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Kohl, Uta --- "Reports/Reviews" [2000] JlLawInfoSci 18; (2000-2001) 11(2) Journal of Law, Information and Science 279

BOOK REVIEW

Digital McLuhan - A Guide to the Information Millennium

BY PAUL LEVINSON,

Routledge, London, 1999, pp 226,

ISBN 0-41519251X

Paul Levinson finishes Digital McLuhan with the words “Read McLuhan, read books and essays about his work, … and decide for yourself…”’. If this final sentence contains the measure of success of the book it is a failure. While Levinson certainly brings Marshall McLuhan’s (1911 -1980) work into the future, as is his declared aim, and shows McLuhan’s relevance and regained credibility in the digital age, he does not quite convince that McLuhan is the brilliant media theorist (who the author clearly believes he was) and a must-read. Rather, given McLuhan’s unorthodox writing style, acknowledged by the author, and his delight in picturesque metaphors on the effects of media, followed by his refusal to lift the veil of mystery surrounding them through clear explanation, it appears that all but the most enthusiastic should stay away from McLuhan in the original. Even Levinson’s sympathetic attempt to excuse his mentor by portraying him as the ‘reluctant explicator’ (Chapter two) who devoted his life to coming up with glorious ideas, leaving the explaining, testing and criticism of them to others, is not entirely persuasive. Would not McLuhan himself - at least in the security of his own mind - have tested the strength of his ‘discoveries’ by exposing them to arguments and counter-arguments?

Be that as it may, Digital McLuhan is fortunately the brainchild of someone who believes in the value of explanation of ideas and as such successfully provides an insightful treatise on the digital revolution and how it fits into the broader picture of media evolution. Like Levinson’s history of media and communication technologies - from the alphabet to the Internet - in The Soft Edge (1997), this book offers valuable lessons not only to those who have a specific interest in media studies but for all those who attempt to make sense of the new era. For those concerned with the legal challenges of the media revolution this book clarifies and explains the origins and nature of some of these legal problems and points to the likely pitfalls in solving them. For example, the examination of McLuhan’s idea of the “global village” in Chapter six and of how this metaphor rings even more completely true, more than 30 years after its ‘invention’, in the age of the Internet is instructive to any legal inquiry into the jurisdictional issues arising out of online behaviour. It certainly helps to put outcries about new jurisdictional entanglements into perspective and to show what exactly what makes the Internet so novel in globalisation terms. Similarly, Levinson’s exploration of the fate of the centre in Chapter seven - “Centres everywhere, margins nowhere” - also illuminates the recent equivalent debates in legal circles about the challenges caused by the loss of traditional intermediaries and decentralisation.

Yet another example of how an open multidisciplinary perspective can enrich all perspectives lies in Levinson’s discussion of the “rear-view mirror” in Chapter 14, which draws on McLuhan’s statement that “[w]e look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.” Once it is appreciated, thanks to Levinson, that the tendency to see and evaluate new media in terms of the already known, is fundamental to help us to come to terms with new media, the many judges who, in recent cases, have compared the Internet with magazines or letters[1] may be judged more leniently for their apparent short-sightedness. The necessity as well as the dangers of the rear-view mirror, whether in media or legal studies, are encapsulated in the colourful statement that

‘[i]f we stare too long into the rear-view mirror, focusing only on how the new medium relates to media of the immediate past, we may crash head-on into an unseen, unexpected consequence. On the other hand, if we look only straight and stiffly ahead, with no image or idea of where we’re coming from, where we’ve just been, we cannot possibly have a clear comprehension of where we are going.’ (at 176)

Levinson then himself applies this to electronic ink on electronic paper, concluding that using just a rear-view mirror suggests that such ink and paper is the perfect improvement on traditional ink on traditional paper in terms of revisability and convenience. However, upon closer analysis it is clear that they do not provide the continuity and security of traditional ink and paper. Would such an analysis not inform current legal discussions on the integrity of electronic contracts? In short, Digital McLuhan should be very interesting even to those not devoted to media studies or who are not passionate McLuhan fans.

Digital McLuhan appropriately lets McLuhan’s more or less famous metaphors such as ‘The medium is the message’, ‘light-through/light on’, ‘hot and cool’ or ‘we have no art, we do everything well’ guide the organisation of the book. Thus various aspects of media generally and its specific application in the Internet context form the 15 chapters of the book. While some of the discussion in the book overlaps with that of The Soft Edge, the latter followed a chronological order which not only let the reader glide smoothly through centuries of media development but also was more transparent; and Levinson’s headings in Digital McLuhan, although colourful, are not always immediately instructive as to the content of the chapter. For example, who could have guessed that the fifth chapter, entitled “Online Angels”, discusses personal identity online, virtual sex and deception and the intrinsic fallibility of machines - a chapter you would not want to miss. But this lack of guidance from the table of contents is partially remedied through the very detailed index which also makes the book a useful reference text long after the initial reading.

McLuhan’s metaphors provide useful starting points for Levinson to explore several, and often interrelated effects of media. Beyond those already mentioned, there is the phenomenon that the characteristics of a particular medium often only become apparent when it is replaced by another medium (see Chapter three). Chapter four deals with the question of how visual and acoustic space differ and whether cyberspace is more a visual or acoustic medium. In Chapter eight, media, which rely on light shining on them, such as print or paintings, are contrasted with more ‘illuminating’ and involving media, which rely on light shining through them, such as TV or personal computers. McLuhan’s distinction of hot and cool media, whether the distinction makes sense and is valuable and which medium is what, is analysed in Chapter nine. While the discussion is thought-provoking, I was never quite convinced that this was not “the epitome of an interesting distinction blown well beyond its importance” (at 96) Chapter 10 explains the demise of the traditional powerful gatekeepers, whether in the shape of the church, governments, publishers, editors or bookstores. Levinson suggests that censorship which traditionally has been at least practically made necessary by the limits of physical space available, gives way in the vastness of cyberspace to evaluation, endorsement and matchmaking, as illustrated by the online bookstore amazon.com. However, it could also be argued that these new selection procedures are another form, albeit more subtle, of censorship.

In the next chapter Levinson discusses how the computer and the Internet have further blurred the boundaries between private and public space, office and home, and work and play, and the social consequences of these shifting boundaries. This is followed by an analysis of how a medium slowly ascends to art when newer media at least partially replace it. The author uses the unlikely but perfect examples of convertibles and delicacies to illustrate the process and the reasons for it. Chapter 13 considers whether aspects such as the greater speed and reach of the Internet in comparison to previous information channels do actually lead to an improvement of our ways of life. The answer has to be: yes and no.

In the final chapter Levinson concludes by introducing the reader to McLuhan’s tetrad or laws of media, according to which four questions can be asked about every medium: What does it enhance? What does it render obsolete? What does it retrieve from the past? What does it reverse into? While these questions are no doubt useful analytic tools, Levinson’s own media theory is certainly at least as instructive and enlightening, if not superior to that of his master. The author’s “anthropotropic theory” of media is that media evolve, analogous to biological species, with human beings selecting for survival the media most appropriate to their needs and those that tend to increase “consonance with pre-technological human communication modes, while maintaining their extension across time and space…” (at 185).

Finally, unlike many other academic, and in particular legal, writers, Paul Levinson is entertaining. So, even those who do not expect that Digital McLuhan will advance their professional or general knowledge, may be persuaded to give it a try on the basis of lines like “But there is more to human life than sex.” (at 60). Just don’t try sleeping with your computer.

Review by Uta Kohl, University of Wales, Aberystwyth.


[1] This is particularly obvious in US jurisdictions which have already built up a considerable body of case law on Internet-related legal issues. See for example, Maritz, Inc v Cybergold, Inc, 947 F Supp 1328 (ED Mo) (analogy to postal mail); Hearst Corp v Goldberger No 96 CIV 3620 PKL (SDNY Feb 26,1997) (analogy to national magazines); Telco Communications v An Apple A Day Inc, 977 F Supp 404 (ED Va 1997)(analogy to letters).

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