What Would Late Media Theorist Neil Postman Think of “Mobile First” Media?

“The medium is the metaphor” takes on a whole new meaning

Whether you’re interested in media theory or not, you’ve probably heard the phrase “the medium is the message.” Media theorist Marshall McLuhan coined the now-iconic phrase, which sums up his theory that the way a message is presented affects the message itself. For instance, the same bit of information presented via TV, a book, or a telegraph would influence how the message is received in different ways.

Neil Postman, a later media theorist and educator, was very inspired by McLuhan (as many are — his works are foundations of the field) and specifically by “the medium is the message.” But in his seminal work Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), Postman tweaked it into his own phrase: “the medium is the metaphor.” He theorized that not only does the medium affect how the message is received, but that it also affects what types of messages can be sent. In other words, not only does a TV or the printed word affect our relationship to its content, but it also establishes what kind of content we can create, what conversations we can have in society. For instance, it’d be difficult to have a philosophical debate using smoke signals.

Thus, in Amusing Ourselves to Death he laments that American culture has become so intertwined with TV because TV is a medium which encourages vapid, shallow conversation and thus a vapid, shallow society. (A reminder here: this was written in the ’80s and many were arguing that junk TV shows were making us stupid. That’s not Postman’s argument. In fact, he writes, “I raise no objection to television’s junk. The best things on television are its junk, and no one and nothing is seriously threatened by it.”)

Postman thought that the way TV works makes certain societal conversations impossible and reshapes others to the point of triviality by turning everything into entertainment. Since TV is image-based, biased toward attention-grabbing images presented in quick succession, and presents information often out of context and in random order, it’s impossible to have a logical, language-based, coherent discussion about anything.

Consider the nightly news: we flip on the TV and happy, pretty anchors show us a quick highlight reel of things going on that largely have no relation to our personal lives and that we largely won’t do anything about. They jump from tragedies around the world to local sports news to cat fashion shows. We learn very little if anything about this “news” they describe in just a few seconds, without finding it strange that the anchors don’t seem sad about the tragedies they’re mentioning, or that we just move on to some other subject entirely. There’s no time to digest the information, no logic to its presentation. And for some reason we feel “informed” by this. Seems silly on paper, right?

Postman argues that TV made this lack of cohesion and depth seem normal to us, and that it affected everything we do, from electing politicians (make them pretty, and functional in 10-second increments) to educating kids (above all, it better be entertaining).

Now, take all of Postman’s theorizing on TV — that as an image-based medium which only lets us have illogical, shallow, fleeting conversations biased toward visually-interesting subjects, TV makes its citizenry disinformed and disengaged — and think about ~the internet~

Is “the internet” a medium? Sure. And perhaps when internet connections became as common as TVs, it would have been the medium to worry about. But the real culprit today is the internet-in-your-hand, the smartphone.

Our current media ecology is “mobile first;” it’s based on the distribution of information via the smartphone, often through social media apps. So let’s break this down using Postman’s own interrogation of a medium.

What is the character of its content?

Postman argues that print is content-laden, because words undeniably mean something, and serious, because it takes concentration, study and rationality to understand language. On the other hand, he says photography is really the opposite; it cannot make an argument or present an abstraction. It is only a slice of time and place, out of context. Besides what is literally taking place in the photo, it can have no meaning on its own. We just assign meaning, using our language, to what is being depicted.

The smartphone, nearly regardless of what apps you’re using, collapses word and image as to be inseparable. I’d argue that while much of the mobile medium— social apps like Twitter and to an extent Facebook, and news apps, for instance — are language-based, the content is so brief, de-contextualized and randomized it becomes graphic, condensing its meaning. The mobile medium is content-laden but it is anything but serious. It thrives on casualness, and encourages us to “dip” in and out for seconds throughout the day.

What does it demand of the public?

Postman argues that print language demands to be understood (because it has meaning and requires knowledge of language), but that images (and thus by extension TV) only demand to be recognized.

Information arrives through the mobile medium at such speed and with such fluidity that it certainly doesn’t encourage true understanding, or even lasting recognition. It encourages its consumers to absorb things for a split second and then scroll onward. If anything, the content of the mobile medium demands to be forgotten.

What uses of the mind does it favor?

Of course, the mobile world favors speed and aesthetic pleasure, plus the acceptance that changing topics from second to second is fine and normal. But most importantly, it favors that which is instantly comprehensible: thoughts in 140 characters, moment-long GIFs, familiar memes, 30-second DIY videos, headlines, emoji.

But what important topics are instantly comprehensible, yet easily forgotten?

What are the implications for public discourse of a mobile metaphor?

Well, the implications are that public discourse must happen instantly, and that everything can be distilled into a moment, or a word, or a phrase.Yet, it also implies that nothing is worth remembering. It leaves no room in public discourse for extended discussion or nuance or reflection.

It’s no wonder the recent news cycle has been deemed punishing, and that each new topic is considered a “distraction.” Maybe the constant scream of the mobile metaphor just doesn’t allow for conversation.

The mobile medium presents information en masse in random order, out of context, and for milliseconds at a time, remaining extremely biased toward the visually interesting. It’s Postman’s fears of TV on steroids. Rigorous public discourse isn’t just discouraged in the mobile metaphor, it’s impossible. It doesn’t just displace context, it destroys it. It doesn’t just shorten our attention span, it eliminates it. To be perfectly honest, I’m glad he never had to see a Facebook feed.