Robert van Boeschoten...Am Ende der Gutenberg-Galaxis...MM
8#1...Review
- R O B E R T V A N B O E S C H O T E N
N O R B E R T B O L Z
Am Ende der Gutenberg-Galaxis
Die neuen Kommunikationsverhältnisse
- Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 1993, ISBN 3 7705 2871 9, German
text, 249 pp., Dfl.43,70
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- Norbert Bolz's most
recent book is a summary of past ideas. Interactive means of communication have
made McLuhan's End of the Gutenberg Galaxy a reality. Bolz's
philosophical view of his subject is fed by aesthetic interest. Communication
relations are determined by the way the means of communication present
themselves. The appearance, the presentation is important: this is expressed in
his `surface philosophy'. In the world of the media, appearances, or (put more
accurately: the contemplation of appearance or aesthetics) dominate completely.
The book in which one searched for the underlying story is finished.
Philosophically, this means that the light itself in Plato's cave is no longer
interesting, but the shadows all the more. Sunlight has been exchanged by
today's and tomorrow's cyber-cowboys for cathode radiation.
-
Because Am Ende der Gutenberg-Galaxis has the character of a summary,
it runs a certain risk of superficiality, too. But it is certainly to be
recommended to those who have not yet stood still at his work. The relationship
between philosophy and communication technology is portrayed in a structured
and comprehensible way. Through a tour of the best-known, especially German,
communication theories of Luhmann, Habermas and Benjamin, among others, Bolz
arrives at the evolution of `interface design'. By this he means, as McLuhan
explained before him, the technical structure in our perception that forms the
basis of that of which we are aware. Physiological processes organise our
neural network and stimulate psychological changes with consequences for our
knowledge of the environment and thus also our theories of knowledge.
Technology makes structures in our frame of thought (`Brainframes' according to
De Kerckhove), causing us to categorise and explore the world in a specific
way. Through linear perspective and the `panoramic gaze', we have arrived at
interactive perception. For McLuhan, this last form of perception was best
represented by a `resonant interval'. A term that he borrowed from physics,
where it is used to indicate how particles interrelate. In McLuhan's theory,
various sensory impressions enter the brain simultaneously, where a choice is
made between them. The sensory nervous system first checks over all the
impressions, as it were, and creates a specific image based on them.
-
The consequences of the means of communication for philosophy are elaborated
most clearly in the last two chapters. For Bolz, these are mainly in the fields
of epistemology and aesthetics. He calls it a `knowledge design' and a `media
aesthetics'.
-
The most important impulse to the design of our knowledge in Western culture
was the invention of writing. Writing increases interaction between people,
because of the representation of absent people by the written word. The
production of writing in book form causes the text to represent a person even
more. The unity of the book was equal to that of the person who had written it;
the text had an identity.
-
This identity has been splintered by electronic media, made possible by a
difference already present in the book: that between speech and writing.
Writing was a representation of the spoken word, but not its equivalent. The
printing press caused a reordering of our thinking, by elevating the written
text as organisation form above other forms of information transmission. The
printed text pressed an order into language that was represented by the book as
a mental unity and accepted by all. Our knowledge structure oriented itself
towards this, so that today a situation is comprehensible if described as a
story with a beginning, a discussion and conclusions. Every history in book
form consists of a unity in which beginning and end are tied together.
-
In written language, absence as false reality and presence as true reality are
engaged in a continuous game with each other. The book that is present
represents a writer that is absent. The text in the book seems to only portray
the writer's thoughts, as though the writer is speaking. But because of the
written character of the text, the reader must interpret the written word
himself, and the text is not as clear as it pretends.
-
Bolz finds this theme in the work of J. Derrida, who deals with the
philosophical consequences of this game. The break-up of linearity in modern
thought is described by Derrida as an archedifférence underlying
any description of reality. Where a philosophical truth or description of
reality is offered, the text resembles a speaking `reason' attempting to prove
its correctness. The text pretends to be present and clearly understandable,
but is in fact not yet present because it must first be interpreted by the
reader in order to acquire meaning. McLuhan portrays this difference with the
metaphor of the `mosaic', and also rejects linear thinking in modern science.
In Bolz's book, these metaphors are joined in a `figuration game', used by
modern media to describe reality and distance itself from the logic of cause
and effect. According to McLuhan, language has developed from an oral- via a
scriptural- into a typographic form, which is being transformed in modern times
into an electronic form that resembles the language of the scriptural era. Bolz
adopts these categories when he speaks of today's `hypertext', that fits our
image of mediaeval times. The Torah and the Bible were regarded
as texts that required annotation. The texts thus produced were organised
tours, in which `super links' were created between fragments from the
Torah, the Bible and philosophical texts. The modern media also
weaves texts together in zig-zag fashion. The book in which reference of one
text to another is suppressed, has lost its validity. Reference to other texts
remains reference in modern media, causing the internal difference meant by
Derrida to be present in the text. The structure of communication is more
transparent in modern media than in books.
-
To Bolz, modern means of communication represent a revolution taking place in
our consciousness now. The greatest challenge to the developer of the media is
the design of that same media. Their demand is directed at making the media as
user-friendly as possible. According to Bolz, this requires examination of
modern art forms. Communication that does not artistically reflect on its own
form is nonsensical, according to him.
-
Bolz places art and communication media on the same level. He finds them not
to be a reflection of an utopian, other world, as people like T. Roszak still
thought in the sixties; rather, they form an `alarm system' for our
consciousness. Our senses are tested by today's media, causing us to learn to
deal with new forms of perception.
-
According to Bolz, aesthetics in modern art develops from Cubism, in which the
perspective image is shattered, through Futurism, in which the movement as such
is the main thing, to Suprematism, in which the minimum of representation in
art is attained. In Malevich's Suprematism, all objects are deception, forming
a false reality that conceals real being. Suprematism opposes artistic reality
to this. According to Bolz, Suprematism takes a kind of `eagle-eye view',
making `geometrical aerial photographs' to describe the situation in art and
daily existence. The turbulence of daily life is established as a structural
form in Suprematism. But Bolz gets into difficulties with this metaphor. The
eagle-eye view of artists like Malevich assumes a reality that is determined in
an Euclidian space that the artist can rise above. The all-seeing gaze is
transcendental. On the other hand, Bolz describes reality as a time-space
continuum, like modern physics. Connections are not located within systems of
causal relation in that world. Rather, they are located in a field of forces at
play where various options are present -- McLuhan's resonant interval.
Appearance and reality are indistinguishable in that world. It is not possible
to rise above it. Only recognition of the pattern of effects provides insight
into the situation.
-
Finally, Bolz compares the object-less world of the Suprematists with the
world of computer simulations. The technical teachings of modern media are just
as object-less as abstract art, because they are about communication as process
and not about the content of communication.
-
Modern advertising has understood this aspect of the media well. It has
changed its goals in recent years, selling life-style and world-image rather
than products. We are no longer guided by the function of products, but by the
emotional bond we can form with them. From this, Bolz concludes that the
important thing is no longer essential understanding and unmasking of
appearances, but a well-thought-out attitude or stance towards them.
-
According to Bolz, the effect of modern media is to make people cling to role
patterns that are recognisable on the surface. McLuhan writes in
Understanding Media, that because of the uncontrollability of the modern
media, our consciousness has moved outside of the body. We put our faith in
public opinions, accept the life-style advertisements and adjust our habits and
customs accordingly. That which is individual is no longer interesting, because
the subject has lost its right to have a voice. The book as representation of
that subject is finished.
-
translation JIM BOEKBINDER
..
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