I've been reading Understanding Media and thinking about how McLuhan's theories about hot and cool media apply to the internet. It's clear that with its combination of "hot" text and "cool" electronic communication and participation, the internet does not fit neatly into either category. But does that mean that McLuhan's theory doesn't apply to the internet, that it breaks down in our new media atmosphere? Or does the mixing of "hot" and "cool" online make the internet "lukewarm"?
I think a good way of understanding the internet in McLuhan's terms is with the description used in a Pop-Tart commercial I remember well from the '80s, which seized on the phenomenon of how the burning sensation of freshly-toasted fruit filling searing one's tongue is indistinguishable from the similar "burning" coolness you feel when your tongue is stuck to ice. The overstimulation of your senses in one direction leads to an inverted experience of the sensation. And so, Pop-Tarts are "so hot, they're cool -- so cool, they're hot."
That's what the internet is like. It is, I believe, an inherently "hot" medium -- so hot that we've come to experience it as "cool." The internet's heat comes from its inherent characteristics:
- high definition (computer screens)
- high density of data
- high specialization (specialized function of transmitting text, images, and sound)
- intense engagement of a single sense (sight)
- high degree of fragmentation (on millions of web sites)
The internet's "cool" attributes have to do with its apparent effects:
- high audience participation
- unification of time in a continuous present
- inclusion of all
- retribalization
These "cool" effects have all come about precisely because of the internet's extreme "hot"ness: it's the "hot" qualities of data density and intense visual engagement that bring about the "cool" sensation of unified time and instantaneousness; "hot" fragmentation that is causing "cool" retribalization and all-inclusiveness; and the "hot" specialization of computer technology that requires "cool" participation. The extreme hotness of the internet makes it "feel" and in some ways behave like a "cool" medium. But it still lacks the essence of "cool"ness.
McLuhan theorized that electric technology would deliver us out of the literate (often misconstrued as "rational") mindset of mechanization back into an intuitive ("irrational") world, where myth, the "total field," non-illusionistic art, structure and configuration (as opposed to linearity), and oral culture would gain ascendency. But I don't see that happening. Sure, the internet's intensity creates a kind of buzz that gives a feeling of iconography, mythology, simultaneity, and complex structure; but, to me, in practice the internet mainly displays the characteristics McLuhan assigns to traditional, Western, "mechanized" culture: fragmentary, superficial relationships; sequentiality; the hiding or denying of causes; an over-focus on "point of view"; attention to specialized segments of information; the divorce of form and function; and written modes of communication.
McLuhan warns that cultures always make the mistake of trying to use new technologies to do the work of the old. That's what we're currently doing with the internet by using it as the medium for our same old literacy-focused culture. It's not impossible for the internet to "cool down" so that we can bite into it without burning our tongues; but in order for that to happen, I believe it would have to evolve dramatically from what it is today. It's fun to think about the ways in which people initially "misunderstood" how to use the internet -- which suggests that we "get it" now. But I think we're still mistaking a "hot" medium for a "cool" one. That's a mistake that may have some disappointing consequences.
2 comments:
Re: The hotness or coolness of the internet. I agree that the high definition available from the internet would lead us to believe that it is a hot medium. However, the intense user participation that most web access requires (from active surfing to actually responding to a web post like I am now) would imply that the internet is "cool." I suggest that the coolness factor outweighs the hotness characteristic.
Hi there - yes – but I'm wondering whether the kind of "participation" we do with the internet does not qualify as "cool" participation, but is just an illusion caused by the internet's true "hot"ness. It seems to me that the kind of participation McLuhan sees as “cool” is really participation in completing the FORM of a medium. TV is “cool” because the eye must participate with it by filling in details in order to complete its data-poor analog images; film is “hot” because its high definition does not require the eye to do any such participatory completion. The internet, saturated with data and high-def technology, does not require us to participate in its form. It’s possible to just click around, reading and looking just as we’d read and look at a (“hot”) book. When we do participate by writing our own text, uploading our own videos, etc., what we’re actually participating with is the internet’s CONTENT – no? And according to McLuhan, content is irrelevant. If this is so, then not only is participating in content not “cool,” but it actually contributes to the hotting-up of the internet by causing it to become even more full of data.
Post a Comment