Analyzing McLuhan's "Laws of Media" with David Bobbitt
In an essay published to the Media Fields Journal, author David Bobbitt explores the applicability of McLuhan’s theories to the internet. In addition to “the medium is the message” and “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”, McLuhan saw that there were four effects of every new technology, which he described as “Laws of Media”.
The first law asks “What does it enhance or intensify?”. Bobbitt explains that the internet it able to increase the amount of people with access to huge amounts of information currently available to everyone. Essentially, what the internet is adding to the table is more people with access to more information, a lot more. The second law asks “What does it render obsolete or displace?” Here McLuhan wanted to know what society and the individual is losing with the inclusion/invention of a new technology. One thing that is becoming increasingly obsolete is print journalism. It isn't feasible anymore to print newspapers when the same thing can be posted on a web page and accessed for less money, by more people, and potentially infinite amount of times.
Another thing being obsolesced are the monopolies of traditional industries such as film, music, and television. Bobbitt expounds upon the music industry as an example. He makes the distinction between physical music sales (physical albums, CD’s) and digital music sales (downloading albums, SoundCloud) and compares them overtime. The general results are that the physical music sale are decreasing and the digital music sales are increasing. The third law asks “What does it retrieve that was previously obsolesced?” meaning what does the technology bring back that had been previously gotten rid of. Bobbitt says that Mcluhan would argue that tribal society paradigm would come back, with each passing of information acting as if it were a loud beating drum (Bobbitt). Social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter would best exemplify this because with each drum of a status update or tweet, potentially millions of people would heat (depending on the number of followers). No other media technology in history has had the ability to communicate that much information to that many people.
The fourth and final law begs the very important question “What does it produce or become when pressed to an extreme?”. Here, Bobbitt admits that we are in the same position that Mcluhan was, in that we do not yet know completely what will become of the digital age and the internet since we have yet to witness it. He does, however, acknowledge the indications of the potential extreme lack of privacy that were are already seeing today. For example, the most followed person on twitter? Justin Bieber with more than forty-two million followers. This means that whatever this person says, we know about it. The lack of privacy for celebrities is a contended issue among the popular media of today. The implications of such a loud and arguably unnecessary drum beat by a celebrity might mean that as humans we are listening to the wrong things, paying attention to the sounds of a drum that is not worth hearing. Bobbitt concludes his essay by saying that what McLuhan saw when he first formed his theories were these constant attempts to control nature throughout history by means of technological advancement. We aim to extend ourselves until we can control more of our surroundings, but, as the four laws of media indicate, our efforts are temporary. Bobbitt compares these efforts to evolution and cells. As cells become more and more organized, they gain control, but, as an unintended by product, what we gain in temporary control we will ultimately and eventually lose to the “natural entropic process”. The concept of entropy deals very abstractly with the amount of chaos and disorder in the world, and it has been proven by the Second Law of Thermodynamics that it is constantly increasing.