Networked media marks a profound change in the relationship between creator and consumer. As [Marshall] McLuhan emphasized, the specific form of any widely adopted medium evolves human cognition; networked media is evolving human cognition in directions unfamiliar to programmers and producers of media product that have come before. In addition to the multiplicity of programming elements, and the increased complexity of the creative process they beget, our perceptions of how networked media effectively "rewires" our brains and behavior, in McLuhan terms, must be addressed. - Word of Mouse: The New Age of Networked Media, by Jim Banister
I saw an excellent presentation last Friday at the LA Futurists (affiliated with Bay Area Future Salon and also the Accelerating Change conference - just a reminder to use code AC2004-CROSS for discount) by Jim Banister, author of Word of Mouse: The New Age of Networked Media. (More comprehensive notes later this week, I'm stressing the cognitive changes and literacy needed in this post.)
Jim's lofty goal with the book was to develop a shared language and common framework so that Hollywood and Silicon Valley can have a conversation with each other. He's definitely a bridge-builder. And it's obvious from his presentation and his book that he truly understands "networked media", including the Internet although his background is in 'traditional' media having worked at Time Warner, Disney, BBC and Steven Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah project.
From spending more time with his book since the presentation and reading up on Marshall McLuhan (I realize I never did truly understood the famous 'The medium is the message' statement - and it's worth understanding from any innovation angle as McLuhan defines anything from which a change emerges as 'media'.)
"[I]t is only too typical that the "content" of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium." (McLuhan 9) And it is the character of the medium that is its potency or effect - its message. - from essay from McLuhan Program Program in Culture and Technology, University of Toronto
We are undergoing cognitive and societal changes at widely differing paces as we make the transition from "programming" and "marketing" and "distributing" and "vending" and "producing" in traditional linear and interactive media to the networked media world. I think Banister's taxonomy and framework will be useful to explain why you cannot simply graft traditional media's business models and marketing practices and other processes onto networked media - it's a radically different beast.
"[I]t is only too typical that the "content" of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium." (McLuhan 9) And it is the character of the medium that is its potency or effect - its message. - essay from McLuhan Program Program in Culture and Technology, University of Toronto
I heard Tim O'Reilly at last year's Accelerating Change conference say he was invited on a tour of the extensive data center that MP3.com had built - back in the dot com heydays and pre-Napster - to host their services. Their thinking: We have all the songs. A college kid named Shawn Fawning had a different mindset - that of someone whose mind was shaped and influenced by the characteristics of networked media - and he had a different thought: I don't need to have the songs - all my friend's have the songs. (For Napster naysayers, Banister does include 'commerce' as part of the framework.)
Banister talks about the skills and literacy needed for this networked media age. He stresses that "programming" television versus the internet require a "different composition of literacy." Traditional media companies are also gearing up to train their workforces for the skill sets needed in an increasingly digitized and networked age, according to my sister whom I also visited while in L.A. (she works in training and development for a major media company).
The chapter that drew me the most in the book was titled "Symphonic Literarcy and the Feminine Touch" (excerpts below):
Eastern philosophies like Taoism and Buddhism maintain, among other things, that the way to intellectual, spiritual, and physical health is through a synthesis of the feminine and masculine - the ying and yang. But for thousands of years, civilization has been lopsided in favor of the masculine...I must stress that the terms "masculine" and "feminine" are used here in their transcendental sense. Every human is a blend of this dual set of characteristics in varying compositions. "The masculine is sovereignty," St. Germain once said, "the crown upon your soul. Femininity is humility and unconditional love, the heart within the breast of your soul, and together they make the whole soul essence." These traits are applicable to media as well as to human beings...
I find it fascinating that the media itself and our interaction with it is evolving us as humans towards greater personal integration of the yin and yang, the receptive and the active. I thought it ironic that Jim's book publisher (in his taxonomy, books are a "static media" and not even in the same family as radio, TV or internet) had him remove the chapter on the feminine because "it was too woolly" and only on Jim's insistence put some of its content back in within the chapter, "Symphonic Literacy and the Feminine Touch."
McLuhan's "message" [as in 'the medium is the message'] is roughly equivalent to what in this book I call "programming," and I agree with his famous axiom, but with a critical difference. Corned beef is corned beef (the programming or the message), but it affects our taste buds differently oon rye bread (one medium) than on plain white bread (anotehr medium). The medium and the message have equal impact in reconfiguring human cognition; for linear and interactive mass media to date, McLuhan's tenet could read "the medium is the masculine message."Contrast networked media like the internet with television: television is a masculine, paternal "take-what-I-give-you' medium; whereas the internet is nonlinear, interactive, and community-oriented, and infinitely deep and mysterious. Networked media like the internet are feminine in nature. Programming each requires a different composition of literacy. Networked media are shifting the balance back toward the feminine...
This evolution is reflective of a shift in the culture from the profoundly masculine to the sublimely feminine - a swing in the balance of power between the different halves of human nature, one that businesses and media programmers will have to heed, consciously or accidentally, to be prosperous in the networked age. The change has nothing to do with political correctness. It's something much broader and authentic. This shift in viewpoint will likely be as profound a human development as the transition from the Middle Ages to the Age of Enlightenment...
The advent of these new media is pulling society back to a more centrist position - a balance of the two sets of characteristics. Institutions would like to relinearize our behavior and relinearize media itself. It is in their nature to do so. They were born from a masculine template...
Networked media like the internet are capture (masculine) and nurture (feminine) media. In traditional media, for example, an oligarchy of sorts has controlled the programming. In networked media, oligarchies don't work. Networked media require programmers to listen to and engage humanodes [humans that are nodes in the network]... - Word of Mouse, by Jim Banister
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