Marshall McLuhan’s Message for Multimedia

Henrietta Nickels Shirk

Marshall McLuhan (1911-l 980) was more than

the person of his times who coined the famous

popular term “the medium is the message.” He

was also an influential thinker whose views on

media are even more relevant today than they

were in the 1960s. McLuhan’s ideas about “hot”
and “cool” technologies, the power and
limitations of various media, the psychological

landscape of communication, and the global
village are very relevantfor today’s technical
communicators. They contribute important
ideas to the historical

roots of

multimedia, and as

such, they are part

of

an evolving theoretical

foundation

for

technical communication.

WHY CONSIDER McLUHAN NOW?

When Understanding Media

was published in

1964, Marshall McLuhan was described by the

“New York Herald Tribune” newspaper on the
book’s cover as “the most important thinker

since Newton, Darwin, Freud, Einstein, and

Pavlov.” McLuhan is indeed one of the
foundational theoretical thinkers for today’s
practicing technical communicators.

If he were alive today, McLuhan would most
likely be extremely interested in multimedia as a
collection of hypertextually linked
communication technologies, and he would have
included a discussion of it in his famous book.

This paper examines some of the ideas of
McLuhan in relation to multimedia, with the goal
of describing the ways that his theories can assist
technical communicators in their understanding,
development, and evaluation of multimedia
communication products.

It is especially poignant and meaningful to
consider McLuhan at this 44th STC Conference,
which is the first annual conference to be held in
Canada, and in Toronto.

McLuhan was a Canadian who spent much of his

professional career at the University of Toronto.
Indeed, it is as a Canadian thinker that one must

first consider McLuhan, before analyzing his
concepts relating to media and their
technologies, the psychological landscape
resulting from media, and the global village.

SOME BACKGROUND ON McLUHAN

McLuhan was a Canadian writer and educator
born in Edmonton, Alberta, and educated at the
universities of Manitoba and Cambridge. In

1946, he joined the faculty of the University of

Toronto, and in 1963, he was named director of
the

for Culture and Technology at

Toronto. McLuhan received much attention for
his innovative theories of communication.

One of McLuhan’s most important concepts
was “The Medium Is the Message.” This

phrase means that the electronic media of today

have an impact far greater than the information
they communicate. McLuhan stressed the need
to be aware of the changes being wrought in
today’s civilization by electronic media, and he
was especially concerned with the immediacy of
communication in contemporary society,
because of the steady impact of such (relatively)
newer electronic technologies as the telephone,
the television, and the computer.

McLuhan’s concept of the “Global Village”
(which was essentially the erosion of the current
geographical boundaries of social life) has

received widespread attention. When McLuhan
outlined his vision in 1967, the Internet did not

exist, but it has now become a true global
village, where time and space are meaningless
and everyone can communicate simultaneously
through electronic media.

With the goal of providing an overview of the
major concepts of McLuhan, the following
comments begin with single, salient quotations
demonstrating McLuhan’s major ideas. These
quotations are followed by explanations and
remarks that relate McLuhan’s ideas to many of
the typical current concerns of technical
communicators working with multimedia.

There is still much to learn from McLuhan.

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Theory and Research

“HOT” “COOL” TECHNOLOGIES

A hot medium is one that extends one

single sense in “high definition.” [A

cool medium] has “low definition,”

because so little is given and so much

has to be filled in . . . [or] completed

by the audience. Hot media are, there-

fore, low in participation, and cool

media are high in participation or

completion by the audience (McLuhan).

From a

perspective, multimedia

is uniquely both hot and cool. It is a dynamic
mixture of various media that can themselves be

accessed in either structured (provided and
therefore hot) or unstructured (self-determined
and therefore cool) ways. Multimedia is
frequently described as being simultaneously
both multidimensional (or layered) and seamless.

Technical communicators working with multi-
media can use

theory of hot and cool

technologies to assess when and where particular

audiences require certain kinds of media. The
question to be asked is whether or not and how
audiences will want to participate in what is
happening in the communication process

presented via the computer screen.

This issue is very different from the singular and
linear communication solutions accomplished via
paper-based media. Providing multiple
pathways through information is the unique
capability of multimedia. The technical
communicator’s ability to do this effectively,
providing both direction and indirection,
prevents the “lost in hyperspace” syndrome.

THE MESSAGE OF A MEDIUM

It is only [by] . . . standing aside

from any structure

or

medium, that

its principles and lines of force can

be discerned. For any medium has

the power of imposing its own

assumptions on the unwary.

Prediction

and control consist of avoiding this

subliminal state of Narcissus trance
(McLuhan).

Multimedia can impose its own assumption
on technical communicators. It assumes that

human cognition works best in an associative,
nonlinear manner. Indeed, it has created a
particular schema (or what today’s cognitive
psychologists call knowledge structures) about
how the human mind works.

This schema is that the human mind functions
associatively and that learning takes place
through nonlinear, almost random, connections
of the sort that audiences must make in
responding to multimedia. The medium of
multimedia itself assumes and perpetuates

(although perhaps questionably) this model of
how the human mind works.

Technical communicators designing in multi-
media need to question their assumptions about
the hypertextual aspects of multimedia. Just
because every piece of information can be
linked to every other piece of information, it
does not necessarily follow that this kind of
organization is a natural reflection of how the
human mind best works in learning a particular
subject matter. Warily stepping back from the
medium of multimedia with an evaluative
perspective about its impositions will enable
technical communicators to become cognizant of
its impositions and limitations.

PSYCHOLOGICAL LANDSCAPES

technology gradually creates a

totally new human environment. . . .

Each new technology creates an

environment that is itself regarded as

corrupt and degrading.

Yet the new

one turns its predecessor into an art

orm. . . . Today technologies and their

consequent environments succeed each

other so rapidly that one environment

makes us aware of the next. Technol-

ogies begin to perform the function of

art in making us aware of the psychic

and social consequences of technology

(McLuhan).

According to McLuhan, the “content” of any
medium is always another medium. Indeed, the
content of multimedia is just about all the major
media that have come before its advent.
McLuhan believed that systematic discourse,
formal literacy, and logic have been detrimental
to what he calls “juxtaposition,” “imaginative

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261

polyvalence, “nets of analogies,” and “the

mosaic approach.” All of these can be created by
placing diverse things and experiences side by
side in a psychological landscape. Multi-media
accomplishes in electronic realities what
McLuhan’s theoretical discussion envisions.

The creation of multimedia presents a major
challenge for the communication process--the
responsibilities associated with empowerment
through relating multiple media. This challenge

revolves around the abilities now available to

juxtapose various old technologies to create a

new human environment.

What tends to be forgotten is that the new
technology of multi-media itself has not only
built upon our old technologies, but it is also the
precursor of technologies yet to come.

Technical communicators have typically not
viewed their work and daily communication
practices within larger theoretical contexts and
philosophical concerns. We need to find out
what the psychological landscape of multimedia
means not only for our audiences, but also for
the future processes, of communication.

GLOBAL VILLAGE PARTICIPANTS

Rapidly, we approach the final phase of

the extensions of man--the techno-

logical simulation of consciousness,

when the creative process of knowing

will be collectively and corporately

extended to the whole of human society,

much as we have already extended our

senses and our nerves by the various

media. . . . Specialist technologies

detribalize.

The nonspecialist electric

technology retribalizes (McLuhan).

Multimedia’s rhetorical consequences may
viewed in terms of McLuhan’s observation that
the environments of technologies “are not
passive wrappings but active processes.” From
the perspective of rhetoric, McLuhan’s prediction
for a technological global village has come to
pass. Multimedia entails important psychic and
social consequences by extending and then
retribalizing human consciousness electronically

“Global Village.”

McLuhan correctly observed that “our private
and corporate lives have become information
processes because we have put our central
nervous systems outside us in electric
technology.” One has only to explore the
Internet to know that this immediate access to
information about almost everything is now a
reality. Technical communicators must examine
how multimedia’s electronic extensions affect
all humans within our global village.

HOW TO APPLY THESE THEORIES?

any medium or structure there is

. . . a “break boundary” at which the

system suddenly changes into another

or passes some point of no return in its

dynamic processes. . . . One of the most

common causes of breaks in any system

is the cross-fertilization with another

system . . . (McLuhan).

McLuhan’s theories form a relevant rhetorical
foundation from which technical communica-
tors can begin to understand, implement, and
evaluate multimedia. This final quote helps to
put McLuhan into a useful perspective.

The multiple media entailed in multimedia have
individually now passed a rhetorical break
boundary in which they have imploded upon
themselves to create new and required
“literacies” for technical communicators.

Technical communicators need to aware not
only of already existing “break boundaries,” but
also of the possibilities for new ones to emerge.
Perhaps then with such a perspective, we can
prepare ourselves for the requirements of new
literacies in the workplace.

Some of the ways that technical communicators
can continue to learn from McLuhan’s theories
are to participate in ongoing discussions about
them (see Figure 1 on the next page), to explore
some of the over 5,000 Web sites on McLuhan
(see Figure 2 on the next page) for some major
sites), and to read among the evolving McLuhan
commentary (see the ten books on the

“Recommended Reading List” that follows).

Technical communicators will then begin to
recognize McLuhan as one of our field’s

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Theory and Research

foundational and remarkable thinkers.

(2) Kroker, Arthur, Technology and the Canadian Mind:

St. Martin’s Press, New York,

NY, 1985.

To subscribe, send an

to:

with one line

and no subject as follows:

Subscribe

Your Name

For more information about this listserv,

look at its Web site:

(3) Marchand, Philip,

McLuhun: The Medium

and the Message,

Fields, New York, NY,

1989.

(4) Miller, Jonathan, Marshall McLuhun, Viking Press,

New York, NY, 1971.

(5) Neill, S. D., Clarifying McLuhun: An Assessment

of Process

Product, Greenwood Press, Guilford, CT,

1993.

Figure THE

N

(6) Rosenthal, Raymond, ed., McLuhun: Pro and Con,

DISCUSSION GROUP

Funk Wagnalls, New York, NY, 1968.

(7) Sanderson, George, and Frank

eds.,

Marshall McLuhun: The

and His Message,

Fulcrum, Inc., Golden, CO, 1989.

http://www.webcorp.com/cgi-bin/

quote-o-rama

http://www.McLuhan.toronto.edu/

(8) Stamps, Judith, Unthinking Modernity:

McLuhun, and the

School, McGill-Queen’s

University Press, Montreal, Canada, 1995.

(9) Steam, Gerald Emanuel, ed., McLuhan, Hot
Cool: A Primer

for

the Understanding

of

and a Critical

Symposium with Rebuttal by McLuhun, Dial Press,
New York, NY 1967.

figure 2 MAJOR

WEB

(10)

Donald F., The Medium the Rear View

Mirror: Understanding McLuhun, McGill-Queen’s

University Press, Montreal, Canada, 197 1.

RECOMMENDED READING LIST

Books McLuhan:

(1) McLuhan, Marshall,

Gutenberg

The

New American Library, New York, NY, 1962.

(2) McLuhan, Marshall, Understanding Media: The

Extensions

of

Man, The New American Library, New

York, NY, 1964.

Maior Books about McLuhan:

(1) Duffy, Dennis, Marshall McLuhun. McClelland and
Stewart, Toronto, Canada, 1969.

Henrietta

Nickels Shirk, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Technical Communication

Department of English, University of North Texas
P. 0. Box 8503, UNT

Texas 76203-3503

[phone];

Dr. Henrietta Nickels Shirk teaches technical

communication at the University of North Texas.
She has published extensively and given presen-
tations at numerous conferences. She is a senior
STC member and has been a technical communi-
cation professional in corporate computer software
environments for almost 20 years. Dr. Shirk’s on-
going research interests include rhetorical theory,
online documentation, and multimedia design.

Theory and Research

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