Perception. Technology. Electronic Media. Message

"The medium is the message," or so we were told in 1964, as an explanation of the emerging phenomena of mass media via advances in electronic communication. Were he alive today, Marshall McLuhan might be less quick to advance his radical notion, or at least more circumspect in his phraseology. As an academic, he certainly understood the need to 'train perception,' yet was too glib in his attempt to prove another of his sayings: "The future of the book is the blurb." Unintentionally, he left us with a bumper sticker thought accepted into the lexicon, but without value over the long haul. The man apparently lacked perception.

Certainly there were many advances being made in electronic technology that he knew would impact on the culture of the future, and in his book Understanding Media, he devoted whole chapters to television, telephones, weapons, housing and money. As a futurist thinker, he was supposedly disturbed that amid all these technological changes, mankind was "shuffling toward the 21st Century in the schackles of 19th Century perceptions." Yet, instead of providing a reasonable expose and guidepost, he inadvertently destroyed the one concrete historical element necessary for 21st century man to acquire and retain perception. He gave the medium predominance, with no consideration to the message he sent...that content didn't matter.

Forty years later we continue to reap the bitter harvest sown by miniscule and massive electronic gadgetry, mass media shrunken to worthless chatter, and messages filled with state sponsored propaganda, advertising sales pitches, or entertainment geared to low expectations and the lowest potential comprehension. It proves McLuhan correct - in our age the medium (television) is all important and the message nothing more than garbled static when there is a message at all. Is it any wonder we refer to our society as dumbed down?

It is a given, that the intellectual pursuits of most people demand the most frivolous of activities. Their greatest desire is to be entertained rather than to be informed, and the electronic marvel of television has provided them with the golden ring. Since the key to television is the images it provides, it stands to reason that what is accepted without question are the multitude of images rather than substance - in politics, in journalistic news offerings, in celebrity, and even in children's educational and cartoon offerings which are possibly the best marketing gimmickry ever invented, as character-based toy sales figures can attest.

Sly and pervasive, television has been a boon to advertising for every product know to man. It has expanded the lucrative season for every college and professional level sport. It has, along with other electronic based technology like the internet, play stations, and interactive games, become the baby sitter of choice. But its greatest benefit has been gained by the propaganda groups, the manipulators or public opinion, the behind the scenes image and king makers of politics. There are very few homes in our society without at least one television and most have almost as many sets as there are rooms. We are only a single step away from leaping into the middle of Bradbury's book Fahrenheit 451. Ironically, 451 degrees is the temperature at which paper burns, because electronic media has replaced well crafted and content filled books and newspapers at the same time it provides little information or knowledge.

Too bad that McLuhan was prophetic rather than wise. Had he truly foreseen what mankind would become under the influence of the electronic wizardry offered today, he would have stressed that the true message of this modern day medium was that people would grow more gullible, more insipid, and far more stupid. But that would not have been as memorable a bumper sticker.