Marshall McLuhan
Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his ...
's tetrad of media effects uses a tetrad to examine the effects on society of any technology/medium (put another way: a means of explaining the social processes underlying the adoption of a technology/medium) by dividing its effects into four categories and displaying them simultaneously. The tetrad first appeared in print in McLuhan's posthumously-published works ''Laws of Media'' (1988) and ''The Global Village'' (1989).
The tetrad
The tetrad consists of four questions.
#What does the medium enhance?
#What does the medium make obsolete?
#What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier?
#What does the medium reverse or flip into when pushed to extremes?
The laws of the tetrad exist simultaneously, not successively or chronologically, and allow the questioner to explore the "grammar and syntax" of the "language" of media. McLuhan departs from the media theory of
Harold Innis
Harold Adams Innis (November 5, 1894 – November 9, 1952) was a Canadian professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of seminal works on media, communication theory, and Canadian economic history. He helped deve ...
in suggesting that a medium "overheats", or reverses into an opposing form, when taken to its extreme.
Visually, a tetrad can be depicted as four diamonds forming an X, with the name of a medium in the center, where the left/right direction reflects the
figure/ground
Figure/Ground is an open-source, para-academic, inter-disciplinary website that publishes in-depth interviews with scholars, researchers, and university professors. Artists, filmmakers, and creators of every stripe are also interviewed. Figure/G ...
association. The two diamonds on the left of a tetrad are the ''Enhancement'' and ''Retrieval'' qualities of the medium, both ''Figure'' qualities. The two diamonds on the right of a tetrad are the ''Obsolescence'' and ''Reversal'' qualities, both ''Ground'' qualities.
[McLuhan, Marshall (1998), ''Electric Language: Understanding the Present'', p. 28.]
* Enhancement (figure): What the medium amplifies or intensifies. ''For example, radio amplifies news and music via sound.''
* Obsolescence (ground): What the medium drives out of prominence. ''Radio reduces the prominence of print and the visual.''
* Retrieval (figure): What the medium recovers which was previously lost. ''Radio returns the spoken word to the forefront.''
* Reversal (ground): What the medium does when pushed to its limits. ''Acoustic radio flips into audio-visual TV.''
See also
*
Figure and ground (media) Figure and ground is a concept drawn from Gestalt psychology by media theorist Marshall McLuhan in the early 1970s. This concept underpins the meaning of his famous phrase, "The medium is the message". The concept was an approach to what was called ...
*
Hot and cool media
Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his ...
*
Media ecology
Media ecology theory is the study of media, technology, and communication and how they affect human environments. The theoretical concepts were proposed by Marshall McLuhan in 1964, while the term ''media ecology'' was first formally introduced b ...
*
Time- and space-bias
Footnotes
Sources
* McLuhan, Marshall,
Laws of the Media" ''Et cetera'', June 1977, pp. 1973-179, with Preface by
Paul Levinson
Paul Levinson (born March 25, 1947) is an American author, singer-songwriter, and professor of communications and media studies at Fordham University in New York City. His novels, short fiction, and non-fiction works have been translated into ...
.
* "Laws of Media: The Pentad and Technical Syncretism". Zingrone, Frank. ''McLuhan Studies'' 1 (1991).
External links
"Tetrad - McLuhan - Old Messengers, New Media: The Legacy of Innis and McLuhan - Library and Archives Canada"* Augmented reality (AR) researcher Helen Papagiannis applie
the tetradto AR at ARE2011 in Silicon Valley.
* The tetrad applied t
radio th
press an
the Westernon the Ginko Pres
* Applying the Laws of Media in the software testing field (with a good, clear introduction to the topic in general)
"McLuhan for Testers""The MediuM: a Marshall McLuhan Board Game"is a gaming experience of Laws of Media. The New Science (1988), tetrad of media effects.
{{Marshall McLuhan
Books about the media
Marshall McLuhan
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