Text is not Dead

As I read Marshall Mcluhan’s theory of hot and cold media, two things came to mind: the idea was brilliant for its time, and in spite of the simplicity and intelligence of the idea, it is far too absolute for the medium we use most today, the internet. Or is it still accurate? If one thinks of the internet as a stage upon which different kinds of medium play, perhaps the absolute notion of hot and cold still applies.

According to McLuhan, cold media requires more participation from the user than hot media. Text on website would be cold, while video would be hot. Therefore can be thought of as more of a platform than a medium itself. If the internet is a medium, then Scott Rosenberg explains it is both:

Where would the Internet fall on McLuhan’s temperature meter? It remains almost exclusively a medium that transmits and reproduces vast quantities of text at high speeds. McLuhan interpreted the evolution of writing from ideograms and stone tablets to alphabetic characters and print reproduction as a “hotting up” “to repeatable print intensity.” By that standard, the Net is boiling.

On the other hand, its functional characteristics match those McLuhan identified as cool. There’s no question that the Internet is among the most participatory media ever invented, like the cool telephone. And its cultural patterns — with its oral-tradition-style transmission of myth and its collective anarchy — match those of McLuhan’s tribal global village.

Somehow the Net is both hot and cold at once. Maybe that’s just a function of how broad and easily manipulated McLuhan’s categories are. But maybe there’s a valuable insight here into why it is that certain media — like the Internet and talk radio — have been able to vault to prominence so quickly and powerfully.

But if something is both; is it really either one? Here’s what Rosenberg says:

When you mix water from the hot and cold faucets in your sink, your hands may first feel the extremes of the separate streams. After a while, though, all the water just feels lukewarm.

McLuhan would, I think, have found the Internet thoroughly fascinating but ultimately — like any electronic medium — too powerful, too addictive and too pervasive for comfort. He might have had to revise his spectrum a bit to accommodate it, too.

Hot media, cold media — and now lukewarm media. First they fill up one of your senses to the brim; then they invite you to dive in. First they run hot and cold; then you don’t feel them at all.

While absolutes such as McLuhan’s can apply to many different types of medium for many, many years. I do believe the internet is one that doesn’t fit within his mold. How could it? But when McLuhan’s theories are so accepted and studied- as well they should be- how can the internet be understood? McLuhan surely did write the book on “Understanding Media,” but I’m not sure anyone has conquered understanding the internet.