The Diminishing Quantity of Individuality
The interconnected world that we live in today has been a developmental process that began with the first words ever written down and has succeeded in taking the world step by step into new ways of communication, resulting in ever changing cultures and socially constructed worlds. The ideas that mediums have changed the ways that humans interact and communicate with each other have been around since the time of Socrates (469–399). Socrates saw the first of many mediums that would come into this world, writing. He theorized that written communication was drastically different than oral communication and reading would “alter humans and their use of their memories, decrease their desire to interactive dialogue and increase their favor of extended monologues, and lead to new forms of communication that were not tailored to specific audiences” (Meyrowitz, 53). Since this time many other scholars have theorized the effects of medium and mass medium and the ways that they would change human interaction and communication.
Many people think of Marshal McLuhan as the first Medium Theorist. McLuhan’s ideas were rather radical during the time he was publishing his ideas and theories. His most remarkable, and rather radical piece he published was his book The Medium is the Massage which was released to the public in 1967. In the years of his studies and the time leading up to the publish of The Medium is the Massage, McLuhan experienced massive changes in technology, and saw the start of the biggest changes to medium that this world has seen. These changes sparked his ideas and his theories of medium change on the cultures and societies, and saw first-hand how media was impacting social communication and how it was being constructed. He theorized the past, present and future of technology in the world which he called “Our Age of Anxiety” (McLuhan, 8). His beliefs on the changing of humans and families, neighbors and ourselves were the first that made people realize that there are potential negative effects of the mass medium world that we were heading for.
While reading McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage, one thing that drew my attention was the lack of individualism that he saw in the world. Although individuality was more achievable and more acceptable than it was in the Scribal Era, the individuality in today’s world has become a group phenomenon. Although there are many different ways of life, and groups of people who differ from the next, the progress of the individual has progressed into a group of individuals. Meaning that there is always another individual that will share your beliefs, feelings, ideals, interpretations and perspectives. On page 61 of The Medium is the Massage McLuhan offers his thoughts on the idea of “detention as a form of human punitive corrective action” (McLuhan, 61). McLuhan states that the idea of reform through enclosure does not work as well as it may have once worked in the time of the fourteenth century when it was first introduced. He claims this is due to the feeling of guilt that is now felt through a societal perspective and is no longer and individualized emotion/feeling. I think this stands even more true today, and helps further the argument of the diminishing individuality of today’s Modern/ Post-Modern society we live in. Because of the mass communication and the mass media we have available at our fingertips we are so easily able to find someone who we can relate to. Although this can be helpful and can create relationships and spark communication, it has decreased the levels of individuals. People can relate to another person, a book character, a podcast, a TV character and they can see themselves within that person who is a figment of the medium they are engaging with. I think McLuhan’s predictions about individuality and the construction of mutually feelings was completely accurate and resonates even heavier today. Everyone can easily relate to a situation based on something they’ve experienced before, whether it was their own experiences, someone they knew, or a character from a movie. These experiences help to relate emotion and perspective within our connected world, but decrease the levels of individual spirit and thought.
