The Media and The Word

In his 1964 book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase "The media is the message." One sixth the way through the 20th century, it was beginning to be apparent that content was affected by form.

Form and media affect the formality and strength of words. Ephemeral medias only have lasting significant when captured or embedded in other media. The words I wrote in the frost on a wooden crate in the desert of Kuwait faded with the morning sun, but the image of the letters captured and replicated, digitally transform the ephemeral event. The letters written in frost can now be replicated and transmitted globally. As a series of ones and zeros, their image can be moved beneath oceans, bounced off satellite and transmitted from access points.
The words, digitally encoded and transmitted globally, are still ephemeral, though reproduced and displayed on CRTs, LEDs, and plasma displays, their brief appearance is beholding to the whim of the viewer. Their very coding and transmission media are depended in the technology of the now, and the media of the moment. Placed on a CD or DVD, the image of word is still subject to the shifting sand of technological progress. They will eventfully become like the strips of nitrate film stored in my freezer, so out of sink with the modern world that it is virtually impossible to transfer their content to a new media.
While in Iraq at the ruins of Ur I saw ancient cuneiform letters. Words pressed in clay five thousand years ago. I was told by a guide that the words where written to encourage the young. Obey your mother and father. Study your lessons well. The words formed a thread in my mind. They linked me to the man pressing his stylus into the clay. His thoughts where my thoughts, the hopes an fears of those men and women now turned to dust, touched me.

Our vast technology gives a false sense power and permanence. But it is an illusion. As we move away from stone and clay our words lose permanence. Our army may tread on the same cobblestones that bore the feet of Alexander, but our ideas, and our words ablate against ancient concepts recited in daily prayers. Even these, cultures in opposition, are transformed and distorted by the new media called Internet. The global networks that helped us project our power also allowed a few dedicated zealots to coordinate attacks upon us from caves in the borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

From jk70-arin

Words scrawled on an armored door remind the occupant of the ever-present danger. Works give minds numbed by IED blasts the chance to compose a call for help. Personality permanently altered by TBI, the walking wounded, filled with unexplained rage over lost memories. The words remind us of war and death, of long journeys to foreign and hostile lands. But these words have melted away in cauldrons of recycled steel. Armor now transformed into plowshares or Toyotas or the shiny nickle plated backs of iPhones.

While on leave from Kuwait I traveled to St. Louis with my two sons to find America. Hanging from the courthouse columns was a banner. The words on the banner reminded me of great injustice. The beginning of the end of slavery started in that courthouse. The Dread Scott v. Sandford case outraged many and fed a growing abolitionist movement. It fed an anger that eventfully burst forth in civil war. The words that denied citizenship to African Americans where up held by Chief Justice Taney's supreme court. Taney also rendered the oath that put Lincoln into the White House. So Taney's spoken words both broke and bound a nation.

In Springfield I found words cast in bronze. The words in bronze that caught my eye seemed always to echo of death and departure. Some part of me thought of this place as a tragic death trip. Lincoln departed on a train, only to return in a coffin; here was the start of Donner Party; through here past the Pottawatomie Trail of Death; journeys and tragedies. Here was the old capital where Lincoln one served, and where recently Barack Obama announced his candidacy.

From jk70-arin

Full circle to the Internet, information pulsing through fiber optic lines as flashes of infrared light. Pulses transformed from light to electricity to radio waves. Projected up to satellites and down to dishes. In Springfield I was taken back in time. I was in a tent in Kuwait connected to the Internet. There I watched on my Apple laptop the YouTube video of Barack Obama announcing his run for President. I heard the words. The words written down and projected upon a teleprompter, the words and the media transforming the world.

Words transform us and bind us. Words can help us find our common humanity. We are a nation bound by the words in our Constitution. Our peace is bound by treaties, our wars driven by propaganda. We can move words at the speed of light to each and every corner of the world. The paradox of the information age, so many words and so few of meaning.

Carefully chosen words can transform our world for the better. I want to contribute to that transforming dialog.