OT: Marshall McLuhan Survey

[bernice kieffer <bernice_kieffer -at- mentorg -dot- com>]

(Cross-posted to TECHWR-L and Techcomm)

Hi all:

Delurking to ask for your help. As part of my "Human Communication and 
Technology" and my "Communication Research and Discovery" class, I am
conducting a 
survey to determine whether proffessional communication practioners
(laying on the butter 
thick here (:> ) agree or disagree with Marshall McLuhan's theories of
how
electronic technology is effecting how we communicate today. I would
appreaciate
your time in filling out the survey below and returning it to me at 
bernice_kieffer -at- mentorg -dot- com -dot-  


TIA
bernice kieffer
bernice_kieffer -at- mentorg -dot- com


In the 1960's, Marshall McLuhan became famous for his theories about 
the impact of technology on human communication. McLuhan's basic concept
was that each major advancement in technology, such as the invention of
writing
or the printing press, caused an equally major change in the way people 
communicate. For instance, McLuhan believed that tribal or preliterate
man 
communicated orally through a simultaneous exchange of information in
acoustical 
space. After the invention of the printing press, man began to
communicate 
visually through the printed word. To McLuhan, the print media, unlike
the oral
communication of preliterate man, was very linear imposing a sense of
time and 
space on our communications. 

Today we are living in what McLuhan termed the Electric Age. According
to McLuhan,
electronic media [starting with the telegraph and extending to the
Internet] is 
drastically changing the way we communicate today. Each statement
below is a quote from McLuhan that represents a basic concept of his
theory in regards to how electric media is changing the way we
communicate. 

Using the following scale, please indicate the extent to which you agree
or 
disagree with each of McLuhan's statements as applied to Internet
communication. 

1 - strongly disagree   2 - disagree   3 - agree   4 - strongly agree




1. "Electric circuitry has overthrown the regime of "time" and
"space"..."
It [electric circuitry] has reconstituted dialogue on a global scale."



2. "We can now live, not just amphibiously in divided and distinguished
worlds, 
but pluralistically in many worlds and cultures simultaneously."



3. "By putting out bodies inside our extended nervous systems by means
of 
electric media, we set up a dynamic by which all previous technologies 
[print for instance] will be translated into information systems."



4. "...[Computers] flip into the simultaneous from the sequential;
accentuate 
acoustic [oral] over visual [print] space to produce pattern
recognition."



5. "Electric man, having found himself in an arena of simultaneous
information 
also finds himself increasingly excluded from the older more traditional
(visual)
world in which space and reason seem to be uniform, connected, and
stable. Indeed 
western (visual and sequential) man now discovers himself habitually
relating to 
information structures which are simultaneous, discontinuous, and
dynamic. He has 
been plunged into a new form of knowing, far from his experience tied to
the 
printed page."




6. In your own use of the Internet, how many people do you communicate
with in 
how many other countries and how often?
   




7. Do you feel that communicating over the internet has changed your
perspective 
of time? How?




8. Do you feel that communicating over the internet has changed your
perspective 
of space? How?




9. Would you equate the internet more with oral (simultaneous)
communication or 
print (sequential) communication. 



10. McLuhan felt that, due to the speed of electronic communication and
its ability to
enable us to communicate with more people than ever before, one of the
ultimate 
effects of electric technology would be to bring us closer together in a 
"global village". This would seem to imply that we would need to be able
to form 
the same types of relationships with people over the Internet that we
would with 
people in our own "home" towns. 

a. Some communication theorists today believe that we cannot form
interpersonal 
relationships or even working relationships over the internet because it
lacks 
the ability to convey the non-verbal cues of face-to-face communication. 
Using the scale above, please indicate how strongly you agree or 
disagree with this theory. (You can elaborate if you want (:> ). 


b.Other communication theorists feel that the lack of physical or social 
non-verbal cues not only does not hinder our ability to form
interpersonal 
and working relationships over the internet but in fact can enhance our 
interpersonal and working relationships. In business communication 
by taking away the need to expend energy in portraying and reading the 
types of physical non-verbal cues that are always present in
face-to-face 
communication we can speed more time on the actual exchange of
information. 
In interpersonal communication we compensate for the lack of physical
cues by 
placing more importance on those clues provided by language.
Using the scale above, please indicate how strongly you agree or 
disagree with this theory. (You can elaborate if you want (:> ). 


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