Part I
The Culture of Real Virtuality: The
Integration of electronic
Communication, the End of the
Mass Audience, and the Rise of
Interactive Networks
Around 700BC a major
invention took place in Greece: the alphabet.
Widespread literacy
did not occur until many centuries later, after the invention and diffusion of
the printing press and the manufacturing of paper.
Yet it was the
alphabet that, in the West, provided the mental infrastructure for cumulative,
knowledge-based communication.
A technological
transformation of similar historic dimensions is taking place 2,700 years
later.
Namely the
integration of various modes of communication into an interactive network.
Or, in other words,
the formation of a Super-Text and a Meta-Language.
That, for the first
time in history, integrates into the same system the written, oral, and
audiovisual modalities of human communication.
The human spirit
reunites its dimensions in a new interaction between the two sides of the
brain, machines, and social contexts.
For all the science
fiction ideology and commercial hype surrounding the emergence of the so call
Information Superhighway.
We can hardly
underestimate its significance.
The potential
integration of text, images, and sounds in the same system, interacting from
multiple points, in chosen time (real or delayed).
Along a global
network, in conditions of open and affordable access.
Does fundamentally
change the character of communication.
And communication
decisively shapes culture.
Because
“we do not see…reality…as ‘it’ is,
but as our languages are. And our
languages are our media. Our media are our metaphors. Our metaphors
create the content of our culture.”
Because culture is
mediated and enacted through communication.
Cultures themselves,
that is our historically produced systems of beliefs and codes, become
fundamentally transformed.
And will be more so
over time, by the new technological system.
From the Gutenberg Galaxy to the
McLuhan Galaxy:
The Rise of Mass Media Culture
Radio lost it centrality but won in pervasiveness and flexibility, adapting modes and themes to the rhythm of people’ everyday lives.
Films transformed
themselves to fit television audiences.
With the exceptions
of government subsidized art and of special-effects shows on large screens.
Newspapers and
magazines specialized in deepening their content or targeting their audience.
While being attentive
to providing strategic information to the dominant TV medium.
As for books, they
remained books, although the unconscious desire behind many books was to become
a TV script.
The best sellers’
lists soon became filled with titles referring to TV characters or to
TV-popularized themes.
The TV-dominated
systems could be easily characterized as mass media.
A similar message was
simultaneously emitted from a few centralized senders to an audience of
millions of receivers.
Thus, the content and
format of messages were tailored to the lowest common denominator.
What was
fundamentally new in television?
The novelty was not
so much its centralizing power and its potential as a propaganda instrument.
What TV represented,
first of all, was the end of the Gutenberg Galaxy.
That is of a system
of communication essentially dominated by the typographic mind and the phonetic
alphabet order.
The mode of TV image
has nothing in common with film or photo.
With TV, the viewer
is the screen.
He is bombarded with
light impulses.
The TV image is not a
still shot.
It is not a photo in
any sense, but a ceaselessly forming contour of things limned by the
scanning-finger.
The resulting plastic
contour appears by light through, not light on, and the image so formed has the
quality of sculptures and icon, rather than a picture.
The TV image offers
some three million dots per second to the receiver.
From these he accepts
only a few dozen each instant, from which to make an image.
Led by television,
there has been in the last three decades a communication explosion throughout
the world.
In the most
TV-oriented country, the United States, in the late 1980s TV presented 3,600
images per minute per channel.
According to the
Nielsen Report the average American home had the TV set on for about seven
hours a day.
The actual viewing
was estimated at 4.5 daily hours per adult.
To this had to be
added radio, which offered 100 words per minute and was listened to an average
of two hours a day, mainly in the car.
An average daily
newspaper offered 150,000 words and it was estimated to take between 18 and 49
minutes of daily reading time.
While magazines were
browsed over for about 6 to 30 minutes.
And book reading,
including schoolwork-related books, took about 18 minutes per day.
Media exposure is
cumulative.
According to some
studies, US homes with cable TV watch more network TV than homes without cable.
All in all, the
average adult American uses 6.43 hours a day in media attention.
This figure can be
contrasted (although in rigor it is not comparable) to other data that give the
number of 14 minutes per day and per person for interpersonal interaction in
the household.
In Japan in 1992, the
weekly average of television watching time per household was 8 hours and 17
minutes per day.
Up by 25 minutes from
1980.
Other countries seem
to be less intensive consumers of media.
For example, in the
late 1980s French adults watched TV only about three hours a day.
Still, the
predominant pattern of behavior around the world seems to be that in urban
societies media consumption is the second largest category of activity behind
work.
And certainly the
predominant activity at home.
The media,
particularly radio and television, have become the audiovisual environment with
which we interact endlessly and automatically.
Furthermore, the
barrage of advertising messages received through the media seems to have
limited effect.
Although in the US
the average person is exposed to 1,600 advertising messages per day.
People respond (and
not necessarily positively) to only about 12 of them.
The real power of
television is that it sets the stage for all processes that intend to be
communicated to society at large.
From politics to
business, including sports and art.
Thus, information and
entertainment, education and propaganda, relaxation and hypnosis are all
blurred in the language of television.
Because the context
of the viewing is controllable and familiar to the receiver.
All messages are
absorbed into the reassuring mode of the home, or quasi-home situations.
For instance, sports
bars as one of the few real extended families left.
This normalization of
messages, where atrocious images of real war can almost be absorbed as part of
action movies, does have a fundamental impact.
The leveling of all
content into each person’s frame of images.
Thus, because they
are the symbolic fabric of our life, the media tend to work on consciousness
and behavior as real experience works on dreams.
Providing the raw
material out of which our brain works.
It is as if the world
of visual dreams (the information/entertainment provided by television) would give back to our consciousness the
power to select, recombine, and interpret the images and sounds that we have
generated through our collective practices by our individual preferences.
It is a system of
feedback’s between distorting mirrors.
The media are the
expression of our culture, and our culture works primarily through the
materials provided by the media.
Audience
The decisive move was the multiplication of television channels, leading to their increasing diversification.
Development of cable television technologies, to be fostered in the 1990s by fiber optics and digitization and of direct satellite broadcasting.
Dramatically expanded the spectrum of transmission.
And put pressure on the authorities to deregulate communications in general and television in particular.
In the US the number of independent TV stations grew during the 1980s from 62 to 330.
Cable systems in major metropolitan areas feature up to 60 channels.
Mixing TV, independent stations, cable networks, most of them specialized, and pay TV.
According to UNESCO,
in 1992 there were over 1 billion TV sets in the world.
35% of which were in
Europe, 32% in Asia, 20% in North America, 8% in Latin America, 4% in the
Middle East, and 1% in Africa.
Ownership of TV sets
was expected to grow at 5% per year up to the year 2000, with Asia leading the
charge.
In the US, while the
three major networks controlled 90% of prime-time audience in 1980, their share
went down to 65% in 1990.
And the trend has
accelerated since: it stands at slightly over 60% in 1995.
In addition, the
widespread practice of “surfing” introduces the creation by the audience of
their own visual mosaics.
The media have become
indeed globally interconnected, and programs and messages circulate in the
global network.
We are not living in a global village, but in customized cottages globally produced and locally distributed.
At the origins of
Internet is the work of one of the most innovative research institutions in the
world.
The US Defense
Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
When in the late
1950s the launching of the first Sputnik alarmed the American high-tech
military establishment.
DARPA undertook a
number of bold initiatives, some of which changed the history of technology.
And ushered in the
information age on a grand scale.
One of these
strategies, developing an idea conceived by Paul Baran at Rand Corporation.
Was to design a
communications system invulnerable to nuclear attack.
Based on
packet-switching communication technology.
The system made the
network independent of command and control centers.
So that message units
would find their own routes along the network.
Being reassembled in
coherent meaning at any point in the network.
When, later on,
digital technology allowed the packaging of all kinds of messages, including
sound, images, and data, a network was formed.
The network was able
to communicate all kinds of symbols without using control centers.
The universality of
digital language and the pure networking logic of the communication system created
the technological conditions for horizontal, global communication.
The first such
network, named ARPANET after its powerful sponsor, went on-line in 1969.
It was opened to
research centers cooperating with the US Defense Department.
But scientists
started to use it for all kinds of communication purposes.
At one point it
became difficult to separate military-oriented research from scientific
communication and from personal chatting.
Thus, scientists of
all disciplines were given access to the network.
And in 1983 there was
a split between ARPANET, dedicated to scientific purposes.
And MILNET, directly
oriented to military applications.
The National Science
Foundation also became involved in the 1980s in creating another scientific
network.
CSNET.
And – in cooperation
with IBM – still another network for non-science scholars.
BITNET.
Yet all the networks
used ARPANET as their communication system.
The network of
networks that formed during the 1980s was called
ARPA-INTERNET.
Then INTERNET.
Still supported by
the Defense Department and operated by the National Science Foundation.
For the network to be
able to sustain the fantastic growth in the volume of communication,
transmission technology had to be enhanced.
In the 1970s, ARPANET
was using 56,000 bits-per-second links.
In 1987, the network
lines transmitted 1.5 million bits per second.
By 1992, the NSFNET,
backbone network behind Internet, operated at transmission speeds of 45
millions bits per second.
Enough capacity to
send 5,000 pages per second.
In 1995, gigabit
transmission technology was in the prototype stage.
With capacity
equivalent to transmitting the US Library of Congress in one minute.
Computers had to be
able to talk to each other.
The obstacle was
overcome with the creation of UNIX, an operating system enabling access from
computer to computer.
The system was
invented by Bell Laboratories in 1969.
But became widely
used only after 1983, when Berkeley researchers (again funded by ARPA) adapted
to UNIX the TCP/IP protocol.
That made it possible
for computers not only to communicate but, to encode and decode data packages
traveling at high speed in the Internet network.
The modem was
invented by two Chicago students, Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, in 1979.
They were trying to
find a system to transfer microcomputer programs to each other through the
telephone.
To avoid traveling in
the Chicago winter between their distant locations.
In 1979 they diffused
the XModem protocol that allowed computers to transfer files directly without
going through a host system.
And they diffused the
technology at no cost, because their purpose was to spread communication
capabilities as much as possible.
Computer networks
that were excluded from ARPANET (reserved to elite science universities in its
early stages) found their way to start communicating with each other on their
own.
In 1979, three
students at Duke University and University of North Carolina, not included in
ARPANET, created a modified version of the Unix protocol.
That made it possible
to link up computers over the regular telephone line.
They used it to start
a forum of on-line computer discussion, Usenet, that quickly became one of the
first large-scale electronic conversation systems.
In the 1990s,
business has realized the extraordinary potential of Internet.
As the National
Science Foundation decided to privatize some of the major operations of the
network to the usual large corporation consortiums.
ATT, MCI-IBM, and so
on.
The commercialization
of Internet grew at a fast rate.
The peaceful
coexistence of various interests and cultures in the net took the form of the
World Wide Web (WWW).
A flexible network of
networks within the Internet where institutions, businesses, associations, and
individuals create their own “sites.”
On the basis of which
everybody with access can produce her/his/its “home page,” made of a variable
collage of text and images.
Helped by software
technology first developed in Mosaic.
A Web browser
software program invented in 1992 by students in Illinois, at the National
Center for Supercomputing Applications.
The Web allowed for
groupings of interests and projects in the net, overcoming the time-costly
chaotic browsing of pre-WWW Internet.
On the basis of these
groupings, individuals and organizations were able to interact meaningfully.
On what has become,
literally, a World Wide Web of individualized, interactive communication.