“Media Hot and Cool”

How Media Engage Us

(hotcool.doc)

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 McLuhan Says…
“A hot medium is one that extends one
single sense in ‘high definition’. High
definition is the state of being well filled
with data.”
Understanding Media, p. 22
“Hot media are, therefore, low in
participation, and cool media are high in
participation or completion by the
audience.”
Understanding Media, p. 23
Hot Medium
 Single sense, high def’n,
lots of information
 Little completion or
active participation
 Tends to exclude
 Leads to specialization,
fragmentation
 Numbs awareness,
lessens total perception
 Short, intense
experiences
 Tends to hijack attention
Cool Medium
 Multiple senses, low
def’n, less info for each
 High participation, active
completion
 Tends to include
 Leads to generalization,
consolidation
 Engages awareness,
heightens perception
 Longer, sustained
experiences
 Actively aware attention
 Examples:
HOT COOL
Renaissance painting Mosaic or abstract art
Photograph Cartoon

Lecture Seminar

Print (e.g. books) Speech

Pop music Contemporary jazz

 McLuhan audience
Says… participation or completion

“Abstract art is the art of making the

image, not the art of matching inner
and outer.”
Culture is Our Business, p. 88
Recall: “When ‘truth’ is reduced to mere matching
of inner and outer, any statement can be
questioned.”
From Cliché to Archetype, p. 30
 McLuhan Says…
“Consistency is a meaningless term to apply to
an explorer. If he wanted to be consistent, he
would say home.”
McLuhan Hot & Cool, p. xiii
 McLuhan Says…
“Don’t allow my terminology to ‘put you off’. I
use language as a probe not a package. Even
when I seem to be making very dogmatic
statements, I am exploring contours.”
Letter to Jonathan Miller, May 4, 1965
Gordon, Escape Into Understanding, p. 214
 Group Probes
 Why would a supermarket want to have an in-
store bakery and offer free samples?
 Think of women’s fashion. Is haut couture
hot, cool, both or neither?
 The Effect-ive Artist
“[The artist] asks: What precise effect do I want
to have on my public? What precise emotion
do I wish to evoke and define? The artists
starts with the effect, since the means to such
an effect are everywhere.”
Take Today: The Executive as Dropout, p. 99
 The Artist’s Awareness
“The artist is the man in any field, scientific or
humanistic, who grasps the implications of his
actions and of new knowledge in his own
time. He is the man of integral awareness.”
Understanding Media, p. 65
We Now Pause for a
Message
from Our Sponsor…

Spawn Sir?
Spinster?
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 Hyundai  Japp 2
 Levi’s  Japp 3
 Underdaks  Exam
 Volkswagen  Apple Big Brother
 Toyota  Movement Without Constraint
 Woodpecker  Trash Mirror
 Racism – Stop It!  Starry, starry night
 Television… or Teletouch?
“The TV image is now a mosaic mesh of light
and dark spots…”

Hot or Cool?
“The TV image requires each instant that we
‘close’ the spaces in the mesh by a convulsive
sensuous participation that is profoundly
kinetic and tactile…”
“The TV image is one of ‘low definition’, in the
sense that it offers little detail and a low
degree of information…”
Understanding Media, Chapter 31
 The Moving Finger of Television
“But TV is, above all, an extension of the sense of touch …
iconographic art uses the eye as we use our hand … The TV
image … even more than the icon, is an extension of the
sense of touch.”
Understanding Media, 333 – 334

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it…”
Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
 Small Groups Probe
 What “temperature” is television now?
 McLuhan Says…
“Radio is a hot medium … Radio will serve as
background-sound or as noise level control, as
when the ingenious teenager employs it as a
means of privacy.”
Understanding Media, p. 312
 McLuhan Says…
“Put hundreds of extra lines on the TV image,
step up its visual intensity to a new hot level.
This might serve to reverse the whole effect
of TV. It might make the TV image
photographic, slick, like movies: hot and
detached.”
McLuhan Hot & Cool, p. 278
 McLuhan Says…
“Intensity or high definition engenders
specialism and fragmentation in living …
which explains why any intense experience
must be … reduced to a very cool state
before it can be … assimilated. …
“For many people, this cooling system brings
on a life-long state of psychic rigor mortis,
or of somnambulism…”
Understanding Media, p. 24
 Group Probes
 What affects the temperature of a medium?
 What causes media temperature to change?
 Small Groups Probe II
“The hotting-up of one sense tends to effect
hypnosis, and the cooling of all senses tends
to result in hallucination.”
Understanding Media, p. 32
 Overheating a medium induces reversal.
 Find examples and evidence of media that have
reversed temperatures.
 Describe the situation, the ground and the heating
or cooling influences and effects.
 For Next Time…
 Modes of Conversation:
 What are the effects of the various media of
conversation?
 Are there analogues between the various types
of non-electronic and electronic media of
conversation?
 Can we understand the often surprising effects
of electronically mediated communications?