Most likely lukewarm

In the early part of the century Saussure went to great lengths to structuralize language and how it is formed, he did little to separate speech from writing. In fact he says writing has "an identical state of affairs" because the symbols are arbitrary and agreed upon in a communal sense. Ong and McLuhan both regard speech or orality and literacy as two very different mediums. Ong points out that all human societies have a spoken language, yet only 106 or so have been written down to create literature. Most have never been written at all. Literacy transforms a language into something larger and changes the way humans learn. Instead of apprenticeship or discipleship, literate cultures study. Ong writes that long after the development of the alphabet and writing, even in the middle ages people still trusted oral traditions over writing. Only the invention of the printing press created widespread literacy and according to McLuhan brought about nationalism and the industrial age. Then, writing became the more trusted media. Which leads to McLuhan's core idea, the medium is the message. Its not just a tool that can be used in one way or another. Its very creation transforms us. The printing press not merely its products changed the culture from oral/tribal to literate/mechanical.

Now, electronic media because of its participatory nature is transforming the culture into what Ong calls "secondary orality". Ong says "Contrasts between electronic media and print have sensitized us to the earlier contrasts between writing and orality." McLuhan divides media into two categories, Hot and cool. A hot medium has little participation, the data is completely filled. A cool medium requires a small amount of visual data and makes a greater demand upon the audience. McLuhan categorized radio, print and photography as hot media while comics and telephone and television as cool. Television is a cool medium because we have to process the small pixels into a message made of visuals and sound. But how would he categorize the internet and social media? Research is showing that our use of the social media ties us to the printed word more than ever. To borrow from Nicholas Carr "...we are wrapped in a cocoon of text that would have boggled McLuhan’s mind." However, social media is participatory. Our "profiles" are part of a community. Blogs are created to share ideas in the "global village". But, the computer draws the user into its world. Articles are read, programs are viewed individually. Are these terms even relevant? As media converges into a mashup of sound, print, image, and motion are we mixing up a lukewarm brew?

McLuhan theorized that electric media is transforming or "retribalizing" the culture. In his Playboy interview he refers to the social upheaval and the birth of hippie cultures as examples of this retribalization. While print "demanded both personal fragmentation and social uniformity" , the use of electronic media is creating an integrated human. Electronic media itself creates a clash of cultures as the "segmented visual culture" collides with the integrated electronic culture. At other times in human history the birth of new technologies was at a slower pace. People were able to become adjusted or "numbed" by them to a point that that the changes created by the new media become invisible. It is societies way of coping with these changes. However, now the changes are coming so quickly that we are unable to enter this state and thus we are in upheaval. Society is fighting between the segmented individualistic world of mechanical/print and the integrated world of electronic media.

How is social media changing our society? It seems like everyone has an answer to that question. But in terms of McLuhan's idea of retribalization, where do we stand? He stated that print required personal fragmentation and social uniformity. "The retribalized man can lead a far richer and more fulfilling life... a participant in a seamless web of interdependence and harmony." But he also says that electric technology will trigger more discontinuity, diversity and division. Polarization and conflict as well as love and harmony are likely.

Last question, as new technologies change our culture, how do we stay sane? McLuhan says that schizoprenia and alienation may be the unavoidable result of literacy. What is the result of the electronic age?

See Philip K. Dick.