Assignment:
Alison Harwood's review of "The Gutenberg Galaxy"
Assist in writing a summary of Alison Harwood's review of "The Gutenberg Galaxy," but I cannot find her thesis statement and main arguments/ideas.
Write a critical discussion which addresses the following:
Are handwritten script and the printed book equally responsible for the creation of the "typographic man"?
Please give me some ideas from the review or other sources.
The Gutenberg Galaxy
The Making of Typographic Man
by Marshall McLuhan
Reviewed by Alison Harwood
We human beings generally regard ourselves as special because of unique capacities, such as imagination, consciousness, reasoning and language, which enable us to understand reality in a way that is impossible for other beings. We believe that, through technology, we can alter the conditions of life and exercise some control over our future, and we view technological development as a consciously directed process. However, since Darwin presented his theory of evolution, confidence in this view of humanity and technology has been shaken. In positing human beings on a level equal with every other form of life, as products of a blind process, evolution demotes humanity from its privileged status: the evolutionary perspective, in changing humanity's ‘special' qualities into accidental mutations, eliminates the possibility of human agency within the context of life's development. Doubt about human uniqueness also entails similar questioning about technology's status. Is technology, as part of human development, similarly purposeless and unconscious? If each technological development is subsumed under an evolutionary process as a mere successive mutative stage, then technology, loosed from the illusion of human direction, is an independent force. A variety of social and environmental problems have already revealed the need for attention to both existing technologies and future innovations. However, if technology is a mere human accessory, ruled by chance mutations and driven by the forward surge of an evolutionary principle, it is essentially beyond our control. The idea that we may well be at the mercy of our own technology and therefore need to take more care in its design and implementation is illuminated by Marshall McLuhan in The Gutenberg Galaxy.
In his discussion of how the cumulative unconscious effects of print technology have influenced human development, McLuhan shows that, rather than wielding technology to shape our world, we are instead unwittingly and fundamentally changed by it. In an exhaustive investigation into print media's "mechanical technology,"1 he illustrates its effects on politics, economics, philosophy, education, literature, science and communication, revealing its unintended and unnoticed alterations to human perception which have in turn influenced our thinking and wrought radical changes on our civilization.
According to McLuhan, human perception is naturally audio-tactile, inclusive of all the senses. However, with the introduction of the phonetic alphabet, human perception was narrowed to the visual sense as the primary medium. In addition, the physical arrangement of text, combined with the abstraction of meaning necessitated by the alphabet's arbitrary symbols, encouraged an emphasis on thinking that was lateral and linear rather than mosaic, and rational rather than emotive or intuitive. In this way, altered perception changed humanity's approach to understanding the world.
Print technology, as the mechanisation of scribal handcraft, is seen by McLuhan as the first example of applied knowledge that enabled the evolution of many other technologies. When knowledge of scribal craft was transferred to print technology, writing's inherent perceptual principles evolved to further change perception by giving primacy to the fixed form. Deriving from the introduction of accurate reproduction, the fixed form led to "closure and perspective,"2 a fundamental change in the approach to knowledge. Previously authorship was mosaic, as written works were copied, dissected and reincorporated with others. Learning involved the hand copying, recitation and extensive discussion of manuscripts, and knowledge, regarded as flexible and anonymous, entailed time and personal involvement. With mechanised printing, mass production of identical texts introduced the idea of individual authorship and ownership of intellectual property. The permanence of printed works enabled points of view to remain specific to individual authors, and increased production and distribution encouraged variety and comparison, solidifying the idea of the unique viewpoint. Therefore, because of the fixed form, printing was the "technology of individualism."3 Print technology also accounted for a changed attitude to knowledge manifested in the concern with "packaged" philosophical systems4: evidence that philosophia, as love of wisdom, had been superceded by philosophy which regarded "certitude as the primary object of knowledge."5
Accurate repeatability generated in the typographic process also encouraged uniformity of grammar and spelling, which, added to the increased legibility of standardised printed characters, enabled easier and quicker reading of texts, and led to increased literacy and readership and a democratisation of knowledge. However, this knowledge was provided by texts ruled by the underlying principles of standardisation and fixed form, which were instantiated not only in compositional style but also in techniques of thought, and stimulated a tendency for homogenisation and levelling of knowledge toward agreed and permanent views. Print technology's emphasis on uniformity led, in general, to an unconscious assumption of the primacy of permanent, fixed and segmented structures and an insistence on "repetition as criterion of truth and practicality."6 This assumption, together with the repetitive lineal patterns underlying print technology, led to the application of segmented operations to other industries, encouraging mechanisation and industrialisation, all ruled by a subliminal homogenising power.
McLuhan's investigation into the consequences of print technology addresses many other issues. He shows that the "visual assumption of linear continuity"7 combined with that of fixity and segmentation were responsible for a change in the attitude to space and time. In oral and scribal cultures, situations and phenomena are viewed as manifold experiences. However, under the influence of print technology, "typographic man" came to regard experience as a composite progression of fixed, isolated instants.8 The perceptive and intellectual principles accentuated by print technology were conducive to the development of modern science, which bases investigation on the isolation and reduction of natural objects and processes to fixed forms, and employs linear continuity and abstraction for the development of theories and natural laws.
According to McLuhan, print technology has replaced all-inclusive perception and appreciation with "linear, fragmented analysis with remorseless power of homogenization."9 As every technology is "interiorized,"10 it isolates one particular sense at the expense of others, and "when sense ratios change, men change."11 Perceptive and intellectual changes influence new technologies: the way the world is perceived affects the way it is understood and this in turn influences the design of future technologies. Thus people create technologies, which change people, who create more technologies, which change people... The Gutenberg Galaxy exemplifies one of Dennett's algorithmic processes. It also reveals that technology, in determining perception, also determines itself and the future shape of human life, suggesting that, as an evolutionary process, it may not be directed by human purpose.
However, McLuhan is no Luddite. He stresses that the theme
of The Gutenberg Galaxy is not the intrinsic evil of technology, but that "...unconsciousness of any force is a disaster, especially one we have made ourselves."12 Butler's suggestion of the possibility that human beings are the way they are because of the changes wrought on them by their own technology13 is echoed by McLuhan, who warns that the "subliminal operation of our own technologies,"14 in the form of the influence of unexamined assumptions, can lead to technological determinism. This book supports the modern concern that some technological innovations, such as genetic engineering, lack sufficient investigation of their future consequences before implementation.
Therefore The Gutenberg Galaxy is a valuable stimulant to thought about modern communications technology. McLuhan suggests that global electronic media herald a return to the all-inclusive mode of sense perception natural to human beings, the "rediscovery of ordinary transactions between self and world."15 The fact that this too is unplanned and unconscious, and that it has been made possible only through print technology, is reminiscent of Chardin's idea, discussed by Wolfe, of the eventual evolution of the "unified consciousness" of the "noösphere."16 The idea of technology as a cause of modification in human evolution, illustrated in the new "open field and suspended judgement"17 approach to knowledge which has evolved with modern technologies and is evident in modern physics, is of particular interest to a study of evolutionary principles. McLuhan's discussions of the far-reaching social, political and economic consequences of technology are also relevant to Friedman's study of globalisation.18 In addition, McLuhan's emphasis on literary and artistic evidence illuminates the value, often ignored, of including the arts as well as the sciences in studies of evolutionary principles.
For any student of Evolution, Innovation, Communications and the Future who is interested specifically in the application of evolutionary principles to technology, The Gutenberg Galaxy is enlightening, provocative and stimulating. However, there are probably many other works that are easier to read. The flow of McLuhan's argument, based mainly on literary evidence, is interrupted by a preponderance of lengthy citations, and the book is long, densely written and composed of small, sometimes disjointed sections: a format described by the author as "a mosaic pattern of perception and observation."19 However, in finishing the book, perseverance and determination are finally rewarded by a surprisingly comprehensive understanding of the wide-ranging consequences of print technology. One is left with the realisation that the book's effectiveness is strangely at odds with its unfamiliar "mosaic" style; that perhaps uneasiness engendered by its seemingly fractured approach and lack of rational, structured argument is subliminal proof of one's own unconsciously sculptured perception.