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132 COMMUNICA TION THEORY
and then examine more and more complex forms of mediation that alter
this building block. Transmission accounts do not ignore the kinds of
mediation that are in play in a communication process; indeed, they are
interested in how these mediations distort or inhibit the continuation of
dyadic interaction as a way of appreciating what they are.
However, as Meyrowitz points out, the idea of intentionality, which
is the most dominant metaphoric framework by which mediums are
‘lived’, cuts across all kinds of communication. We saw in the previous
chapter that the metaphysics of intentionality suggests that the message is
the medium. And, within this metaphysics, the more extended across
time and space are the mediums by which we can express intentionality,
the more convincing it is to live by the instrumental metaphor of
communication. The greater the distance that is covered in a commu-
nicative event, the more assured we can be of the validity of logocentric
communication.
We have already seen how the ‘metaphysics of presence’ which char-
acterizes the Western experience of communication is premised on the
phonocentric analogue of face-to-face exchange. This does not mean that
the act of face-to-face communication is preferred over other kinds of com-
municative acts; rather, all forms of communication tend to be metaphori-
cally lived and evaluated in terms of face-to-face communication.
For example, the vast critical literature bent on discrediting the social
utility of television, which had its origins well before the Internet, is
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largely aimed at its inadequacy for face-to-face-like interaction. Likewise,
the Internet itself is also assessed for what qualities of face-to-face com-
munication it can redeem by simulation. Where a medium is deemed to
offer more opportunities for such simulation, those interacting with medi-
ums are typically described as ‘users’. Thus, for example, consumers of
broadcast technologies are seldom called ‘users’, whereas those who
interact with email, the World Wide Web or interactive TV frequently
receive such a designation.
To think of technological mediums in this way is to follow a familiar
fallacy that equates communication, transportation and exchange systems
as ‘service functions’ of culture, as supplements to social reproduction. By
this view, individuals are regarded as tool-using actors who are placed at
either end of intersubjective processes. In such a view, the message is the
medium and the medium is ‘used’ as a tool.
In contrast to this model, the advent of Internet communication has
coincided with a renewed interest in theories of ritual communication.
What theorists of the Internet have taught us is the importance of looking
at the ritual aspects of technologically extended communication, which
also means looking at the distinction between interaction and the way in
which communicative forms carry social integration. Sometimes, this con-
nection is only intuitively observed, as when, for example, Howard
Rheingold (1994) describes communication on his own Internet network,
the WELL, as a ‘bloodless technological ritual’.