Media, Technology and Society.

“Electromagnetic technologies require utter human docility and quiescence of meditation such as befits an organism that now wears its brain outside its skull and its nerves outside its hide. Man must serve his electric technology with the same servo-mechanistic fidelity with which he served his choracle, his canoe, his typography, and all other extensions of his physical organs.” – (McLuhan, M. 2011, p86).

McLuhan’s view can have some truth in the sense of man becoming dependent on technology, this much is clear despite opinion. If tomorrow all electricity disappeared, permanently switch off mankind would be at something of a standstill, obnoxiously arrogant in its need for technology. But it state that man must be a slave to it, and treat it with the care we would a part of our physical form is sceptical. It wouldn’t be an understatement to say man has become a slave to technology, but that doesn’t mean we “must” be.  Man survived without it, and although it can be argued that it is an essential part of modern life man doesn’t need it to survive. Modern society might, but man in his physical form does not.

Williams argues that this point that technology is not vital to man, nor is it in control of our lives, but that it is a luxurious product to be enjoyed by society.

 “Technology is not autonomous, nor is it ‘symptomatic’....technological devices or systems are not the inevitable cause result of either clear consumer demand or their own inherent logic... Television did not supersede cinema because it improved picture quality, but rather because it chimed with the broader economic and cultural move towards a more domesticated and privatised everyday life.”  - (Williams, R. 2011, p92).

This shows his opinion differs from McLuhan’s in that developments in technology are not always due to a social requirement, and certainly not because they choose, demand or are destined too, but because they make everyday life for the consumer and society more leisured. Although it wouldn’t be farce to say its inquisitive, curious and greedy human nature that wants new technological products, and often describes it as ‘need’.

McLuhan however defends his point by using examples of human dependence on materials to the point that man is reliant on certain resources to sustain society.

“For society configured by reliance on a few commodities accepts them as social bond quite as much as the metropolis does the press. Cotton and Oil, like radio and TV, become ‘fixed charges’ on the entire psychic life of the community. ” – (McLuhan, M. 2011,  p85).

This is a fair statement. Without these resources’ society would struggle to adapt to survive, this much is undeniable. And because of our reliance on them they must be bought, paid for constantly, like a ‘fixed charge’ such as petrol, clothes, and obviously TV licensing.  McLuhan later states however that the advances technology is creating a change. A change that in this age provides society with greater means to interact and communicate. This change however, may not be positive.

“Every culture and every age has its favourite model of perception and knowledge that is inclined to prescribe for everybody and everything. The mark of our time is its revulsion against patterns. We  are suddenly eager to have things and people declare their beings totally. There is deep faith to be found in this new attitude – a faith that concerns the ultimate harmony of all being.” – (McLuhan, M. 2011,  p84).

Williams however, states that this thought process is a very optimistic and over exaggerated outlook. With McLuhan’s views that the introduction and substitution of these materials for the same resources would be the cause of force of change, and that this change provides a greater expansion of freedom upon man are a very ideological view.

“For Williams, McLuhan’s ideas are idealist and ideological: Substituting the technological products of social and economic forces for those forces themselves as the motor of historical change.” – (Williams, R. 2011,  p92).

Williams dose note that the invention and development of technology is an imperative part of history, but even if the world had not seen the inventions of technologies such as the television or computer, we would probably have seen different means of technological entertainment.

“If television had not been invented, certain social and cultural events would not have occurred...(but) this argument runs, we would still be manipulated or mindlessly entertained, but in some other and perhaps less powerfully....The effects of the technologies, wether direct or indirect, foreseen or unforeseen , are as it were the rest of history. The steam engine, the automobile, television, the atomic bomb, have made modern man and the modern condition.” (Williams, R. 2011,  p94-95).

In conclusion, with both Williams and McLuhan making fair points and examples of their arguments, the truth would lie in-between both views. Man dose no need technology like he needs organs, and technology is not an McLuhan says, an  physical ‘extension of man.’ It is however, essential to modern life and society, and therefore a very profitable business. Also, it has, for better or worse, opened many doors to the way society works and change is inevitable with these ever increasing inventions.

Biblography

Williams, R. The Technology and the Society, in Giddings, S. and Lister, M. (eds.) (2011) The New Media and Technocultures reader, London and New York, Routledge.

McLuhan, M. Selected material from Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, in Giddings, S. and Lister, M. (eds.) (2011) The New Media and Technocultures reader, London and New York, Routledge.