"Technological Determinism"
Toronto School
Theory of Transformative Technology (Michael Heim)

Focus of the theory: pattern watching

affordances: what a technology makes easy

constraints: what a technology makes difficult

"The medium is the message."

Refocuses of attention on the large-order effects of media as technologies rather than on content.

"Any medium has the power of imposing its own assumption on the unwary. Prediction and control consist in avoiding this subliminal state of Narcissus trance. "
 

McLuhan, Understanding Media 1964

• Hot media extend a single sense in high definition (alphabet, print)
• Cool media are low definition, multisensory (orality, television)

"Electricity does not centralize, but decentralizes. It is like the difference between a railway system and an electric grid system: the one requires railheads and big urban centers. Electric power, equally available in the farmhouse and the Executive Suite, permits any place to be a center, and does not require large aggregations."

"The medium of money or wheel or writing, or any other form of specialist speed-up of exchange and information, will serve to fragment a tribal structure. Similarly, a very much greater speed-up, such as occurs with electricity, may serve to restore a tribal pattern of intense involvement such as took place with the introduction of radio in Europe, and is now tending to happen as a result of TV in America. Specialist technologies detribalize. The nonspecialist electric technology retribalizes."

Primary orality (folk poetry) affords:

• Narrative
• Concrete, memorable images
• intimate tribal relationship with knowledge
• cool medium (McLuhan)

• abstract argument
• lists (except as poetry)
• accumulation of scientific knowledge (except as apprenticeship)
• technical illustration
• worship of novelty

Phonetic alphabet represents an accurate, easily learnable system -- takes literacy out of elite status

Affords:

• complex deductive reasoning
• discussion of abstractions (justice, honour, evil, etc.)

MS literacy constrains

• stable texts
• widespread literacy
• repeatable illustration

Readiness conditions:

• appropriate technologies
• paper
• metallurgy
• press technology
• phonetic alphabet
• market: educated middle class
• concentration of capital

Affords:

• cumulative knowledge (scientific/technical journals, eg Proceedings of the Royal Society of London)
• knowledge as ownable commodity (first mass produced product of capitalism)
• stable graphic illustration
• indexes, alphabetical order
• headings, divisions, paragraphs

Print literacy constrains:

• Interactivity and participation (because it's a hot medium?)
• Internalization of knowledge
• Free flow of knowledge (through commodification)
• Mythos (replaced by logos)

• narrative
• interpersonal
• multisensory, involving, "cool"

• still one-to-many, centre-to-margin
• entertainment media only
• little effect on archival or interpersonal forms

Affords:

• integration of graphics, text, sound
• easy personal publication
• rapid linking
• broad access

1. Do we lose our ability to process complex abstractions?

1. Does knowledge lose its authority?

1. Is copyright sustainable?

Can knowledge continue as a byproduct of capitalism?

1. Does webtext continue the evolution of mass media?

The visual incorporated into the textual: "the revenge of the text on television" (Michael Joyce)