Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

Curiously, the newspaper of that time saw the telephone as a rival to the press as P.A. system, such as radio was in fact to be fifty years later. But the telephone, intimate and personal, is the most removed of any medium from the P.A. form.

the Braille system of dots-for-letters had begun as a means of reading military messages in darkness, then was transferred to music, and finally to reading for the blind.

Why is that tension so very much less for an unanswered phone in a movie scene? The answer to all of these questions is simply that the phone is a participant form that demands a partner, with all the intensity of electric polarity. It simply will not act as a background instrument like radio.

In fact the disturbance was almost equal to that caused by the movie itself. For the movie is a rival of the book, tending to provide a visual track of narrative description and statement that is much fuller than the written word.

Unlike radio, it cannot be used as background. Since the telephone offers a very poor auditory image,

As already mentioned, the Shannon and Weaver5 hypothesis about Information Theory, like the Morgenstern Game Theory, tends to ignore the function of the form as form. Thus both Information Theory and Game Theory have bogged down into sterile banalities, but the psychic and social changes resulting from these forms have altered the whole of our lives.

The telephone demands complete participation, unlike the written and printed page. Any literate man resents such a heavy demand for his total attention, because he has long been accustomed to fragmentary attention.

As we read, we provide a sound track for the printed word; as we listen to the radio, we provide a visual accompaniment. Why can we not visualize while telephoning?

Since all media are fragments of ourselves extended into the public domain, the action upon us of any one medium tends to bring the other senses into play in a new relation

The telephone, in the case of the call-girl, is like the typewriter that fuses the functions of composition and publication. The call-girl dispenses with the procurer and the madam.