[Villanova University Ignite Change Now]
[Fatal Amusements Nov 3, 2014 Garey Hall - Villanova University]
[Contemplating Contemporary Media]
[Dr. Lance Strate Harron Family Chai in Communication]
[Villanova University does not endorse and assumes no liability for the materials apearing or opinions expressed in this video]
(Applause) (Lance Strate) Well thank you
I don't think, I don't know, does it matter? Do we need the microphone?
do we need them
Can you hear me, you hear me OK?
OK, so we will set aside this prop and thank you very much I am indeed honored
to have been chosen as the Haron Family Chair for this year
and I'd like to thank the NBC family, Provost Mcginty Dean Landmeyer Maurice Hall, of course, (check)
the chair of the department Heidy Rose and Cheryl Bowen and the rest of the
Department of Communication, including the ones who really run the place,
Loretta and Maria.
It's been a great pleasure to be part of this faculty this semester
and especially to spend time
with the wonderful graduate and undergraduate students
that attend here at Villanova.
So I think it's, no doubt, it's something of a cliche
for visitors to begin by making reference to our close proximity
to the birthplace of the US.
And far be it from me to break with tradition.
So let me begin by posing the question: If Benjamin Franklin we're here today,
what do you think he would make of the possibility of Donald Trump as president?
(laughter
Or to put it more generally, what would the founders of the American Republic
have to say about the State of the Union in the 21st century?
Now, I hasten to add that when I speak of the Founders, I want to set aside
all that racism sexism all the other awful isms
that were part and parcel of their times.
I just want to consider them as embodiments of the ideals
that they set forth in their writings.
And you can say I'm being a romantic but this is my thought experiment
so you'll have to bear with me, and so I ask you to imagine what these champions
of reason and rationality, freedom and equality, justice and democracy
would make of contemporary American culture?
What would they make of a culture that's been shaped
by instantaneous communication, that's dominated by the video image,
transformed by the internet social media and mobile devices?
What would they make of the ways in which public discourse
has been altered and influenced by our electronic communications?
Well, let me suggest to you that some of the words that might come to mind
might be: disturbed, disappointed, maybe even disgusted.
And don't get me wrong:
I do think they'd be duly impressed by all the progress that we've made
in science and technology over the past 230 years.
I also think they'd recognize the progress we've made regarding human rights
over the past two centuries,
but I do believe that our founders would express
grave and profound concern about our future
When Benjamin Franklin uttered the ominous reply regarding the kind of government
they had created "A republic, if you can keep it,"
The danger he foresaw was a return to some form of authoritarian government
but what George Orwell depicted in his novel 1984,
that would have been more extreme than anything that Franklin had known
but he would easily understood the basic premise of coercion oppression and fear
under which totalitarian regimes operate. ////
what franklin never imagined in his wildest dreams that the reports that
wrote the Republic might be lost
not by force of arms but by fulfillment of our desire to have fun and he
therefore would have been baffled by the kind of dystopia depicted in Aldous
Huxley Aldous Huxley in his novel brave new world but I believe that he would
agree that Huxley was more prophetic the Norwell a point that Neil Postman
observed in his best-known book amusing ourselves to death so let me quote to
you now from the opening of that book postman wrote
what orwell feared was though where those who would ban books what Huxley
feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book for there would be no one
wanted to read one or welfare those who would deprive us of information
Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to
passivity and egoism orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us
oxley fear the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance orwell feared we
would become a captive culture oxley feared we would become a trivial culture
preoccupied with some equivalent of the Feelies the orgy porgy and the
centripetal bubble puppy as Huxley remarks in brave new world revisited the
civil libertarians and rationalists failed to take into account man's almost
infinite appetite for distractions in 1984 Huxley added people are controlled
by inflicting pain and brave new world they are controlled by inflicting
pleasure in short orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us Huxley feared
that what we love will ruin us now as you may have noticed the title of my
talk fatal amusements is a tribute to the book that post published thirty
years ago and in my thought experiment I'd like to think that Franklin
Jefferson and company would find a glimmer of hope and postman's
explanation of how public discourse is shaped by our media of communication and
since this is my thought experiment I'd also like to imagine that they gain some
additional encouragement from the footnote and follow-up to post mean that
I published last year a book entitled amazing ourselves to death in the old
postman's brave new world revisited I want to believe that
and in all fairness to benjamin Franklin he certainly would have been familiar
with the old saying Nero fiddled while Rome burned which is a popular metaphor
for irresponsible and foolish action in the face of serious events fiddling
while Rome burns has been used in particular to refer to inaction on the
part of political leaders in the face of a crisis but as citizens in a democracy
responsible for governing ourselves there are no solo acts when it comes to
fiddling around we're all playing in the band fiddling while Rome burns might
well have been an alternative title for amusing ourselves to death which postman
wrote not in puritanical condemnation of all pastimes and leisure pursuits nor is
an elitist screed promoting the poor taste of youth today or the loss of
manners or moral standards the problem that post man identified is not that we
seek pleasure or like to have fun or amusements are part of what make us
human
the problem instead is one of context in the context of a city on fire
we ought to expect to serious response from our leaders not a musical one in
the context of certain activities such as a courtroom trial religious ceremony
or classroom we ought to expect a certain measure of decorum and behavior
appropriate to such situations at the very least to prevent their destruction
and in the context of the vital matters that must be dealt with within a
democratic society we ought to expect some serious discussion and debate as a
basis for making decisions
understanding context is at the core of postman's message and understanding
eloquently expressed in ecclesiastes to everything there is a season and a time
to every purpose under heaven postman's argument and is that there's a time for
amusement and it's time to be serious and as our media and technology of
expanded our ability to amuse ourselves we've lost the ability
to distinguish between the two and this blurs the boundaries in favor of
amusement as a consequence we find ourselves suffering from too much of a
good thing we know quite well that too much of the food that nourishes us leads
to obesity that too much of the exercise that strengthens the body can cause it
damaged that too much of a dose of medicine that cures disease can be
deadly
the primary value for any ecological system is balanced and post man
identified late twentieth-century American culture as dangerously out of
balance his reference to death in the book's title amusing ourselves to death
was no mere hyperbole but an indication that our loss of balance had called into
question the very survival of our culture of liberal democracy and even of
humanity as a species so whether the tune we imagine Nero playing was a
raucous fire on the mountain
rendition of hearts and flowers in the face of such nihilistic soundtracks we
might invoke an altogether different more hopeful musical that of Fiddler on
the Roof Inn at musical texture the main character says of himself and his fellow
villagers that every one of us is a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch
out a pleasant simple tune without breaking his neck and while he goes on
to sing about tradition the theme of the play is the need to cope with change
with modernization in the face of events that would have otherwise been entirely
demoralizing disorienting and destabilizing tradition served as a
much-needed counterweight again
context is essential under other conditions and unchecked emphasis on
tradition might lead to a rigid inflexible culture unable to adapt to
changing circumstances so context and balance or two fundamental elements of
an ecological approach to understanding media which is to say that they are
fundamental
to the field of media ecology a postman introduced the phrase media ecology back
in 1968 defining it as the study of media as environments and noting that he
was not inventing the field that it was already in existence and that he was
just naming it and to this side at that the best known most frequently cited
media ecology scholar would be Marshall McLuhan and its famous maximum the
medium is the message can be considered the first axiom or rather the first
aphorism of our field to put it succinctly the medium is the message
asks us to pay attention to how we do things because the way that we do things
as much to do with what we end up doing and with the results of our actions and
with who we are and who we become idea has been expressed in many different
ways winston churchill said we shape our buildings there after they shape us and
the Koolance associate John culkin expanded that as we shape our tools and
thereafter they shape us back in the nineteenth century Henry David Thoreau
remarked we do not ride on the rail wrote it rides upon us and Mark Twain
quipped that when you have a hammer in your hand everything else looks like it
now you know my mother was fond of saying how you make your bad so you
shall sleep which has its origins as a 15th century French proper course the
English version is you made your bed go sleep on it which is more go sleep in it
which is more judgmental s media logical but also in the 15th century the English
rider and pioneering printer William Caxton published a retailing of Aesop's
fables that had the first English version of the same ask a silly question
get a silly answer and it's a fundamental idea and media ecology that
the kinds of questions we ask have quite a lot to do with the kinds of answers
that we obtain
pain but you can find this idea in the Bible as well in the New Testament
Gospel of Matthew Jesus declares all that live by the sword shall die by the
sword and in the hundred fifteen psalm of David there's a passage about the
worship of idols that concludes they that make them she'll be like onto them
yay everyone that trusteth in while the basic idea is an ancient 11 of the
direct sources of inspiration from the Coons famous saying came from the
anthropologist Ashley Montegut who wrote that and I quote in teaching it is the
method and not the content that is the message and not Montacute went on to
declare that the quote that education quote does not depend upon the
transmission of knowledge but upon the manner in which the knowledge is
transmitted by the teacher so from the media ecology perspective a teacher's a
type of medium and the student is the message or to put it another way the
relationship between teacher and student is the medium relationships are media
and the teacher-student relationship is the most important medium of education
of all at this point let me acknowledge them trying to provide a brief
explanation of the field of media ecology but I've already exceeded the
time limit and given for what's come to be known as an elevator speech is also
known as an elevator pitch the concept is based on the way in which in elevator
ride shapes our relationships and discourse given the fact that it's
characterized by a captive audience a relatively intimate space in the
relatively brief duration we might contrasted then to the ways in which our
relationships and forms of discourse are influenced by the characteristics of a
classroom or a living room or a bar room we might also note how all of these
instances differ from the relationships we enter into and the forms of discourse
we encounter when we read a book or go to the movies or you
use social media as you probably have noticed I'm using a much broader
definition of the terms media and medium and scholars in other fields use it
incorporates all of the ways in which we communicate that means and methods we
use the many modes and codes of communication available to us the
situations and spaces the contacts and relationships all of the ways in which
we mediate between each other and with our environment and this includes all
manner of technology and technique not just those associated with communication
but communication is a particular focus because it's central to the human
condition
language and simple uses what distinguishes us from other species
giving us what Alfred Krzyzewski referred to as the capacity for time
finding for preserving knowledge transmitting it to future generations
and evaluating what we know in order to make progress so media ecology
scholarship's are often concerned with the differences that distinguish one
medium or form of communication from another which in turn means that
different media affect us in different ways as the influence and shape the way
that we think he'll act use our senses organize ourselves collectively and
create and maintain cultural continuities this means that the
introduction of a new medium can have profound effects on individuals and
societies and that's because media constitute environments that shape and
influence us in the same way that biological and geological environments
shape and influence organisms and species it follows that media ecology is
concerned with the process of change when you introduce a change into an
interdependent system its effects can give rise to secondary effects and those
two church sure you effects and so on through many generations of interactive
facts that's why we understand that the introduction of a new medium has an
ecological effect not simply added to the old system plus the new medium but
transformative resulting in a change to the entire system throughout the entire
system and because of the complexity of ecological strange we should understand
that some of the effects will be unanticipated on an unpredictable that
we'll never know for certain all of the consequences of any given innovation
this means there'll always be negative effects that accompanied the positive
effects that every benefit will come with a cost and it may well be that the
benefit is worth the cost but does it really make sense to buy into an
innovation without first looking at the price tag the old sales slogan buy now
pay later pretty much sum saw our contemporary approach to technology and
much like buying on credit we never really know how much will pay for our
purchases in the end
given the concern with change media ecology provides us with the way to
understand human history
simply put language and speech are basic to the human condition
systems of notation and especially writing systems are intimately connected
to the transition from tribal societies to more complex forms of social
organization cities kingdoms and empires alphabetic writing and particulars what
gives Western culture what gave Western culture its distinctive characteristics
the invention of the printing press with movable type is closely associated with
the shift from the medieval to the modern era in Europe and the electronic
media brought the modern era to a close moving us into a new era some refer to
as postmodern of course the spells the end not only of modernity but of almost
4,000 years of alphabetic culture and that's why mcluhan once pointed out
pointed to a TV set
and he said the following this is from one of his biographies quoting do you
really want to know what I think that thing if you want to save one shred of
her breakup greco-roman Medieval Renaissance enlightenment modern Western
civilization you'd better get an ax and smash all the sex is being a bit extreme
you might say hi and even postman who was often labeled and died would agree
but the important point is that all the benefits that we've gained from our
electronic media come with the cost we need to know what the cost has been and
what it yet might be so we can start by noting that the first form of alphabetic
writing the Semitic alpha put it as used by the ancient Israelites went along
with the introduction of monotheism and religion based on a sacred texts with
the first historical narrative in the first system of codified law and what
went with it was a generalized conception of justice and human rights
and this was followed by the Greek alphabet which made possible rhetoric
and philosophy theater and theoretical science the first monetary system in the
first form of democratic government the shift from a reality to literacy vastly
increased our capacity for time binding opening the door to significant progress
in all aspects of human life now the printing press amplified the impact of
the written word well introd introducing new effects of its own so given the fact
that Villanova is an Augustinian University you no doubt are thoroughly
familiar with the confessions and what augustine says about the reading habits
of British Bishop Ambrose but just in case you slipped slipped your mind let
me remind you quote from it when he was reading his I glided over the pages and
his heart searched out the sense but his voice
tongue where I rest we see the fact was that silent reading was greeted with
incredible astonishment and it's an indication that reading out loud was all
that people knew about for the almost entirely until the advent of the
printing is highly legible typefaces which made the process of decoding taxed
easier and faster print media also amplified the written words biased
towards individualism and Privacy Act of reading and writing especially when it's
silent requires a high degree of social isolation as opposed to speaking and
listening which is a collective group centered activity printing increased
access to information dramatically leading to a knowledge explosion as well
as increased specialization and standardization and easy access to the
accumulated knowledge of centuries past facilitated scholar ship it spyridon
research and it led to the rise of modern science and with it what became
known as the age of reason the Enlightenment and printing created a
reading public which constitutes the basis of democracy increased access to
political information made it hard to argue that individuals don't know enough
to govern themselves so the breaking of the state's monopoly of knowledge
resulted in the democratic revolutions of the modern era as Thomas Carlyle Road
in the nineteenth century he who first shorten the labor of copyist spy device
of movable types was disbanding hired armies and cashiering most kings and
senate's and creating a whole new democratic world I wish I could do in
English accent is that's really what that requires but printing also fostered
it did foster centralized political economic and social control and the
building of colonial empires
it also made possible the Enlightenment ideals of political emancipation
self-determination equality before the law along with a new emphasis on
individualism rationalism and scientific method so out of the typographic media
environment come we came the Enlightenment and out of the
Enlightenment result we have resulted in the creation of the American republic
which is the first nation to be founded on the basis of a reason
logical argument has put forth in the Declaration of Independence now the 18th
century media environment was one in which the spoken and written word
achieved a fruitful but a delicate balance which is why they're given
special protection in the first amendment freedom of speech freedom of
the press so what happened to public discourse over the past century and a
half but we could boil it down to three factors the first involves images from
the invention of photography to subsequent developments and graphics
film television and video we do take it into an image culture one in which
images have replaced and displaced words as the philosopher Susanne Langer as
explained images do not make claims they don't make arguments they don't put
forth statements or propositions if I say that it's raining outside right now
you can look out there and determine whether that's true or false you can
gather the evidence and image if I show an image though what is it it's a
concrete representation if I show you a picture of a ring of rain out there it's
neither true nor false it can be used as evidence but it makes no claim about
anything
a picture can be tampered with it can be airbrushed photoshopped but it's not a
fake until it's attached to a statement the bias of the image as a symbolic form
favors gut feelings over rap
coherent organization of ideas it evokes emotional reactions rather than rational
thought that's the first factor the second is information and the problem is
that our capacity to transmit and store information has continued to expand over
the past two centuries so that we find ourselves in a time of TMI too much
information otherwise known as information overload media professionals
are well aware of the problem of cutting through all the noise and clutter but
for audiences the problem is making sense of so much stimuli evaluating the
messages determining what small amount of them is really relevant to us and
what small amount of those are actionable the third factor is immediacy
beginning with the Telegraph electricity made instantaneous transmission of
messages possible this contributes to information overload and incoherence
there's no time to sort things out especially as the acceleration of
communication favors rapid turnover against any type of contextualization
and speed gives us an abbreviated form of discourse the sort we associate with
the telegram the newspaper headline the advertising slogan more recently the
text message status update in tweet contemporary critics such as Nicholas
Carr know that there's a significant amount of reading the takes place online
but it's not that deep reading associated with print culture instead
it's a kind of rapid scanning and skimming accompanied by a good deal of
linking and clicking speed also places a new emphasis on efficiency which is
essentially a numbers game based on measurement and statistical analysis and
in this sense the balance between the spoken and written word comes under
assault from another direction in the form of counting and calculation were
caught then between two extremes of image and number of the irrational
and the hyper rational so images information and immediacy come together
as never before with the medium of television with television language
takes a back seat to the image as the medium allows us to see what is
happening for ourselves as it is happening the verbal report is no longer
the main source of information as it was previously it
newspaper reports and even with radio but now the purple report is reduced to
commentary coming after the fact of the live image the difference between a
televised experience in the report can be seen especially in the sports program
as Walter on pointed out the voice on a live television sports broadcast lags
behind the audience's perceptions on also argues the sense of immediacy is
central to the television forum I quote not all television presentations are
simultaneous with reality but in a way to pull television presentation seem to
be the fact that the instrument is capable of such presentations defines
its impact so whereas for example the motion picture always communicates in
the past and it's always something that has happened already
the television broadcast communicates in the present tense instilling in a very
strong form of present mindedness now over the three decades that followed the
publication of amusing ourselves to death Tirmidhi environment has evolved
through the vast expansion of the cable and satellite and through the
popularization of the internet the introduction of the web social media
media mobile technology and some had hoped that our new media would counter
the negative effects of television but I want to suggest that in many ways they
have much in common and as further elaborations of electronic media but
let's consider our longest running reality
shun series you know the one that with the slogan that goes outwit outplay
outlast you know that one if you think I'm referring to survivor the mistakes
understandable when actually referring to could be called who wants to be the
president it's easy to confuse the two
both conclude with all but one player being voted off the island and when so
much of our political campaigning is played out on television is it any
wonder that the host of another reality series The Apprentice could be our next
president this is despite the fact that donald Trump has no government
experience offers platitudes in the place of campaign platform and is not by
any traditional standards eloquence or even all that coherent but he has a
decade of experience hosting The Apprentice and long before that can
spent considerable time and effort on publicity and self-promotion simply put
he knows and much like ronald reagan our movie star turn president from the
eighties donald Trump knows how to look into look into the camera how to talk to
the viewers he knows what works and what doesn't work on the television screen
and this more than anything is the reason for his early success in the
polls along with a certain ability to use new media it's not to say that being
telegenic will guarantee victory but it is to say that anyone who's not very
telegenic will pretty much go down in defeat
regardless of their qualifications and this includes this now incorporates the
use of new media and you can think back to 2008 and the Obama girl YouTube video
and the way that Obama and now Trump has very effectively used interacted with
campaign supporters through Twitter now it may be hard to believe nowadays but
that was a time when appearing on an entertainer
program was considered beneath the dignity of apollo of a serious
politician really now it's a part of every candidate's campaign strategy
fred thompson deter fred thompson just passed away and it's worth noting in
2008 fred thompson whose previous career was a film and television actor went on
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to declare his candidacy for the president
and he wasn't the first candidate to go that route but he did this instead of
participating in the Republican primary debate being held that same night as a
veteran of the big and small screen he knew that a late night entertainment
program hosted by comedian would provide him with a much better platform for
launching his campaign than discussing issues with other politicians and who
can blame them it's simply a matter of choosing which of two forms of
television programming he should go with and selecting the one that has the
bigger audience in our current election cycle being a guest on late night talk
shows
has become a routine for candidates as routine as taking part in debates and
running political commercials and once the election is over image politics
persists as part and parcel of governing promoting policies and political
advocacy he's back in March of last year President Obama appeared on the comedy
program hosted by Zach Galifianakis right between two ferns and his
motivation was to urge young adults to sign up for health care there's no
question that that program was highly entertaining whole areas there's no
question that he was able to reach his target audience the question now is
whether the message he was trying to convey got through it all or whether it
was lost in the context of comedy in stark has and the overarching question
is whether the learning of entertainment and politics makes it all possible to
engage in the serious discourse that's vital to our democracy you know thirty
years ago
broadcast journalists working on network news complain that they had less than
half an hour to report on the day's events they couldn't help but be much
more than the headline service so now we have cable news channels with 24 hour
news cycles and we find that the coverage is not that much different as
it turns out most people to an end to cable stations news stations only for a
limited time so rather than lose viewers they tend to provide repetition in place
of death
the news stories are also kept short out of concern of losing the audience's
attention and essentially essentially Fox News CNN and Ms MSNBC of all
discovered they can build larger audiences by providing more entertaining
programming emphasizing dramatic confrontations confrontations that
resemble not so much sort of pro and con newspaper op-eds but more like
confrontations we see on televised professional wrestling programs the old
adage in TV news was if it bleeds it leads and that perfectly sums up the
fact that decisions on what stories to report how much time to devote them and
where to place them in the broadcast are heavily influenced by the presence or
absence of compelling footage and this trend has been greatly amplified by the
availability of video recorded by smartphones dashboard cameras
surveillance video and the like we find that the caught on camera genre has
become a new kind of news program one whose only rationale is 2% entertaining
video to attract audiences in this way journalism is reduced to a spinoff of
America's Funniest Home Videos but why not after all
television news programs are called shows their show business they have
theme music is music
theme music for the newscasters wear makeup they had their hair styled their
costumes appropriately they become celebrities they appear on talk shows
the appear in fictional movies and TV episodes
blurring the line between fiction and nonfiction you know many viewers
lamented the loss of Brian Williams whose main qualification as anchor the
NBC News was the fact that he looked and sounded like a traditional network
anchor and acclaimed TV critic marvin kitman refer to Williams is Brian the
mediocre and he called it described him as someone a quote
who came across as a nice guy always well-dressed but more of an actor /
model playing a newsman course it didn't matter much by that time who took over
the anchor's chair cuz it was led by that time was longer observed that most
young adults have been getting their news from the monologues of late night
talk shows from Jay Leno and David Letterman at the time you know Walter
Cronkite who anchored the CBS Evening News from 6281 was commonly referred to
as the most trusted man in America but if anyone could claim that title in
recent years I think it would be Jon Stewart host of The Comedy Central cable
program The Daily Show and of course Stewart like leno letterman in others as
a comedian not a journalist which you know certain got to ask if so many
people get their news from comedians that mean the journalism has become a
joke and I think it's particularly telling that when Stewart announced that
he was leaving the Daily Show earlier this year you know who want to the name
was mentioned about who might take over forum Brian Williams I should add that
it's not at all clear that new media provide an adequate substitute Twitter
simply gives us a new form of telegraphic discourse while YouTube
Instagram our new manifestations of image culture the internet contributes
in a major way to information overload and does not provide a forum for shared
a shared forum for discussion and deliberation really what it does is it
situates us in isolated silos that intensify the divisions in american
society
offer contrast the recent visit of Pope Francis to the united states right the
leader of the Roman Catholic Church is a serious individual who communicates a
strong sense of dignity compassion and moral authority he's not someone who was
chosen because of his ability to perform for the television camera or to share or
his willingness to share personal details via social media he's not a
celebrity not an entertainer and I want to tell you that I personally was very
moved by the Interfaith service that he led at the 911 memorial back in
September but I have to confess that I watched it on CNN was sitting on the
couch in the living room wearing pyjamas sipping coffee and eating a bagel and
when it was over I change the channel
how different then was that experience from watching appointment moving on HBO
what happens to religious experience when it becomes televised or tweeted or
Instagram as Walter on the explains sound is intimately connected to our
sense of the sacred the human voice
the most distinct and unique element of the human person is produced by breath
which is closely associated with life itself in hebrew the words for breath
and winds are synonymous with spirit and soul both human and divine it is worth
asking therefore if it makes a difference if the voices heard in song
and prayer are breathless in a sense of being electronically disembodied the
problem is always as one of context participating in a religious ritual
Lisa sauce in a special context that's different from all about context it
situates us in the distinct media environment one that asks us to play
different roles and play by different sets of rules whether the location is a
church a synagogue temple or mosque or outdoors religious experiences Mirchi
Aliotti explains is characterized by a sense of sacred space and sacred time
separate and distinct from profane space and time into the deep meaning of
sanctification and consecration traced back to the Hebrew word Kadosh is to set
up heart to differentiate so what happens to our sense of sacred space and
time when congregants in the pews here a cell phone ringing receive text messages
or even stop to answer them our experience of the sacred is associated
with the still small voice of God as described in the Bible with quiet and
silenced many religions incorporate some form of silent prayer in their worship
services and silences in to grow to contemplation and meditation during the
20th century especially in the aftermath of the second world war there was quite
a bit of discussion about concerning what was referred to as God's silence
and on suggested that it may not be so much that God is stop start speaking to
us as it is that our electronic media generates so much noise that we've
drowned out that still small voice now whether religious spiritual experiences
conceived of as communion with something greater than ourselves whether it's a
personal day D or transcendent understanding of the universe whether
it's just a matter of an inner journey a soul-searching sort simply an effort to
better understand our own minds and consciousness the loss of silence in the
constant deluge
of distractions can be nothing short of devastating to our collective spiritual
health as well as our prospects for cultural survival now when it comes to
education schooling has always been about learning to read and write
television in the electronic media offer us a different and incompatible
curriculum and so it's worth asking if it's in the best interests of young
children to spend time playing with tablets and smartphones and watching
programs such as Teletubbies poop and Yo Gabba Gabba you know cable television is
given a specialized educational programming via the National Geographic
Channel The History Channel the Discovery Channel this is private
provided a wonderful avenue for the dissemination of documentaries but what
audiences are specially drawn to our programs such as moonshiners ancient
aliens UFO files and then Estrada mass effect on the Animal Planet channel two
specials entitled mermaids the body found and mermaids the new evidence he
gave the cable outlet its highest ratings in its seventeen year history
and these fake documentaries were assumed to be real by many so many
viewers so many viewers that they prompted the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration to issue an official statement stating that mermaids
do not actually exist it's almost too easy it's just too easy but I'll do to
mention the learning channel TLC which achieved its highest ratings by turning
to reality programs such as toddlers in tiaras and its notorious spinoff here
comes honey boo boo you know the most recent fad in higher education has been
the massive open online course abbreviated as much
a move can contain as many as 100,000 students that raises the question of in
what census muka course what sense is the instructor really teaching it's
revealing I believe that the acronym move is a variation on other new media
terms such as mmm RPG that stands for a massive multiplayer online role-playing
game in other words the primary connection is with gaming not schooling
and came in can be educational but the question is can learning be reduced to a
game or are we talking about grand theft education well as another in variation
on the inside that the medium is the message Hannah Arendt insisted that I
quote there are no dangerous thoughts thinking itself is dangerous so the
question we're left with is to all of our amazing new media technologies allow
us the space in the time to pause and reflect and think things over here is
our ability to think drowned out in a flood of images and noise and pushed
aside in favor of calculation and automation at this point you might
imagine that if we could travel back in time and show benjamin Franklin how
things turned out he might have put his kite back in his closet and not ventured
out into that thunderstorm to unleash the power of electricity but I think
it's more likely that he would have sat down to write up some ideas about how we
might still be able to keep our republic what we would have to do to counter the
bias ease of the brave new world his discovery would unleash it would begin
with something along the lines of McCune statement mcluhan wrote there is no
inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is
happening with you see contemplating the contemporary media environment is one of
the main purposes of media
ecology scholarship and as for postin he was well aware of the flaws and failures
of american society but as a proponent of Enlightenment ideals he believed in
its promise and potential to do agree he would agree with abraham Lincoln's
characterization of the American experiment is the last best hope on
earth but it also echo lincoln's concerned about a nation so on happily
distracted but now it's not the horror of civil war that has sidetracked us
rather we find ourselves diverted from a higher calling but a constant stream of
entertainment information and innovation post comments argument speak to the
future of humanity in its entirety especially in this era of convergence
and globalization and again it comes down to the question can we think and
can we talk about what we're doing and where we're going we live in the midst
of a temp this by which I refer to the turbulent nature of the electronic media
environment as it's a digital technologies wave after wave of changes
to our mode of communication and interaction or tools for thought and
social action have altered and continue to alter our societies and cultures as
well as our psyches and ourselves as human beings we are certainly well
equipped to survive a passing storm but it's far from clear whether we can build
a sustainable way of life in the midst of permanent upheaval be a natural or
cultural how are we to survive while keeping our humanity intact that's the
fundamental question raised by postman and by the field of inquiry he called
media ecology now there's no turning back the clock no point in arguing that
we abandon our media and technology and try to retrieve an earlier age or less
advanced way of life nor does it make sense to deny that there are legitimate
benefits that are inventions have brought us what we need to do
then is to engage in concerted evaluation of what we're doing how we go
about doing it to carefully weigh the costs and benefits of our technologies
to consider what are the appropriate uses of our media and what uses might be
inappropriate to proceed with caution understanding that our innovations will
always result in unanticipated affects many of them
undesirable and to provide just a few practical suggestions we need to
strengthen our commitment to the spoken word to conversation public speaking and
oral performance and reading out land as well we need to place greater emphasis
on the written word on literacy and the practice of deep and sustained reading
that requires significant periods of quiet time at which takes effort so one
example is the pioneering efforts of the movement to observe a weekly technology
sabbath write a day when you turn everything off
ultimately though what's needed is cultural change and that ought to
include strengthening the four cornerstones of the American American
experiment all of which were products of literate culture and the typographic
media environment that is democratic politics a free press
religion and schooling as Shakespeare's play The Tempest includes the line 0
brave new world that has such people in it and that's where huxley took the
title of his prophetic novel shakespeare's main character prospero is
a powerful sorcerer living in exile and like prospero we possessed extraordinary
powers through the use of media and technologies that are nothing short of
magical shakespeare concludes his play with prospero finally willing to give up
his sorcery in order to embrace the world of rationality and reconciliation
with family and community can we do the same perhaps not entirely abandoning or
gifts but being mindful of their contacts
and our need for balance to once again invoke ecclesiastes there is a time to
weep and a time to laugh at time to mourn and a time to dance time to
embrace and a time to refrain from embracing a time to keep silent and a
time to speak but promised that the electronic media environment we inhabit
in that environment the time is always a uniform 24 7 365 and the season never
changes so can we make the time and can we create what mcluhan referred to as
counter environments safe spaces where the biases of the electronic media to
not hold sway such as can be found in sanctuaries and sacred spaces in schools
classrooms and sites devoted to art and creative expression against the fact
that we've been fiddling around as we are amusing in forming an amazing
ourselves to death can we find the means the method the way to start speaking and
thinking and teaching ourselves back to life that's the question I leave you
with thank you very much
well I think that when you talk about journalist says as people some are some
of them are are very much on the side of cultural change some of them lament the
situation
postman's book amusing ourselves to death was one of five books that tom
brokaw he was the guy who was the anchor of NBC Nightly News before Brian
Williams the email listed five books that every journalist should read and
amusing ourselves to death was the only book that wasn't specifically about
journalism so I and that critique was very popular among serious journalists
but you know the problem they face is that is organizational where they're not
able to do what they want to do so I wouldn't put the blame on on journalists
but I get there is this kind of technique that goes with the whole
organization of media industries that pushes them towards working with the
bias of the media not against it so I mean the answer from a democratic point
of view is it's us we're the ones who you know I was a Gundy said be the
change you want to see in the world and I think you know also echoing post
minute and others education is very much a part of it that it starts through
education it's what we try to do and what we try to instill in our students
the you know anyone to hold out some hope because in some folks take from
this you know conclude that it is hopeless I think it's difficult it may
take something catastrophic to wake people up but at the very least there's
the idea of let's preserve something of you know in the sense of when you have
dark ages at least let's have some places
those where people are still enlightened and and certainly it starts with schools
thanks you know I I try I felt like I was saying I was writing this I felt
like how many times should I say that there are benefits and it's i mean but
and the problem is that the benefits are clear to people for the most part and
the problem is recognizing the cost but certainly access to information can be
very advantageous and can be with parading the ability for people to
organize I think it is a very powerful benefit of the new media so that people
who are there's a kind of empowering people who are on the margins and able
to to organize themselves for political action so I mean I think there are
definite benefits that what you're asking and it but I think that you know
again I mean what we find is that people really to do all those benefits i mean
you know how many times have you heard how much access to know how wonderful it
is that you can say hey Google and get whatever the answer to any question you
have everyone knows that that's that's that's easy you know and I perhaps less
obvious but I think you know certainly significant is the fact of people being
able to connect with one another and especially for individuals who feel
isolated from one reason or another that that's a powerful boon for the problem
really comes down to how to find that balance and how to say no because we
just have this tendency to just keep going in the same direction and keep
going and keep going
Joseph wise and pound he was the head of a professor of computing at MIT back in
the sixties he created one of the first artificial intelligence programs little
program called allies
mimicked a psycho rosier aryan psychotherapist and just reflected back
what people were saying and he found any thought that this was just like a goof
and then he found that a lot of people in this office we're like leave me alone
I'm talking to allies and and you know and even worse that the American
Psychological Association hearing about this came out with this idea that
wouldn't it be wonderful if we had computer kiosks so anyone in need to go
to one and get psychotherapy and wise and pound said usually worry we don't
use too much thought you said just because we can to something ought we to
do it right and that's the question we don't so that's why I mean I think the
question is what's appropriate what's the appropriate use and I think that's a
reasonable question what is appropriate
what's not appropriate
the other side of it is what's effective and what's not effective in these two or
not don't go together because sometimes what's effective is you know may be good
for the immediate purpose but not in the long run so I can see that
what's appropriate right i mean we all know the phenomenon of spending all your
time taking pictures and not experience what's what's actually going on so I
mcluhan in particular so are as as essential and as away as a kind of way
way to educate ourselves about media because he believed that he argued that
media were extensions of our senses art speaks to our senses and helps us to see
how are using our senses so this is not so much about art but you know again we
wouldn't expect against talk about democracy for example we wouldn't expect
that a treaty is negotiated on a week we don't find the question of how to deal
with Iran way out of that threw me through art I mean it's a different it's
not the appropriate medium or the appropriate approach to do that sort of
thing so it's not about art so much as it is about knowing when it's time for
art and when it's time for something else
22
be employed
one hand it's just a progression and it's not that newspapers where three of
criticism they had their faults as well but then reading the news and print had
a different set of biases than seeing it on television so it's a natural
progression from nightly news to comedy programs because they really are about
eliciting responses gathering audiences eliciting responses rather than trying
to arrange things in a coherent and logical manner so it's all relative so I
mean compared to what used to be the nightly news it's it's further sliding
further downhill but it's not that the nightly news was that was particularly a
great way to get news either you know there was a time when no serious person
would say that they got their news only from television if you ever heard of the
the novel being there by Jerzy Kosinski the movie they made out of it it was
like the big joke in the novel was that this one fellow says I like to watch and
that people said it's so refreshing to see someone who says they get their news
from television actually read it into the character but I don't know if you if
you remember or noticed a man who is this moment when Katie Couric was
interviewing Sarah Palin and she says well where do you get your news from
what newspapers do you read and she couldn't answer to all I read all of
them right
could tell she was just bullshitting right i mean that she couldn't answer
and more recently I forget who was it someone asked a trump you know what
who are as military involved Bazar what does he get his military advice from an
800 i watch the shows I mean this is a problem it's also a problem by the way
as PowerPoint which is also saw the usual
medium no supe seriously they found this a major problem for the military
that the pentagon there they look at the power points they don't get the
explanation and they think they have that's what people say it's also in
business they say oh I mister talking I C you can you know Casey your PowerPoint
and its abbreviated its visual but they don't get the context
condemnation
story is the latest version and of course what can be harder than trying to
get a young child to sit still I mean it goes completely against the grain
you know that's why we have to learning to read and write is completely
artificial learning to speak and listen isn't that's natural to us reading and
writing is artificial and its fragile for that great reason to keep trying to
find ways to make it fun and you know and get some game applications just the
latest version of that and the problem is that with all these attempts to use
formats whether it's that or sesame street and posting was an early critic
of Sesame Street as being all about advertising formats you know that it
really was more about that than anything else
it teaches that's what it teaches that you know it's the manner not
content so it teaches game playing and I love playing games I spent when I was
younger I spent many a late night on computer games in and I still play like
plants vs zombies and in some of these other games not angry birds they're
stupid but you know but they're not that that's what they teach you they teach
you how to play games and that's very different from learning to read and
write I tell you when I was two years ago and posting was still alive I was
teaching and M a class and I had him in as a guest lecturer he was my mentor or
and really friends and I wanted to play devil's advocate so I and my son was
just a few years old they said you know he's watching he's watching Sesame
Street and he's learning letters and numbers from Sesame Street and postman
said well you know lance and they're only 26 letters in the alphabet and
children have been able to learn this for thousands of years without the
benefit of television and that's really the case so you know i mean it's very
hard to do
education is very hard so you know where we love to look for technologies to try
to make it easyer but in the end it's the teacher and the student that's what
it comes down to