Page 180 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

Semiotics and the Dialectic of Information 169

MAINTAINING THE DIALECTIC OF INFORMATION

We have seen that the dialectic of matter and form, which I here refer to as
the dialectic of information, has been broken by some of the most respected
scholars of our time. In previous chapters, however, we noted that this di-
alectic figured prominently in the writings of the founding writers of media
studies. Innis, Adorno, Williams, Hoggart, and Thompson all espoused a “soft
determinism,” which in the present context is akin to proposing a dialectic of
freedom and control, of interpretation and determinism, of language and ac-
tion, of form and matter, of medium and message.
To illustrate, I turn briefly again to Innis, but now also to his “disciple,”
Marshall McLuhan. Innis, as we have seen, provided an immensely original
and heuristic way of integrating what are today called cultural studies and
critical political economy of media. In his media thesis, Innis focused on the
dialectic of medium and message. Far from presuming, as do theorists of de-
materialized information, that the medium is of little or no consequence, In-
nis proposed interactivity between medium and message, which is to say be-
tween matter and form. Depending on the physical properties of any given
medium of communication—its durability, lightness, ease or difficulty in be-
ing encoded, its capacity to carry messages—it is predisposed to transmit ei-
ther time-binding or space-binding messages, thereby supporting elites whose
power is based on the particular monopoly of knowledge made conducive by
the prevailing medium. Messages, though, act recursively on media, as in
choice of medium made by those with messages to send. Although some com-
23
mentators have accused Innis of being a technological or media determin-
ist, enough has been said in previous chapters and elsewhere 24 to lay that
charge to rest.
However, Innis neglected (but not entirely! ) reception and interpretation,
25
and it is in this regard that Marshall McLuhan may be understood as filling a
gap in Innis’ work. Like Innis, McLuhan was a medium theorist who drew at-
tention to the interplay of medium and message, between matter and form.
McLuhan, however, proposed connections between the material means of en-
coding messages and “biases” in interpreting them by receivers or audiences.
McLuhan maintained that media, being extensions or amplifications of either
the eye or ear, affect interpretation/perception in broadly predictable ways. 26
For example, he attributed the predominance of either linear logic or of ana-
logic reasoning to the preponderance in any given culture of media extending
(or amplifying the power of) the eye or ear respectively. Linear logic, ac-
cording to McLuhan, derives from the (illusion of) connectedness in visual
space, whereas analogy, due to gaps inherent to audile/tactile space, is
more common in cultures emphasizing the ear. It is from gaps or intervals, not