Neutral On Neutrality

| By Scott McClellan | Found in Communication | 7 Comments

Here are two generally accepted ideas that I read and hear often:

1) Technology is neutral; it’s what we do with it that counts.

In other words, Marshal McLuhan was wrong when he said, “The medium is the message.” The message of the Church — the gospel — doesn’t change when our media and methods do. The message stays the same whether it’s preached, printed, broadcast, blogged, or tweeted because technology is neutral.

2) To reach this media-saturated, ADD-riddled, MTV-raised generation, we’ve got to …

In other words, media and technology have shaped younger generations in such a way that the Church needs new strategies and methods to reach them. The old ways won’t work because people can’t hear/see/pay attention to the old ways.

Well … which is it?

Can you see the contradiction of those accepted concepts? For one reason or another, that contradiction wasn’t entirely apparent to me until I read Amusing Ourselves to Death (Amazon link – $9.75!) by the late, great Neil Postman. Despite the fact that the book was published in 1985 and therefore doesn’t have much to say on the Internet, it’s incredibly relevant in its analysis of the power of media and technology to shape culture.

Postman provides an overview of the history of public discourse and the effects of the printing press, the telegraph, the telephone, and the television on the world. In each of these cases, the tools with which we communicate alter the content of what we communicate, though we tend not to recognize it. “You cannot use smoke [signals] to do philosophy. Its form excludes the content,” Postman asserts. Print communication, then, is a medium that enabled and encouraged philosophical discourse. TV and the Internet, both of which are driven by entertaining snippets, are decidedly not conducive to philosophical discourse, but rather to sports and sex and shoot-outs and car crashes.

Postman’s point is that living in a world in which TV and other technology have changed the discourse also changes us. With the utmost conviction he declares, “Only those who know nothing of the history of technology believe that a technology is entirely neutral.”

With all that in mind, I encourage you to read Amusing Ourselves to Death. It’s challenging, smart, accessible, witty, and relatively short. I also encourage you to abandon Belief #1, that technology is neutral, while continuing to seek out new means of meaning a generation for whom the discourse has changed. One caveat: the best way to reach an ADD-riddled generation may not be through means that encourage or inflame their ADD.

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  • http://intensedebate.com/people/jonathanmalm jonathanmalm

    great post…opens up my eyes a bit. very good point that the medium does dictate the discourse. (a lot of d's there) so it's almost like social media opens up the philosophical debate a bit more…because it is not a one-way medium.

  • http://www.christandpopculture.com Richard Clark

    Good stuff, Scott. I love the fact that the editor-in-chief of a ministry and media magazine would encourage his readers in this way. Media can be extremely helpful in reaching and teaching… or it can be something else. Maybe even both.

  • http://www.christandpopculture.com/asides/the-medium-is-not-the-message-except-when-it-is/ The medium is not the message… except when it is. | Christ and Pop Culture

    [...] Neutral On Neutrality – Scott McClellan juxtaposes two oft-claimed opinions on ministry, media and culture… and finds that they just don’t add up. [...]

  • Ryan Holmes

    I hear many Christians citing Marshall McLuhan's "The medium is the message," but I have yet to see any Christian actually grapple with exactly what McLuhan is saying through that. Ultimately, I fear that Christians use that statement without having read or thought through what he was really arguing for. I would venture to bet that if Christians took a harder look at what McLuhan was arguing for via that statement (i.e. in his work Understanding Media and The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects) that many Christians would reject that as a moniker they want to be associated with.

    And for the record, I agree that technology is not neutral, but to say that any given medium IS the message as McLuhan meant it…well I'm not prepared to go that far.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/ScottMcClellan ScottMcClellan

    Ryan — I definitely understand not buying into McLuhan's statement. It may be helpful to read Postman's book — he doesn't buy into it either. Early in the book, Postman explains his position: "the medium is the metaphor."

  • Ryan Holmes

    Yeah I'm currently reading Postman's book. McLuhan's argument in The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects is that the content of the message is virtually irrelevant. So it doesn't matter whether your kids watch violent movies or Sesame Street, what's important is that they are absorbing the television medium. Ultimately, the medium shapes us and to an extreme lesser extent, the message (if the message even impacts us at all).

    I think that's too far. If true, it makes irrelevant all communication in any form. The preacher, the teacher, the artist, the musician would have no voice save the actual medium they use. I'm willing to go as far as to say the medium influences or impacts the message. For example, tweeting isn't a good way to have a philosophical debate. The medium of tweeting is not conducive to long, thoughtful debates. But tweeting isn't the message itself.

    I guess my fear is that tech/media-savvy Christians have been keying up on this phrase in the last few years, but I wonder if they've thought through it's implications if taken at face value. If McLuhan's statement is true, then my typing of even this is quite superfluous. The real message is that I'm using a comment board to communicate.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/JessePhillips JessePhillips

    "I love the fact that the editor-in-chief of a ministry and media magazine would encourage his readers in this way."

    I agree with Richard! This is now the second book that Scott has blogged about that I am going to purchase and read. Scott, you rock. Thank you. (the first was "The War of Art" – Pressfield)