The Phenomenon of Mediological Induction

The way media works is often counterintuitive. The logic it follows to bring dynamics into happening goes against the grain of human sensemaking. It literally goes in reverse. Consider this. The narrative woven by your mind to make sense of the world is made of sentences. These sentences need a subject and, in clauses with "person in-the-loop", it feels less awkward to blame the action on the person and not on the artifacts they interact with. For example, it is more likely for people to think “the man sat on the chair” than “the chair caused the man to sit”.

I want to convince you that the latter case is not only plausible but pretty much the case. I will start by proposing that it was the chair, in fact, which introduced a want into the man's head. is that you come to appreciate that it is often the case, that the chair caused the man to sit.

It’s all too often that human perspective blinds us to a convenient version of the truth. Dynamics can be induced mediologically, i.e., by the introduction of a new logic of mediation. Dynamics that emerge by way of being facilitated by a newly-introduced medium are 'mediologically induced'. That is, the dynamic did not happen before when the medium was not present, because the means enabling the dynamic were not available. When the new medium is introduced, it cooperates with latent forces waiting for means to manifest. The logics of mediation can be technical and/or cultural, giving rise to technologically-induced dynamics and culturally-induced dynamics.

Understanding Media is the famous attempt by Canadian professor Marshall McLuhan to demystify the media notion. A first read feels like lunacy... the sentences don't make sense! The turning of every page demands patience. Making it past chapter one is challenging. But if you read carefully, it invariably hits you... at some point you get this feeling McLuhan might be up to something, a feeling that maybe he's trying to tell you something that is simply too big for words.

McLuhan teaches that unintended consequences are a staple of technological progress. It's as if we couldn't predict the effects that technologies will have until they become adopted by the masses. Because if you step back and evaluate the last century of human technical developmental, it is hard to ignore the pattern: The adoption of new technologies has brought much wanted relief from the burdens of life, but it has also invariably brought new kinds of suffering. From motor vehicles to the internet, there is a rich list of notable instances where new technologies healed preexisting wounds but also opened new painful ones. It's ironic because people develop these technologies with the hope of making life more bearable. This is not to say humankind's technological and scientific achievement is something we shouldn't feel proud of, but without serious regard for the negative effects of new technologies all progress is adrift.

A core aspect of McLuhan's message is that the artifacts we put out there take a life of their own. Technologies exert pressures upon us. It's an esoteric proposition that suggests our surroundings have a secret language to communicate with us and trigger human action. "Understanding media", in this sense, means gaining a fluency in this language, a knowledge that is essential to provide true solutions to the burdens of life without fear for unintended consequences. What you'll find here are very intentional words written as an invitation to take a fresh look at the world around you and as a guide to help you make sense of McLuhan's enigmatic call to action.