Starting by understanding the development of media and how it greatly affected our life. Media has fragmented our daily life, during the mechanical age humans extended themselves through space, but in the electric age we technologically built massive extensions to our nervous system, “abolishing both space and time”.
The main difference between the mechanical and electrical ages lies in the effect of action and reaction. Although the mechanical age offered increasing possibilities and control to the daily human life but it maintained, at the same time, a delay between the action taken and the reaction, while in the electric age the separation between those two entities was greatly reduced to the point that they now happen simultaneously. The western man is no longer part of the action; he controls it but is not in it. “The power to act without reacting” likes in the case of the unmanned aircraft pilots who can bomb enemy targets without being physically in the aircraft.
The Medium is the Message?
It is not always easy to see the difference between the medium and the message. In the example of the electric light, where the light is the “pure information”, it is a medium without a message, unless it is used to spell out a name or an electrical advertisement. The actual activity that happens under the light is the actual content. It is important to understand that the content of the light is the impact of the human activity that is resulted by it (i.e. a basketball game at night).
We may look at it in another way, “the content of any medium is always another medium”. The content of writing is the speech and the content of speech is the thought process. While computers may accelerate the design process but they do not add to the actual message. The Railway did not introduce movement or transportation or wheel or road into human society, but it accelerated..” the process of transportation which lead to creating new types of cities and leisure”
The author argues that technological advancement and the mechanization of every day’s life is not responsible to any of the effects that are caused by it. There is no principal of causality in a mere sequence… nothing follows from following except change” and media is facilitating that change and is not responsible for creating a new content. “…”technology could do anything but add itself to what we already are”
The message of cubsim
The media that is projected on the TV screen is in many ways similar to that of the notion of cubism, as cubism radically attempted to stamp out ambiguity and to enforce one reading of the picture. It achieved that by driving its message by involvement. It became an act of painting more than that of an illusion. Cubism maintain the communication of its message by providing information of the top, bottom, sides, in and out and therefore illuminating the illusion and by “seizing one instant total awareness suddenly announced that the medium is the message”
Hot and Cold Media:
Hot Media presents its message in a high definition way, it presents a more descriptive and informative massage. Most of the information is being filled by the media and the audience has less to fill out, it is low in participation just like Radio and Television. Cold Media on the other hand is more participative and less informative, like the telephone for example. “ A cool medium like hieroglyphic written characters has very different effects from the hot and explosive medium of the phonetic alphabet”
The problem with hot technology:
The introduction of hot technology can be devastating in unprepared cultures. In my personal opinion the introduction of computers in the early 90s has made most of the older generations (baby-boomers) left behind and therefore the younger generation became more adapted to that new and fast moving development. The older generations are no longer able to resist the change and were forced to use the technology, in doing so they turn to their kids and grandkids for computer lessons. The flow of information has been reversed; it is no longer that the younger turns to the older for advice and information. The information is widely available on the internet and the younger generations know how to utilize it. This great shift in the flow of information demonstrates the effect of hot technologies on the traditional ‘tribal’ system in our society.
Is architecture meant to be a cold medium? How is architecture intended to evolve to keep up with the hot media era of the future?
Hot media gone wrong
