A Brief Book Summary from Books At a Glance
by Steve West
Table of Contents
1 The Medium is the Metaphor
2 Media as Epistemology
3 Typographic America
4 The Typographic Mind
5 The Peek-a-Boo World
6 The Age of Show Business
7 “Now…This”
8 Shuffle Off to Bethlehem
9 Reach Out and Elect Someone
10 Teaching as an Amusing Activity
11 The Huxleyan Warning
Summary
Chapter 1: The Medium is the Metaphor
In America’s history, different cities at different times have served to represent the whole spirit of the nation. Today, Las Vegas occupies that place, since it is a city devoted to entertainment, and we are on the verge of amusing ourselves to death. Currently every area of public discourse including religion, news, and politics takes the form of entertainment. Politicians and news anchors must have stylists; the unattractive are barred from public office or delivering the news. The quality of material goods is of secondary importance compared to how they can be displayed. Human conversation requires forms, and forms limit how conveniently we can express an idea. This convenience of expression in turn determines what will be the important topics in a culture. For example, smoke signals do not allow for in-depth philosophical analysis and argument, so using the form of smoke signals rules out nuanced philosophical exchange. With television, the visual medium magnifies the importance of image and minimizes the value of intellectual content. As the age of the written word wanes, the age of visual imaging rises, and our content is cast into a form that is most suitable for television. The media of communication in a culture are a dominant influence in shaping that culture’s intellectual and social priorities.
A message is a specific statement about the world; a metaphor makes powerful connections about reality. TV is not a medium that is a message, since it is not making a specific statement about the way things are. What it does is give us a way of seeing and framing the world and experience: it gives us a suggestion of the way the world is. Oral cultures and written cultures are very different and understand communication very differently. For cultures without writing, the introduction of words frozen in time, addressed to nobody and everybody, which could raise questions that couldn’t be asked of the communicator, written to an unknown audience, etc., is difficult to process; the difference between writing and speaking is obvious. The introduction of a new technology like writing can transform our thinking and, hence, change the content of our culture. Our conversations are conducted according to the languages and media we have available to conveniently express content. The content of our culture is shaped by the metaphors we use. . . .
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