace these changes to their environment and thus, to the impact of electric technology, but their inability to do so seems one of the chief reasons that so many within the managerial blue-check class of journalists, writers, and analysts completely misunderstand social media. There is a lingering “boomerism” when it comes to perspectives on social media, in particular with regards to the regulation of content. Literal boomers up into the current millennial generation regard social media as an extension of the “objective newsroom”, the Kronkite world of “that’s the way it is”. The fact that such a world never existed seems unbearable, and the idea that the electric world of interconnectivity makes such a notion obsolete has either not occurred to them or is disregarded before it sets their neurons to firing. Interconnectivity destroys the concentrated centers of journalistic investigation: once seen as paragons of truth, journalists now seem vestigial, and increasingly cagey as this realization slowly dawns on them.

When it comes to “fake news”, most people pick and choose. Block chains, algorithms, and the ability to tailor-make ones newsfeed ensures that any social media user can essentially live ensconced in their own reality. Just the facts we say: but you can select which ones you believe. More and more, social media users find themselves becoming tribal over the pettiest interpretation of the most insignificant of current events. When everyone lives in their own reality, conflict is inevitable. McLuhan predicted implosion, tribalism, and violence: what else can one say about our current age if not that?

Even more interesting than that is the response to this apparent conflict: everyone believes themselves to live in a world run by their enemies. Leftists and Rightists both believe the media is controlled by the opposition: that they and their enemies might both be mutually correct is the more significant revelation. The real “red pill” is not that the world is inherently Left Wing, but rather, that such labels are a distraction from deeper realities. The winner in the political struggle is never the Right or the Left, but rather entities that are much more difficult to classify.

In the modern era, we are indeed amputated: we have heightened our sense of social awareness and dulled our sense of self. The Matrix is far too simple an analogy, but instead, we are the victims of something more akin to lobotomy.