Marshall McLuhan’s tetrad: enhancement, obsolescence,
retrieval and reversal, provides a way to explore the effects of new
developments or new technologies.
Enhancement is the extension of an ability in time,
space, strength, speed, agility or other quality. A telescope enhances vision across
large distances while a microscope enhances vision of very small objects. Enhancement always leads
to imbalance because as one sense or ability is enhanced, less attention flows to
other senses. McLuhan’s term for this phenomenon was auto-anaesthesia. When you
talk on a telephone, for instance, your attention is focused on the sense of
hearing. You have no physical sense of the other person and you are less aware
of your own body. When you read a book, attention is focused through the sense
of sight and you lose touch with your body. The book makes it possible to
create an imagined world, a world of stories and ideas in which the body does
not participate.
Obsolescence means that one way of relating or
communicating is replaced by another. The older way of doing things doesn’t
disappear completely. Instead, its relative importance, position or role changes and usually
becomes highly specialized. Some people still drive a horse and buggy even
though most use a car. The horse and buggy are retained by particular
communities or become specialized for purposes such as entertainment, sulky
racing, for example. Film is still used by some photographers who are looking
for particular effects, but the vast majority of photographs today are taken
with cell phones.
Retrieval involves bringing back the experience of an
older technology or an older way of relating or interacting. Facebook, for
instance, brings back the experience of living in a small town; everybody knows
everything about you. You cannot keep anything secret. Even as one moves
forward with technology, the past returns in a different form.
Reversal is the principle that any development
creates its own negation. The car, for instance, gives rise to gridlock. Email
gives rise to miscommunication, especially if you write anything humorous. The
advent of the car led to decades of experiments with freeways until it became
clear that building freeways does not eliminate gridlock. Traffic just
increases to the point that the same degree of gridlock occurs. In many cases,
reversal reveals the limits and problems associated with growth in use of new
developments.
The changes that take place with the advent of new
developments or technologies are complex, partly because all four of McLuhan’s effects
take place simultaneously, and partly because individuals, societies and
environments interact with new developments in unpredictable ways. Cultural
values, social norms and even geography all play a part. For example, gunpowder
was invented in China, but it was in the highly competitive environment of
Europe that it was put to military use.
To be continued...
