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December 6, 2004

Now no excuses for those restaurant cellphone slobs

From Boing Boing, WSJ amongst others.

"Restaurant owners everywhere, tired of hearing people blather on their cellphones from their tables, have started building phoneless phonebooths for them to use. So far, designs include plush, velvet-lined booths, and an English-style phonebooth."

cellsilence.jpg

Anyone familiar with McLuhan's Media Laws will recognise this reversal.

"Beginning with Bacon and Descartes in the modern era, science came to be understood as the conjunction of cause and effect. Since Aristotle specified the causes of human action, it seems surprising (in hindsight) that no one ever proposed four effects to complement them, especially as ours is supposed to be a 'scientific age'. Finally someone did propose those four effects: McLuhan. Unfortunately this amazing accomplishment has been either systematically misinterpreted or completely ignored.

McLuhan's thesis is deceptively simple, yet extremely powerful. In summary it is this: All human contrivances exhibit four types of effects which together subsume all of the kinds of consequences we encounter and experience. Those four effects are:

# (1) Retrieval - everything new contains some existing elements from the cultural inventory;
# (3) Enhancement - new contrivances provide improved performance compared to the old;
# (2) Obsolescence - new contrivances render previous models or versions passé;
# (4) Reversal - we tend to over-do the new, until we run out of benefits and into detriments.

The combination of the four causes and the four effects is the most comprehensive and capable framework that has been developed so far whereby to evaluate the impacts and implications of new technologies. The other way of saying this, is that no competent or serious technology assessment is possible outside of McLuhan's framework, now that it is available. This is particularly true of anyone who might aspire to build on McLuhan's legacy in terms of either media studies or technology etymologies."
Source

Posted by sdehaast at December 6, 2004 2:22 PM Posted to digital-lifestyle

Comments

I really like this bit about McLuhan's thesis. We always over do everything... it's the way of human innovation... or perhaps industrial innovation. The key then is to figure out how to "not over do things" and do it just enough to find the good, but not push it far enough that it turns on us... hmmm.

Mobile phone booths... I love it! Wonder if we'll start to see those on the streets too? Wouldn't that be great, a place to sit and use your mobile... randomly located on any street.

Great thoughts! :)

Anita

Posted by: Anita at January 18, 2005 11:14 AM