06 March 2001Copyright © 2001, South Wind Design, Inc. The Laws Of (New) Media: Marshall McLuhan And Knowledge Technologies Dale Hunscher, CEO South Wind

06 March 2001 Copyright © 2001, South Wind Design, Inc.

The Laws Of (New) The Laws Of (New) Media:Media:

Marshall McLuhan Marshall McLuhan And Knowledge TechnologiesAnd Knowledge Technologies

Dale Hunscher, CEOSouth Wind Design, Inc.

06 March 2001 Copyright © 2001, South Wind Design, Inc. Slide 2

Marshall McLuhanMarshall McLuhan1911-19801911-1980

McLuhan was a Canadian academic, a literary scholar whose studies of the effects of advertising and of print media blossomed into a new discipline of media studies

Far from being an ardent technophile, his attitude toward technology was decidedly ambivalent!

McLuhan’s insights into the effects of media on our culture—and ourselves!—grow more useful every year


What Is A Medium?What Is A Medium?According to McLuhan, media are the

extensions of our senses, our bodies, and our minds

As the caddisfly larva manufactures its “shell” of stones, the bird its nest, the spider its web, Homo sapiens manufactures media to protect him/herself from the world

There is a price, however—media also deprive us of direct experience of the world!


The Mediation Of The Mediation Of ExperienceExperience

McLuhan believed that media form the all-important ground against which all our perceptions and actions are figure

Because they “mediate” all human experience, media play a vital role in determining the conceptual framework of a society or culture

Only recently have media begun to change at a rate fast enough to be detected by those experiencing their effects!


Media And The SelfMedia And The SelfSensory Inputs

Physical Outputs

The Self & Its Conceptual Framework

Eye Ear Nose Tongue Skin

LocomotionSpeech Gesture

Media

Media

Media strengthen, refine, and distort

our outputs

As carriers of information, media magnify, filter, and

distort inputs to all our senses

A McLuhanesqueView Of The Self


Media And KnowledgeMedia And KnowledgeQ: What makes a medium “cool” or

“hot”?A: Cool = Low Definition…

Less Information…More Audience Participation

Hot = High Definition… More Information… Less Audience Participation

Q: So do hot media excel at knowledge transfer, since they provide more information?A: Not necessarily! In fact, not likely!


Media And KnowledgeMedia And KnowledgeConsider these media with which most

of us are familiar (with their McLuhan “heat ratings” in bold):

Lecture: HotSeminar: CoolLab: CoolerLife Experience: CoolestThere is appears to be an inverse

relationship between McLuhan’s concept of heat and the knowledge we seem to gain from a medium!


Media And KnowledgeMedia And KnowledgeKnowledge is not an inherent property of

content—More information does not automatically translate into more knowledge!

Knowledge is the extension of your conceptual framework as the result of stimuli you receive—stimuli that come from the message and the medium.

Extension of the conceptual framework can’t be forced by any amount of information—you can’t know something you’re not ready to learn!


The Laws Of MediaThe Laws Of Media

McLuhan posited four Laws of Media, framed as questions we can ask about any medium:What does it extend?What does it make obsolete?What does it retrieve?What is its reversal potential?


ExtensionExtensionWhat does the artifact enhance or

intensify or make possible or accelerate? This can be asked concerning a wastebasket, a painting, a steamroller, or a zipper, as well as about a proposition in Euclid or a law of physics. It can be asked about any word or phrase in any language.

- Marshall McLuhan and Eric McLuhan Laws Of Media


The Extended The Extended PhenotypePhenotype

In genetics, an organism’s phenotype is the outer manifestation of the tendencies inherent in the genetic material

The extended phenotype is the reach of genetic tendencies beyond the organism into the external world—e.g., a bird’s nest, a spider’s web, or the caddisfly larva’s stone house…


Media As Man’s Media As Man’s Extended PhenotypeExtended Phenotype

Media act as humanity’s extended phenotype by extending our sense, motor, and mental capacitiesReify: from the

Latin res, thing: to treat an abstract concept as a concrete object or entity.Evanescence:from the Latin evanescere: the tendency to vanish like vapor.

Thought and experience are evanescent

Media allow us to reify (and thereby capture) them for later consumption


Examples Of ExtensionExamples Of Extension

Writing extended speech over space and time

Arithmetic extends our capacity for measuring and balancing

Libraries extend our capacities for memory and recollection


ObsolescenceObsolescenceIf some aspect of a situation is

enlarged or enhanced, simultaneously the old condition or unenhanced situation is displaced thereby. What is pushed aside or obsolesced by the new “organ”?



ObsolescenceObsolescenceMedia extend the same few senses and

motor capacities over and over again—there haven’t been any new ones for a while!

Therefore new media must displace existing media, extending the underlying sense or motor organs in different ways

The older medium doesn’t die, however…

More typically the older medium will be transformed, continuing to exist but with different content and purpose


Examples Of Examples Of ObsolescenceObsolescence

As writing had made speech obsolete, print made writing obsolete

Double-entry bookkeeping obsolesced simple arithmetic

Libraries rendered memory enhancement techniques (rhetoric, Memory Palaces, etc.) obsolete


RetrievalRetrievalWhat recurrence or retrieval of earlier

actions and services is brought into play simultaneously by the new form? What older, previously obsolesced ground is brought back and inheres in the new form?

- Marshall McLuhan and Eric McLuhan

Laws Of Media


RetrievalRetrieval

Media differ in their structure, focus, and pacing, but ultimately they draw from the same wellsprings of perception and action as earlier media

Therefore, every new medium retrieves some characteristics of older media, incorporating them as content!


Examples Of RetrievalExamples Of Retrieval

Print retrieved tribal universality of knowledge

Accounting software obsolesced double-entry bookkeeping, retrieving personal knowledge of finance

The World-Wide Web retrieves the Homeric encyclopaedia—a tribal store of knowledge


ReversalReversal

When pushed to the limits of its potential … the new form will tend to reverse what had been its original characteristics. What is the reversal potential of the new form?



ReversalReversal

Claude Shannon showed that information exists in the tension between order and chaos—both total order and total chaos contain no information

McLuhan maintained that media inevitably become overheated as we adapt to them and imbue them with too much regularity and order—resulting in death by enthalpy!


ReversalReversalWhen a medium becomes subject to

too many rules or constraints, the informative capacity of the medium decreases, causing it to “overheat”

When enthalpy progresses too far, reversal is inevitableThe original extension advantage is lostThe resultant discomfort brings the

medium from background to foregroundThe medium undergoes transmutation…


Examples Of ReversalExamples Of ReversalWith its epitomization of orderly

thought, print necessarily reversed into humor and graffiti

Accounting software becomes overly complex, reverses into the ultra-simple—e.g., expense organizers running on handheld computers

As the World-Wide Web over-commercialized and over-commoditized content, it began reversing into Webcams and Weblogs


Media Foundations Of Media Foundations Of Knowledge Knowledge

TechnologiesTechnologiesBefore we can apply the Laws of

Media to knowledge technologies, we must expand our mental model of the self

Since the death of McLuhan in 1980, new media have emerged that extend ever more refined capacities of the human organism


Sensory Inputs

Media

Media

Conceptual Framework / Current Context

Inference

Model-Building

Pattern Recognition

Discrimination & Classification

Physical Outputs

The Unconscious


Story Generation & Interpretation

Memory

Recollection


Problems

Solutions

A Post-McLuhanesque View OfMedia And The Self

Arithmetic &

Symbolic Logic

Organic View Updated Organic View Updated For New MediaFor New Media


SGML And XMLSGML And XMLSGML extended our pattern recognition,

discrimination, and classification capacities by standardizing the syntax of semantic markup across OS/HW platforms and human and computer languages

SGML obsolesced proprietary text markup, retrieving implicit semantic implications that had been lost to formatting concerns

As SGML became overheated through over-specification (Groves, HyTime), it reversed to become XML!


The Role Of XMLThe Role Of XMLXML obsolesces both document

processing and data processing, retrieving the unity of data and documents that prevailed before computers

XML reverses into SML et al.XML-based vocabularies in turn

extend our model-building capacity, obsolescing code-embedded information models


Sensory Inputs

Media

Media


Inference

Model-Building

Pattern Recognition


Physical Outputs

The Unconscious



Memory

Recollection


Problems

Solutions


Arithmetic &

Symbolic Logic

XMLExtends

These

Domain-Specific XMLVocabularies

Extend This

Media View Of XMLMedia View Of XML


RDF And XTMRDF And XTMBoth RDF and XTM extend our model-

building capacity and provide a foundation for inference

RDF works from the inside out, XTM from the outside in

By applying them, we construct primitive conceptual frameworks

They obsolesce META tagging and retrieve the flexibility of our innate semantic abilities

What will they become when they reverse?


The Place Of RDF And The Place Of RDF And XTMXTM

Sensory Inputs

Media

Media


Inference

Model-Building

Pattern Recognition


Physical Outputs

The Unconscious



Memory

Recollection


Problems

Solutions


Arithmetic &

Symbolic Logic

SGML &XML

XMLVocabularies

RDF/XTM(Foundations)

RDF/XTMNetworks

(Substance)


The Semantic WebThe Semantic WebThe Semantic Web is a “machine-

readable” successor to the current World-Wide Web…

…but there are really two facets of the Semantic Web—a human-centric facet and a machine-centric facet

From the user’s viewpoint, the Semantic Web will have two goals:Do what I meanFind what I mean


The Domain Of Media The Domain Of Media ProxiesProxies

The machine-centric facet of the Semantic Web will be the exclusive workplace and playground of our media proxies

Media proxies are more or less complete extensions of our selves—software-based androids, if you will—that operate independently and autonomously in cyberspace…

…the logical conclusion of a process of extension that has gone on for 100,000 years!


Media Proxies:Media Proxies:Automata As Actors Automata As Actors

And AudienceAnd AudienceExisting media proxies exhibit very

limited intelligence, performing pattern recognition, discrimination, and classification

For example: automata such as bots and spiders manipulate media on our behalf—media interacting with other media as our proxies!

What could they do if they were more intelligent?


Media Proxies: Media Proxies: Eliminating The Need Eliminating The Need

For Universal For Universal StandardsStandardsReasonably intelligent media proxies

will come into being primarily to fulfill their “killer app”:Intelligent media proxies can eliminate the need for universal standards!

Picture a world where automata can actually communicate with each other, negotiating meaning dynamically!

What would such a world be like?


Media Proxies:Media Proxies:The Next Step In The Next Step In

Machine IntelligenceMachine IntelligenceCommunity Building

Imagine your new home connecting you and your family with others in the area with similar interests, even working with other intelligent homes to arrange get-togethers to welcome you into the community

Energy Conservation

Imagine a region wherein all energy-using appliances share knowledge of energy usage patterns and collectively plan how to work together to minimize cost and environmental impact

Medical Diagnosis

Imagine a world in which the doctor’s office, hospital, pharmacy, and plan providers inter-operate to minimize costs and risks while maximizing quality and timeliness of care

Research

Imagine a world where your natural-language queries are answered cooperatively by a global network of libraries, working with you interactively to clarify and further specify your desired results



Machine IntelligenceMachine IntelligenceHow can proxy media be extended

through knowledge technologies to meet the requirements for truly intelligent machines?

A medium that extends our entire selves is a quantum jump from our current technology

Tools such as DTD/schema repositories, RDF databases, and topic map repositories are necessary but not sufficient!



Machine IntelligenceMachine IntelligenceQ: What currently distinguishes machine intelligence from human intelligence?A: Thus far, computer intelligence lacks two things…. 1)A robust conceptual framework (a vast

and extensible store of cultural and “common sense” knowledge)

2)The contextual tools to initiate, maintain, and refine complex sequences of action based on high-level goals (i.e., stories, plots, or scripts)



Machine IntelligenceMachine IntelligenceTechnologies like RDF and XTM provide us with languages for describing semantic networks—useful standards for sharing ontologies

Efforts like CYC have begun to lay the semantic foundations for a truly robust conceptual framework…

…a framework that is complete, shared, dynamically extensible, and self-correcting


Robust Conceptual Robust Conceptual FrameworkFramework

Complete

Humans don’t ordinarily “fall off the edge” of their conceptual frameworks—we can fit emergent events into our view of the world, adapt, and move on

Shared

Humans (at least within particular cultures) share a wealth of common “facts” (assumptions) and a set of stories (scripts, plots) that explain the course of any given set of events

Dynamically extensible

Humans can integrate new facts and stories into their conceptual frameworks as new information arrives

Self-correcting

Humans can operate in the face of uncertainty (even blatant contradiction) and discard invalidated facts


The Importance Of The Importance Of ContextContext

Currently, media proxies require hot media—they lack the grasp of context needed to participate intelligently in the experience of the media that surround and protect them

A robust conceptual framework and the ability to work within a milieu of stories will provide the needed context

A media proxy will be able to describe not only what it is doing, but why—i.e., the role its actions play in the achievement of its overarching goals


Anatomy Of A Media Anatomy Of A Media ProxyProxy

Sensory Inputs

Media

Media

Knowledge Bases, Blackboards, etc.

Evaluation of Rules & Heuristics

Information Modeling

Parsing & Lexical Analysis

Syntactical Analysis

Physical Outputs

Mass Storage

Network Thermistors Motion Sensors Voice Input Etc.

Collaborative Agents & AnalystsStore

Recall

ConceptualSearch

Problems

Solutions

Anatomy Of The MediaProxy

ALU

SGML &XML

XMLVocabularies

RDF/XTM(Foundations)

SemanticNetworks

(Substance)

Inference And StoryManagement Happen Here

Network Robotics Speech Synthesis Displays Etc.


The Semantic Web The Semantic Web RevisitedRevisitedEarlier-generation media extended our

senses and our motor capacitiesNew Media extend our capacities for pattern

recognition, discrimination and classification, and model-building, as well as our conceptual frameworks, culminating (soon) in the human-centric Semantic Web

The machine-centric Semantic Web will extend our capacities of inference and story participation—the very capacities that ultimately define our humanity!—into a world populated by media proxies, whose daily experience and inner lives will be largely hidden from us


…When the walls (and our cars, even our clothing) can talk

…When the machines can think…When our questions about the

effects of media on ourselves begin to apply to the media themselves!

The Future AheadThe Future Ahead

Will a day come when our media proxies find themselves pining for the “good old days” of proprietary data formats, closed systems, 8-bit character sets, and two-digit years?


Further ReadingFurther Reading Please visit our Web site for a complete

bibliography. It will be posted within 2-3 weeks.

http://www.swdi.com/media-readings.htm

Documents

06 March 2001Copyright © 2001, South Wind Design, Inc. The Laws Of (New) Media: Marshall McLuhan And Knowledge Technologies Dale Hunscher, CEO South Wind