City As Classroom PDF

McLUHAN
City as Classroom HUTCHON

Understanding Language and Media McLUHAN
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City as
Classroom
Understanding
Language and Media
Marshall McLuhan
Kathryn Hutchon
Eric McLuhan
The Book Society of Canada Limited

Agincourt, Ontario
Copyright © McLuhan Associates Limited for the services of:
Marshall McLuhan/Kathryn Hutchon/Eric McLuhan, 1977
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank the following authors and their representatives who have kindly permit-
ted the reproduction of copyright material: Noel B. Gerson: Because I Loved Him: The Life
and Loves of Lillie Langtry. William Morrow & Co., Inc. New York. © 1971. Marshall
McLuhan: "Inside on the Outside, or the Spaced-Out American." The Annenberg School
of Communications: journal of Communication and McLuhan Associates Ltd. © 1976.
Henry Reed: "Naming of Parts" in A Map of Verona. Jonathan Cape Ltd. London. Kenneth R.
Schneider: Autokind vs. Mankind. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York © 1971.
It is an infringement of the author's rights and a violation of the Copyright Law to repro-
duce or utilize in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photo-
copying, electrostatic copying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval sys-
tem or any other way passages from this book without the written permission of the
publishers.
NOTE
It is essential that users of this book
study Chapter One first, as it explains
and develops the method of analysis
used throughout the book.
ISBN 0-7725-5020-4
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
McLuhan, Marshall, 1911-

City as classroom
Bibliography: p.
ISBN 0-7725-5020-4 pa.
I. Communication. 2. Mass media— Social aspects.
3. Technology— Social aspects. Hutchon, Kathryn. I.
II. McLuhan, Eric. III. Title
P90.M252 301.16 C77-001 283-3
Printed in Canada
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 84 83 82 81 80 79 78 77
Contents
Introduction: What's in a school?
1 Training Perception
1. Noticing accurately 7
2. Figure/ground: a technique for seeing the whole situation 8
3. How useful is figure/ground analysis? 1
4. Hidden grounds: how they affect our perception 1
5. Figure/ground analysis: a way to discover meaning 21
2 Properties of the Media
Introduction 31
1. Motor Cars 33
2. Newspapers 38
3. Magazines 46
4. Books 52
5. Light Bulbs 59
6. Photographs 61
7. Films 64
8. Television and Videotape 70
9. Radio 87
10. Audiotape 92
11. Telephone 100
12. Clocks 105
13. Computers 109
14. Airplanes 113
15. Satellites 116
16. Money 117
.
3 Effects of the Media: a New Culture

Introduction 119
1 Motor Cars 122
2 Newspapers 126
3 Magazines 128
4. Books 129
5. Light Bulbs 132
6. Photographs 133
7. Films 134
8. Television 135
9. Radio 137
10. Telephone 138
11. Clocks 140
12. Computers 141
13. Airplanes 142
14. Satellites 143
15. Money 144
16. Media Trials 145
4 The City as Classroom
1 What you already know about your society 1 49

2. Updating your knowledge outside the classroom:
continuing education 151
3. Getting to know your culture through maps and exhibits 155
4. Exploring your culture through its advertising 157
5. Learning about your own culture through others 161
5 How to Relate to Your Own Time

1. How to remain aware 165
2. Slang 166
3. Popular Culture 170
4. What good is it to be aware? 171
General Bibliography Ml
General Reference 183
Introduction:
What's in a school?
Let us begin by wondering just what you are doing sitting there at
your desk.
Here are some questions for you to explore. We suggest that you divide
yourselves into research teams of not more than four people, and when
you have worked out answers to the questions, present your findings to
the other teams for general discussion.
The questions and experiments you will find in this book are all con-
cerned with important, relatively unexplored areas of our social environ-
ment. The research you choose to do will be important and original. If
you'd like to share your research with our team of three authors, send us
a note in care of the publisher.
As students in a school, do you think you have come to work?

1. Is school supposed to be a place of work? Is the work done by the
students, or the staff, or both? Look up the root meaning of the word
'school' (schola < Greek o x o A rj ).
When you are at school, are you separated from the community?
If so, are you separated physically or in other ways?
Does the community want you to be separated from the work

force? Ask local leaders in business and education.
2. Could you join the work force before you reach school-leaving age?
Contact local labor union leaders and ask for their opinion of the
school-leaving age. Ask your teacher to explain the legislation gov-
erning school-leaving age in your area. Can you discover the reasons
behind the legislation? Ask your vice-principal to explain the relation
between school funding and school attendance.
Do you and your fellow students tend to regard the classroom as

a kind of prison?
3. Do the days of your school life seem like 'doing time' until you are
eligible for the labor market?
Do you consider that real education is outside the classroom?
2 City as Classroom
Do you find that what you learn inside the classroom is as useful as
what you learn outside the classroom?
How do classrooms affect your learning experience?
4. In order to discover what effect your present classroom has on your

experience of learning, try holding a class in another room. For ex-
ample, go to the teachers' lounge where you can arrange yourselves
in a circle in comfortable chairs. Hold a regular class. Toward the end
of the class period, take a few minutes to talk about the differences
between your experience in the lounge and your experience in a
regular classroom. Ask:
• Was it easier in the lounge to grasp points presented by your

teacher?
• Did you enjoy your teacher's presentation more or less in the
lounge?
• Did you find it easier or harder to become involved in discussion
with one another in the lounge?
• Was it easier or harder to relate what you were learning to your
own daily experience when you were out of your classroom?
• Which of the two settings did you find the more comfortable?
• Which of the two settings was the more congenial to learning?
• Did your teacher find the different setting an advantage or a

disadvantage?
• Did your teacher find a change in the group's attitude either to
students or to the subject?
• What differences did your teacher notice in responses from indi-
vidual students and in the responsiveness of the class generally?

• How did the different setting and its effects change your learning
experience?
Discuss the different meanings of 'noise' in the classroom and in
the lounge. Is 'noise' in the classroom 'noise' in the lounge?

5. Ask your drama teacher how theater 'in the round' changes the
relationship between audience and actors.
Ask your teacher to discuss with you changes in the method of
presentation for teaching 'in the round'. Ask whether the classroom
today has been placed in a new kind of 'round'.
From the answers to these questions can you draw any conclu-
sions about the sorts of activities that classrooms inhibit or exclude,
and the kinds of activities that they encourage?
Introduction 3
Should all schools be closed?
Some educational theorists of this century argue that we are living today
in a new kind of world: our community has become a storehouse of
information of all kinds, and this information is easy to get. They argue
that when schools were first established, there was not much informa-
tion in the community, and schools were opened to provide knowledge
and information. Your grandfather may have gone to the 'little red
schoolhouse' that was common in Canada and in the United States. Such
schools had a single teacher, and all grades were taught in one room. The
school teacher, next to the preacher, was the best-educated person in
the community. (Look at Oliver Goldsmith's poem, "The Deserted

Village.") Outside the school, people toiled at the country tasks of plow-
ing and sowing and harvesting. They were very active physically. School
was a strong contrast to their work.
How has the relationship changed between work done in the

community and work done in the schools?
6. Talk to your fathers about the sort of work they do in the daytime.
How much of their time at work is spent looking at papers and
books? Do they also bring their books and papers home? How many
people do you know who work day in and day out with papers and
books?
7. If much of the work done in our society deals with data and informa-
tion of all sorts, how has this affected the school in which you are
today? If the old contrast between physical work and study is dimin-
ishing in our everyday world, are schools becoming unnecessary? If
all the information ever taught in school can be got instead from
libraries, recordings, films, centers of instruction for every kind of skill,
in-service training programs, adult programs for intensive language

training, data banks of computerized information — if all these re-
sources and many more are everywhere around us, then why should
schools exist at all?
To what extent has the community taken over the function of

schools?
8. If many people in the community work mainly at exchanging

knowledge and information with one another, how does their activ-
ity differ from the work done in schools? Examine the phrase 'contin-
uing education' which has become the new name for 'adult educa-
tion'. Does this new name tell us that the work of the community has
4 City as Classroom
become a continuation of the work done in school? Or, vice versa,
has schoolwork become part of the work of the community?
By talking to a variety of people, investigate what the community

thinks school is for.
9. Ask your parents, your friends, three or four of your teachers, your
principal, your local alderman or member of parliament, a business
person, a lawyer, a garbage collector, a cab driver. Do their answers

differ widely? When you have written down the answers you have
collected, discuss the differences with your class. How do the an-
swers group themselves? Do they imply basic notions or theories
that everybody takes for granted?
10. What did the designers of traditional schools intend when they put
thirty or so desks in rows, facing the front of the room? Why is the
blackboard at the front? Why is the teacher's desk at the front?
11. Are the assumptions about teaching and learning which are evident
in the set-up of your classroom similar to the attitudes evident in the
replies to the question, "What is school for?"
12. Can you find any relation between your experience of school and
the answers of other people about its purpose? Have your fellow
students as many different attitudes or ideas about the purpose of

school as the adults you have interviewed?
If all the answers are available outside the classroom, is it good

strategy to put the questions inside the classroom?
In their approach to problems, Orientals tend to ask first, "What is the

question?" while Westerners tend to ask, "What is the answer?"
Of course, it is more difficult to learn to ask yourself productive ques-
tions than it is to look for answers to other people's questions, but
learning to ask productive questions helps you to become self-reliant.
You will find that you do not have to wait until somebody else asks you
a question in order to learn.
In the next chapter we shall be looking at the interplay of figure and

ground as patterns in everyday life. We shall use these terms to describe
the parts of any situation in order to observe, to analyse and to ask
productive questions that will lead to learning.
Introduction
Education: ''What remains when we have forgotten all that we

have been taught."
George Savile, Lord Halifax, 1633-1695

Dictionary of Quotable Definitions
Do you agree ;
For Further Study:

lllich, Ivan. Deschooling Society. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
Illich supposes, naively, that because in our new world the
'answers' are outside the school, the schools should be closed.
A productive question his theory raises is: Can we now put the
questions inside the schools and begin a richer kind of education?
Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock. New York: Random House, 1971.
Some have mentioned that this book lives in the 'rear view mirror',
and merely tells us that things are moving too fast. Toffler fails to
see the opportunities for enriched understanding through pattern
recognition in a speeded-up world.
1
Training
Perception
1 . Noticing accurately
Here are a few 'warm-up' exercises to sharpen your powers of

observation.
1. Receptionists are often surprised when they eventually meet some-

one they have spoken to only on the telephone. Although they may
have talked many times, the 'real' person often differs completely
from the receptionist's expectations. Often receptionists cannot tell
you why they are surprised, only that they are surprised.
Would a blind person be likely to have similar experiences? Why?
Have you ever had a similar experience? Tell about Which of your it.
images, the expected or the unexpected, was the more 'real' or

'true'? And what is wrong with that question?
2. Call your bank and ask about the procedures for opening an
local
account, or call some other business and ask for information. Make
sure the person to whom you are talking is not someone you know.
After your call, write a description of the person you talked to,
including such details as height, weight, age, length and style of hair.
Be as you can to the image you have formed of the person,

faithful as
and do not let anyone else's ideas interfere.

3. Make a call to another bank or office. During your call, jot down the
sort of image you are forming of the person with whom you are
talking. Does the person seem to stand or sit or move? Is he or she
tiny or huge? Do you 'see' an image? Is it in colors or greys? (Be

careful here.) you cannot answer this question, it is worth asking
If
why; the reason may not have anything to do with lack of imagina-
tion.
Discuss the relation of the image you formed during this call to the
image you described after your earlier call. Is each the same sort of
8 City as Classroom
image? Notice how the results differ, if you are talking to someone
you know. Or do they?
4. Using a tape recorder, record samples of several kinds of voices
saying usual things. You may record people talking about the
weather or their daily routines, but not describing themselves. Try to
record many different people: old people, young people, parents,
students.
Select from your samples a few short pieces, and either dub them
onto another tape or splice the bits together to make a separate
tape. Next, transcribe the contents of the new tape onto a single
sheet of paper. Label speeches 'Exhibit A', 'Exhibit B', and so on, and
give each member of the class a copy of the transcription.
Have each speech read aloud in as many ways as the class thinks
appropriate in order to see how much can be established about the
characteristics of the original speakers. Finally, play the tape.
Discuss what happens. As you compare your impressions of the
speakers with their taped voices, ask what clued you in or threw you
off about each speaker. What does this experiment tell you about
'you-and-print'? What does you about 'you-and-speech'?
it tell
Have you ever read book and then seen the movie? What was
a
your reaction? Do you react in the same way when you see a movie
and then read the book? Explain your answer. What do your reac-
tions tell you about books, about speech, and about newspapers?
2.Figure/ground: a technique for

seeing the whole situation
The terms figure and ground, in the sense that we are going to use them
in this book, were first introduced by a Danish psychologist, Edgar Rubin,
about 1915. Strange as it may seem, until 1915 there had been no
satisfactory terms in general use to describe the parts of a situation:
people could only resort to talking about 'this thing' and 'that stuff, or to
similar indefinite expressions.The terms 'figures' and 'foreground' and

'background' were in use, but they were not fully satisfactory for the
study of structure. For one thing, they already had quite specific mean-
ings with reference to painting.
Training Perception 9
Rubin adopted the terms figure and ground to assist the study of
structure in visible phenomena.
Scholars had observed that when a simple picture or image is looked at
for a short while, some elements tend to advance into the foreground,
while others recede into the background. In fact, the ones that advance
often seem to detach themselves from the others and to stand out some
distance from them. Quickly or gradually, these items in the foreground
begin to monopolize the viewer's attention, while the rest are ignored:
this termed a figure/ground situation. The consciously noted elements
is
and everything else is ground.

are figure,
When we look at a bowl of flowers on a red tablecloth, we may be
very conscious of the flowers {figure), but much less conscious of the
tablecloth {ground), although that tablecloth influences the way we see
the flowers: if the tablecloth were blue, for instance, the flowers would
appear to be a slightly different color. But if a weaver were standing
beside us, he or she might exclaim, "What a beautiful weave in that
tablecloth!" {figure), and be relatively unconscious of the flowers
{ground).
The interplay between figure and ground is 'where the action is'.
This interplay requires an interval or a gap, like the space between

the wheel and the axle.
Figure 1
.
10 City as Classroom
Begin to experiment with figure/ground relationships by looking

at the image in Figure 1
Notice how, when the dogs are seen as figure, the telephone seems to
recede into the paper, and how, when the telephone is seen as figure,
the dogs recede and form a ground. For most people, this is the 'normal'
kind of response to visual ambiguities: the figures alternate.
Some curious aspects of figure/ground relationships can be seen here.
First, note that the outline of the one image is also the outline of the
other. This is always true of structural relations: it is just as true of the
drawing as figure in page as ground. Secondly, because of
relation to the
the shared outline, figure and ground create and define each other. All
structural relationships have this feature: the parts are reciprocal. Thirdly,
contrary to a common misconception, both figures can be seen simulta-
neously and held in the visual field. This simultaneous perception is, at
first, easier for some people than for others, because it requires a certain
amount of 'un-learning'. (Most of our training is directed toward keeping
clear the distinction between figure and ground.)
1 . Take another look at Figure 1 : look 'softly', not intently, at the central
area of the drawing. The dogs can both be seen at once, though
perhaps a little hazily. Retain your sensibility of the dogs' presence,
and gradually become aware of the rest of the complete bounding
line — and the telephone becomes visible, although it too may be a
bit hazy. You can try several other strategies as well: squint— look
through your eyelashes; close one eye and look 'softly' with the
other, as you did before; shine light through the image by holding it
up to the light. When you see all the figures at once, you are expe-
riencing the sense of configuration; this is the sense that an artist
brings to bear on painting, a satirist on situations.
The sense of configuration allows the viewer to perceive figure and

ground together; in fact, the viewer is perceiving a whole situation as
ground, before figures emerge or become detached. This perception
depends on a very delicate equilibrium: the moment one or another
figure begins to exaggerate itself or to dominate the situation, the bal-
ance is destroyed, and the other elements begin to recede and to form a
ground for it. Now consider: all figures at once means NO figures— just
outlines and interfaces, just structure. In your own experience, you are
always the figure, as long as you are conscious. The ground is always the
setting in which you exist and act. The ground is never static; it is always
changing. The interplay between you and this changing ground changes
you. (Compare your picture in the Year Book last year with your picture
this year.) Does this interplay change the ground also?
Figure 2
Figure 2 provides another example of figure/ground interplay: as before,

each figure uses the other as its ground. This sort of image, where there
are possible logical' connections between figures, tends to set people
searching for meanings. You might interpret Figure 2, for instance, as a
representation of bride-and-mother-in-law or youth-and-age. Again,
both figures can be seen at once.
Figure and ground are usually associated with visual experience, but
they are equally useful for noting and analyzing other kinds of situations.
Try some figure/ground experiments that deal with a nonvisual

area of experience, the area of sound.
2. Pick two locations of activity in your school — say, the library and the
cafeteria— and put them 'under surveillance'. Do some reconnais-
sance; then use a tape recorder to record all the normal sounds you
hear. Edit down the sounds you have collected to a two-minute tape
that creates the effect of the place through sound. Try to transmit
the feeling of being there, not the impression of a 'trip through':
avoid story-line sequences (figure) in order to concentrate on the
ground. When you have played the tape, ask yourselves:
• How many sounds did the place make?
• What kind of sounds were they?
• Which sounds were remarkable (figure)?
• Which sounds were usual, normal, unremarkable (ground)?
• Are there any sounds you did not know you had, until you heard
the tape?
• Are there any sounds which seemed uninteresting while you were
recording, but which sound interesting on tape? Are there any
uninteresting sounds on the tape, which seemed interesting in the
place?
• Which sounds would tell a man from Poland or Mars most about
the place?
• Which sounds need explaining? Why? To whom? Are they figure
ground?
or
• Did you get any sounds that occurred both outside and inside the
place? What principle of physics makes this possible?
• Which sounds are most subtle?
• Which sounds would be most significant to a blind person? Why?
• Which sounds contribute nothing? Explain the reasons.
• Does the tape give the impression that the place is a container of
sounds? Or is it a place-with-sounds?
3. Record five or ten minutes of environmental sounds at a couple of

more open sites. You might record sounds at a busy street corner
downtown, on your own street, in the schoolyard, in a factory, an

office, a junkyard, a park, on a tractor, in a barn, in a friend's house.
Edit your tapes to recreate the effect of the sites, so that a person
hearing your final version for the first time would know what it felt
like to be in that place. Use the questions in Experiment 2, where

they are applicable and, in addition, ask:
• What is the loudest sound in each location?

• What is the softest sound?
• What is the most beautiful sound?
• What is the ugliest sound?
• What is the least important?
• What is the most significant?
• Are any of these questions not useful?
Answer all these questions in two modes: once for a seeing per-
son at the site, and once for a blind person or someone who just
hears the tape. Remember that these exercises are intended to direct
your attention to figure and ground and to your own sensibilities
and preconceptions.
Because sound is usually ground for sighted experience, we ignore most
of it as irrelevant, and apply visual values to all situations. By treating
visual values as figure, we make some sounds seem more important than
others, some 'unwanted', some 'ugly', some 'disturbing'. In making most
of these responses to sound, we fail to develop an understanding of
what it is, how it affects us, what sort of terms it presents.
4. Look into the nature of 'white noise' and its use in office buildings.
Investigate the nature of background music and its use in a variety of
places such as airplanes, dentists' offices and elevators.
When environmental noise increases to the point of becoming

figure, does noise pollution begin?
In his book, The World of Silence, Max Picard explains how any sound
must have silence as its ground. When the noise of the ground, or
surround, itself becomes noticeable, the figures of sound tend to be
obliterated. Conversation waits until a jet has passed.
5. Why have people recently become conscious of noise pollution?
control in your own area. Find out whether
Check the laws on noise
they can be enforced. Is the figure under attack in the polluted
surround, or the ground? When the surround is man-made, does the
nature of pollution change? Would an earthquake create noise pollu-
tion? How does an earthquake differ from a jet breaking the sound
barrier?
These exercises are intended to help you to get at sound on its

own terms by making you aware of figure and ground. The rest is
up to you.
3. How useful is figure/ground

analysis?
Let's consider the print you're reading as figure: what is the ground for
it? Obviously, it has to be all of your surround. But what use is such a
general answer? Well, it draws attention to the composition, that is, the
'structure', of situations, something uncommonly difficult to notice in our
culture.
When we concentrate on the structure of a situation, we can

assess problems more realistically and change the situation or our
response to it.
Someone who deliberately (that is, as figure) undertakes to read a serious

book, would expect to find a more favorable ground for the activity in a
library than on a beach, and could choose the place to read accordingly.
Look at the opening of Poe's poem, "The Raven":
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-
Try substituting a spring day or a hurricane for the setting of the poem.
Would they change the figure of the 'curious volume'? And what would
happen to Omar Khayyam's "Book of Verse" as figure, if the lines read:
Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,

A Can of Coke, a Book of Verse— and Thou . . . ?
These examples point to the fact that every experience happens in a

milieu, in a set of circumstances, and not by itself in isolation.
Therefore the ground, or underlying structure, of a situation

provides the conditions for experiencing any part that presents
itself as figure.
If you're still thinking, "So what?" let's try some experiments now that
will show how the underlying structure, or ground, of a situation
changes our experience of everything within it.
1. Take a bright green book and hold it in the center of a white back-
ground. Ask everyone else to concentrate on staring very hard at the
center of the book for thirty seconds. Take the book away very
quickly and ask the others what saw on the ground where
color they
the book was. If they saw pink on the ground, then where did that
pink come from?
Repeat experiment using books and backgrounds of as many
this
different colors as possible. List your results. What does this tell you
about figure/ground relationships of colors and the way we experi-
ence color?
Try to organize the information about color you have just col-
If you want to explore the subject further, look up the Color
lected.
Wheel developed by the French Impressionist painters and compare
your organization of the facts with theirs. If you're still keen, ask your
Physics teacher to come in and talk about all of this, and if you're
him or her to explain the difference between
really enthusiastic, ask
additive and subtractive color processes. (This experiment uses the

subtractive color process. Color television, on the other hand, makes
use of the additive color process.)
2. Pick up a wastebasket. Ask other students to name the object you
are holding. Ask them to write down a definition of 'wastebasket'.
Ask them to prove that the object is a wastebasket according to their
definition.
Next, turn the wastebasket upside down and sit on it. Ask stu-
dents what it is now. They'll probably say that it is an upside-down

wastebasket, but by their definition they no longer be able to
will
place garbage in it. This means they any longer that it is a

can't prove
wastebasket. It is now a seat. If you put earth and a plant in it, what
is it?
Ask the class to think of other uses for the wastebasket, until it
becomes obvious that the ground, or usage, changes our experience

of anything that is a figure in that situation.
3. This experiment is Thomases'. Ask each student to
for 'doubting
bring to class an object which is unfamiliar to everyone else. Ask the
class to guess what each object is. If the class cannot guess what an
object is, ask its owner to use it either in a conventional way or in
some new way. The class should have no difficulty now in determin-
ing what each object is.
The interaction between the object, or figure, and its ground

enables one to experience meaning which is the relation of the
situation to oneself.
4. Take an ordinary object — a Q-tip, for instance — and demonstrate all

the things it can do for you. Marketing analysts often experiment in
this way. By combining a common figure, a pen or pencil, with an
uncommon ground, electricity, manufacturers brought out the pen
with alight on it for writing in the dark. You can try a similar experi-
ment yourselves by holding a brain-storming session to discover ten

new uses for rubber tires.
5. Give an unfamiliar object to a blindfold person and ask him or her to

guess what it is. Then remove the blindfold and ask the same person
to draw the object without looking at it. In figure/ground terms,

analyze what happens.
6. Make a tape of familiar sounds {figure) against unfamiliar background
sounds {ground). Ask other students to try to identify the familiar
sounds. What do you have to do to make these easy to guess or to
make them difficult to guess?
7. Using a tape recorder, make a sound essay of some element in your
environment. You might collect all the sounds of water you can find;
then edit your tape to demonstrate what the figure, water, is in the
many grounds of your environment.
You can vary this project by using a camera to make a photo essay
of what water means in your environment: to a sailor, water is a lake
to race on; to a child, water is a drinking fountain to squirt.
8. If you have access to a small, portable television camera and re-
corder, tape a student reading a short speech {figure). As the student

is reading the speech, vary the sound ground with jeers, clapping,
boos or cheers. Vary the visual ground behind the reader with maps,
flowers, flags, people moving about. Note the reaction of the class to
each figure/ground combination. How does the varying ground
change the effect and/or meaning of the speech?
Certain features of the underlying structures {ground) of this situation
obviously caused people to infer certain things about the speaker and
the speech {figure). It is equally plain that the inferences can be analyzed
and the results of the analysis used. By this method we ought to be able
to learn how to structure a situation so that its ground will cause people
what we want them to infer about its figure. This kind of

to infer only
knowledge and expertise is a very powerful weapon and, in fact, is used
widely in advertising.
9. Videotape a series of actions that lead to a climax or result. Play back
the sequence, but cut just before the climax. (Your tape should seem
like a cartoon with the last frame missing.) Ask the audience to infer
what happens next.
Make a number and keep a record of all your
of these tapes
successes and you know exactly how much material
failures, until
and what kinds of information you need to put into the figure/
ground relationship to induce your audience to infer exactly what
you intended.
Try an experiment to see how susceptible people are to

figure/ground manipulation.
10. Ask a group of ten people who don't know one another (the figure)
to sit in a classroom (the ground), and tell them that a guest lecturer
will arrive shortly. Light the classroom with high-intensity fluorescent
light, the kind usually found in schools. Time the period which
elapses before people begin to talk to one another.
Repeat the experiment with another group of people who don't
know one another, but this time use soft, yellow light — ordinary
lamps will do. Again, time the period which elapses before people
begin to talk to one another.
Try the experiment with another variable: seat people in desks
separated from one another during one experiment, and during
another, on comfortable chairs close to one another. How does the
difference in seating affect the time which elapses before they begin
to talk to one another?
To extend the base of this experiment, try it with different age
groups. Do the results differ, and, if they do, how much?
When either figure or ground changes in any way, its effect

changes, and with it, the meaning of the situation.
The lyrics of a rock song have one set of meanings in their 'natural
ground' on a record, and another set entirely when printed for use in an
English class. The figure is the same, that is, the words are the same, but
the ground is different. Therefore the effect, and hence the meaning, are
different. This shows that there is a direct relationship between effect
and meaning. Each is a result of the relationship between figure and
ground.
11. Find four or five instances of a change in effect and meaning pro-
duced by a change in ground. You will discover that you have
already considered some examples.
.
4. Hidden grounds:
how they affect our perception
The personality structure of each individual forms part of an

invisible ground which changes the way he or she experiences
the same figure.
1 To test this statement, arrange for a group of students to listen to

some public speaker 'live' rather than on TV or radio. Ask each
student to write out afterwards what he or she saw and heard.
Collect the responses; chart the differences and try to account for
the variations: after all, the students all saw and heard the same
things, didn't they?
The sounds and rhythms of words form part of an almost hidden

ground which conditions your experience of a poem as figure.
2. To discover what sound ground is, write a
a powerful influence a
short poem and 'translate' it you make up. (Look at
into a language
Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky," if you don't know how to start.) Read
the poem to your class or your team and ask the others to write
down what they think you are saying. Several students should try
this and compare results to decide which of you communicated
most clearly the message you intended. Can you pinpoint what
facilitated communication in some poems and what prevented com-
munication in other poems?
3. Next, try reading aloud T.S. Eliot's "Fragment of an Agon." Then listen
poem. Now read it again your-

to a recording of Eliot reading this
selves with a rhythm band accompaniment, or try miming the
rhythms using hand-clapping or drums. What have you learned from
this exercise?
4. Now that you've seen how important a sound ground is to poetic
communication, you might try listening to a poem in a language you
don't understand. T.S. Eliot has pointed out that poetry communi-
cates before it is understood. To test this, listen to a recording of
Yevgeny Yevtushenko reading his poetry in Russian. Next, listen to a
particular poem, "Babiy Yar"; then listen to it a second time and, as
you listen, write down what you think is going on in the poem. Now
compare your description with a translation of the poem. You may
be surprised to find your description almost exactly the same as the
translation.
A sound poem takes the hidden ground of sound in poetry and raises it
to your consciousness as a figure: pure sound all by itself.

5. Listen to a recording of b.p. nicol or Steve McAffery reading his
sound poetry.
When you listen to a sound poem, do you supply a ground for the
sound as figure? Has the sound poem any 'meaning' for you, if you
cannot supply a ground?
Try to make up your own sound poems. Try a funny one to start
with: compose a sound poem that is a flat tire. Tape your poem and
listen.
6. Borrow from a music library a copy of Professor John Beckwith's

score, "Gas!". This is a vocal score which can be performed easily in a
classroom even by people who don't normally sing. It is a musical
portrait of an automobile trip through a modern city. It raises the
unnoticed automobile ground of a city to conscious attention as a
figure. Try performing the score with your class. Professor Beckwith's
method lends itself to other subjects. Your team or class might try
composing your own vocal scores of, say, a day in school.
Satirists and caricaturists have always used the technique that Professor
Beckwith employs. They exaggerate one feature of a situation's ground
in order to bring it to our attention as figure, because normally we don't
'see' what is ground.
A ground may be 'hidden', because it has become so familiar to

us that we have stopped paying it any conscious attention.
Have you ever tried to find a book which you knew was in a particular
bookcase, yet still couldn't find? We're too used to looking at the books
on the shelves as we look at the wallpaper.
Be sure to finda safe and sensible place for the following experiment,
where you are legally entitled to drive at the speeds suggested. Arrange
to have both a driver and an observer in the car. They should not share
responsibilities.
7. Put a Toulouse-Lautrec poster beside the road. Drive by at 10 km/h.
Can you read the poster? Drive by again at 80 km/h. Can you see it?
What information have you discovered from this experiment
about the ground of nineteenth-century France? What have you
discovered about the ground of twentieth-century North America?
Is there a difference between town- and country billboards? Are city
billboards supposed to attract conscious attention? Are they figures

or part of our barely noticed, irban ground?
8. Try applying what you have learned by considering the hidden
ground in your own classroom. How many aspects of its hidden
ground can you discover? Discuss them with your class. For a start,
you may have to take air conditioning into account, since it com-
pletely changed architectural spaces by lowering ceilings and closing
windows.
One sure way to perceive the structure of any situation easily is

to reverse its figure/ground relationship. If you do this, even the
most hidden grounds and relationships will come to light.
9. To discover the structure of a talk show, for instance, arrange to put

one on. Invite strangers in to host the show and ask class members to
be guests. What happens? What does this exercise tell you about
the structure of a talk show?
10. To discover the structure of your classroom, reverse the classroom
situation. Ask your teacher to pack the class into a very small, almost
uncomfortable room (a large closet, maybe?) and conduct the class.
Give some kind of test on the material covered in this class. Ask your
teacher to teach the same material to another class of the same size
and composition, but in an ordinary classroom. Give the same test.
Compare the results of the two tests. Ask both sets of students to
write any comments about the situation and its effects.
11. To investigate the nature of your teacher/student relationship, try a
'reverse the teacher' experiment. Ask the teacher to conduct a class
with his or her back turned to the students the entire time. The
teacher should never turn around, or you have to start the experi-
ment over again another day. (This experiment takes both courage
and courtesy!)
When your class next meets, discuss the differences the experi-
ment made and the material taught. Talk
to the teacher, the students
about the difference in the teacher's and students' sense of the class.
Find out what the teacher could tell from voices, from movements,
from questions.
5. Figure/ground analysis: a way
to discover meaning
Why is it that, when people are trying to explain a difficult or complex

situation, they often use metaphors? We can easily see the usefulness of
metaphor, if we analyze it in figu re/ground terms.
Consider the expression, "Tempers flared." This statement is quite
simple in figure/ground terms. Tempers don't burn, and can't flare as a
fire might. But how can we better communicate the emotion of anger
than by using words associated with fire or extreme cold? 'Flared' doesn't
describe temper; it offers a way of thinking about the notion of temper.
'Flared' creates a ground for 'tempers' as figure.
There no logical connection between figure and ground, but

is
there always a relationship, since ground always provides the

is
terms on which a figure is experienced. In that relationship,

meaning (the effect on you) is generated.
Take another example: "She sailed out of the room." Obviously, people
don't sail, and certainly not on hardwood or concrete floors, but 'sailed' is
an effective term for evoking a mental picture of a certain kind of stately,
nose-high departure with garments flapping, as sails might flap in a

breeze.
Examine another metaphor: "He swallowed his pride." Obviously, you
cannot swallow pride same sense that you can swallow bread andin the
peanut butter. But 'swallow' as ground gives to the figure, 'pride', a sense
of what happened that won't come across as economically in any other
way.
T.S. Eliot often observed, "A poem can't mean anything it doesn't
mean to you." But how about puns?
The same figure becomes different against different grounds. Consider
the different meanings of 'train' in different contexts: the train sped
by . . . train your dog . . . the bridesmaid carried the bride's train ... a train of
thought . . . going into training.
All words and poetry and all devices of

at every level of prose
language and speech derive their meaning from figure/ground
relation.
This holds true not only at the level of words and expressions such as
metaphors and similes, but at other levels too: subplots always serve as
ground for main plots, in real situations as well as in plays and novels.
;
Subplots provide the setting for the main plots {figures), and shape them
and define their meaning.
1. Examine the way in which an excellent writer uses figure/ground
relationships. Read Bolingbroke's speech, from Shakespeare's Richard

II Act 3, Scene iii, lines 31 — 61
Noble lords,
Co to the rude ribs of that ancient castle;
March on, and mark King Richard how he looks.
What is the setting for the speech?

what setting does Bolingbroke picture King Richard?
In
In what setting does Bolingbroke picture himself? How do these
settings (grounds) influence your perception of the two characters

(figures)! How many striking examples of figure/ground relationships
can you find in other Shakespearean plays? How many can you find
in books you are reading just now? How many can you find in the
articles and advertisements of today's newspapers?
Many modern writers combine figures with unexpected or unusual
grounds to generate new meanings.
2. A particularly effective example of this technique is Henry Reed's
poem, "Naming of Parts." What is the effect of combining guns as
figure inside the room, with the japonica flowers as ground outside
the window? What meaning does this effect generate? The poet
doesn't draw the relationship for you, but he does give you a clue in
the last line of each stanza:
To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,

We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighbouring gardens,
And to-day we have naming of parts.
This is the lower sling swivel. And this

Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent,eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.
This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me

See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see

Any of them using their finger.
And you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this

this
Is open the breech, as you can see. We can slide it

to
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.
They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy

If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of

balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards
and forwards,
For to-day we have naming of parts.
3. How many other modern poems or songs can you find which use
Henry Reed's technique? How many advertising jingles? Read your
collection to other students.
Old English, the language spoken in England before 1066, is very differ-
ent from modern English. Anglo-Saxons often named things by putting
together two words that have no obvious connection meaning. These in
compound words are called 'kennings' or 'births'. In Old English, the

word for a woman literally means 'peace-weaver', and the word for a
man 'sword-tree'; a harp, 'joy-wood'; music, 'joy-staves'. Old English has
many ordinary compound words as well: 'whale-road' for 'ocean'; 'swan-
road' for lake'. Can you explain the sense of these words? How many
other Old English compound words and kennings can you find? Discuss
the effectiveness of the Old English words.
4. Try making up five good kennings of your own. The figure/ground

relationship must be highly resonant, that is, allow for a lot of inter-
play, if your kennings are to be effective.

5. In recent years, scientists have been working with this same element
of resonance in the field of chemistry. Some scientists have formed a
theory that resonance is the chemical bond of the universe. See
what you can find out about this theory.
The ways in which individuals perceive events and experiences as

figure and the particular sense or senses through which they do
so create for these happenings an invisible ground.
6. Close your eyes and recall the house or apartment you lived in when
you were four or five years old. Do you remember its size and shape
and how you felt there? Do you remember the armchair and hassock
and table and rug and your own bed and the drawer you couldn't
reach, and how these things were important— as important and, in
their way, as alive, as you were? Fine. Describe it that way as accu-
rately as you can. Go back and 'try it on' again. Revisit the site, if you
can. Then ask yourself:
• Does it look different? How? And why?

• Is there more difference in the figure (you) or in the ground?
• What does that tell you about you?
• Which perception of things is/was true or accurate and reliable?
• Would that child's perception of things, that kind of sensibility, be
you now? Why?
of use to
• some characteristics of that way
List of experiencing, and note for
what purposes it is or is not useful.
7. Find an insect and follow it around for about half an hour. Make
notes of everything you think it is seeing and doing and hearing and
thinking and feeling and tasting and smelling, as though the insect
were you. What can you learn this way?
8. Arrange with your teachers to send students to class in pairs, one
blindfold, one not, for a whole morning; change places in the after-
noon. The 'seeing-eye student' leads his or her partner around {Note:
not 'drags'), but does not explain noises or protect needlessly from
bumps. This calls for restraint and for common sense, as well. Each
student should write down or tape a description of her or his general
experience in classes while blindfold and while 'sighted'. Compare
your impressions with one another, but only after the experiment is
finished.
Are there common factors which appear in the 'sighted' descrip-
tions that do not appear in the 'blind' descriptions of the same class?
9. In a classroom lighted with white fluorescent light, hold your hand
above your desk so that you can see the shadow of your hand.
Measure the distance you can move your hand away from the desk
before the shadow disappears. Go outside in the sunlight and use
another object to make the same test. Can you see why we generally
feel more comfortable with incandescent light or natural light rather
than with fluorescent lighting?

10. Your shadow is a visible expression of the relationship of you as

figure to your environment as ground, because your shadow enables
you to see some of the effects of your interaction with your environ-
ment in 'instant replay'.
Try to find out about the importance that some primitive peoples
attributed to their shadows, and about the superstitions relating to
shadows in Western culture. You
that persisted for a very long time
might start by looking The Golden Bough.
at J.G. Frazer's
Historians often speak of great people and events 'casting long

shadows'. What does this expression mean? Collect two or three
other metaphorical uses of 'shadow'.
Figure/ground relationships exist in the senses and their

relationships to one another, as well as in our perceptions of
situations.
There are, for example, two types of vision which interrelate as figure
and ground. One, called 'macular' or 'foveal' vision, presents sharply
focused figures in color, but doesn't detect motion well. The other,
'peripheral' vision, is neatly complementary: figures are not clearly fo-
cused and appear in greys rather than colors, but this area of vision, the
so-called 'corner of your eye', is an excellent detector of motion. We
usually give 95 percent of our conscious attention to what we see with
macular vision, while we don't normally pay much heed to what periph-
eral vision presents; not that we can't, just that we generally don't.
As we noted earlier, our sense of sight is usually figure to all our other
senses as ground, at least in Western cultures. (It is always important to
keep in mind that other cultures may have a different order of sensory
preferences. If you're interested in this subject, read E.T. Hall's The Hid-
den Dimension. See page 28.) Of course, there are lots of exceptions to
situations where sight is figure to other senses: when you're on the
telephone, or at a concert, or at a barbecue, for example, other senses
become figure. Perhaps hearing runs a close second to sight, but, for the
most part, all senses but sight are ground. This means that what our
other senses tell us about our everyday experiences, we usually suppress
to a nearly subconscious level of awareness. Let's examine some implica-
tions of this fact.
11. Go downtown on a weekday and stand on the corner which you
consider the most beautiful in your city. Note all the things which
you think make this corner so beautiful. Now close your eyes and
listen for a few minutes. Is the corner still beautiful? Next, look for a
place to sit down. Is there one? Or must you 'keep moving'? Does
this affect your feeling about the corner?
Architects have found that people meeting in rooms where loud street
noise is audible suffer more from irritability than people meeting in qui-
and urban planners
eter surroundings. Yet, until quite recently, architects
seldom paid attention to requirements other than structural and visual.
In Experiment 11, you tried a method of focusing your attention on
one sense at a time when experiencing a situation. Test the usefulness of

this method by investigating three other places.
12. Find a quadrangle in your school or any other area enclosed by four
walls, but open to the sky. If you can't find one, construct a large
one. (Try putting up high cardboard walls in the middle of a field.)
Write a general description of the quad. Then, using a portable

tape recorder, describe the quad only in terms of what you see. Next,
describe the quad only in terms of what you hear. For this you will
have to blindfold yourself in order to concentrate sufficiently on

what your sense of hearing tells you. Remaining blindfold, describe
the quad in terms of what you can feel, smell and taste.
Transcribe your descriptions. Compare them with your first writ-
ten description, and chart your findings in five separate columns in
order to find out how your impression of the quad changes, when it
is perceived through each of your five senses. To help confirm your

impression, ask yourself:
• which of the five situations did have to move most?

In I
• which did have to move least?

In I
• What kinds of boundaries were present in each of the five situa-
tions?
• Were there no boundaries in any of them? Which ones?
• What perceptions did each sense make possible?
• What perceptions did each sense exclude?
By reviewing your answers to these questions and examining the

way the quad 'changes' as you rely on each of your five senses in
turn, what can you learn about their functions?

What percentage of the general descriptions of the quad was
visual? What does this tell you about the sensory preference of your
class?
13. Rub your hands together vigorously for a minute or so. Make sure
you rub your fingertips until they are tingly. Hold your hands, palm
outward, opposite but not touching, the palms of the person beside
you. Move your palms closer to the palms of your partner until you
can both feel energy creating a field between your hands.
Does this highly palpable field of interplay with another person
{ground) heighten or dull your consciousness of yourself {figure)?.
Compare this experience with your consciousness of yourself as

figure in the ground of everyday situations.
Figure/ground analysis can give you more insight into the works
of modern painters.
14. Look at some of Rene Magritte's paintings. They usually present two
disparate groups of images. Identify the different groups in each
What is the effect of putting these very different images
painting.
together?Where is the gap? How are you 'making the connection'?
What connection are you making? What is the figure/ground rela-
tionship?
Write down all the situations you can think of in which you use
the phrase, 'make connection with' or 'make the connection'. In
cartoons when someone 'makes the connection', the draws a

artist
little light bulb over his head. Why are this phrase and the image of
the light bulb so expressive?
15. Look at some of Salvador Dali's paintings and other paintings by
Surrealists. Look at covers of rock albums, as well. Ask yourself, about
each painting: Where is the gap and what 'connection' am making? I
Try making your own and ask your class for

surrealist paintings
their reaction to them. If you can't draw, you might try using parts of
well-known paintings to make a collage.
The term surrealisme means 'superrealism'. How is this name ap-
propriate to the style of painting you have been examining? In a
surrealist painting, is the relation of figure to ground more or less
clear than in representational art?
Figure/ground analysis provides a useful method of finding

meaning in advertising.
Consider pictorial advertising as a modern art form. Advertising has so

much direct and indirect influence on our culture that it is an important
area to investigate.
16. Look at the figure/ground relationship in a pictorial advertisement. Is
the structure, the figure/ground relation, of a pictorial ad in any way

similar to surrealist structure? Or is it more like representational
structure?
17. What effect is produced by draping a beautiful woman over an
expensive car in an advertisement to sell a car? Is the car figure, or is
the woman?
Bring to class a variety of ads to demonstrate the effect created by
placing a figure against a particular ground. The class might want to
work in teams and each team could collect perfume ads, or liquor
and make a presentation to the class on the way each
ads, or car ads,
group of products is sold. One team could use well-known television
commercials for a particular kind of product.
Recheck your ads to see whether the product which is the ad's
presumed figure is really the sales-object, or whether some element
in the presumed ground attracts more conscious attention. The more
outstanding element is the real figure and the real sales-object.

18. Are there visual ways of making sure that people will see as figure
exactly what you want them to see? Ask your Art teacher.
19. All ads are figure against some ground. Would you object to ads
interrupting a movie or a telephone conversation? Why? Would you
expect to find ads in Nigeria, in China, in Russia, or in a country
suffering from famine? Why?
What is the hidden ground in all advertising?
20. In James Joyce's Ulysses (Penguin edition, page 348), there is a de-
scription of a lady named Gerty MacDowell. The description is made
up entirely of phrases from advertisements and demonstrates the
absurdity of stereotypes. To discover the stereotype of men and
women in current advertising, collect thirty or forty ads directed to
women and thirty or forty directed to men. Write a description of a
man or a woman based entirely on phrases from the ads. You might
look up the Joyce passage for some help.
A stereotype is a figure repeated so often in a culture that it

ceases to be noticed and becomes part of the unconscious
ground of that culture, shaping people's perceptions subliminally.
For Further Study:
NOTE: You will find other useful material listed in the General Bibli-
ography beginning on p. 177. You will also find information

about material specifically mentioned in the experiments
and exercises.
Hall, E.T. The Hidden Dimension. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966.
A study of preferential distances between people and of cultural
spaces.
The Silent Language. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959.
A study of the unspoken assumptions of cultures.
Key, W.B. Media Sexploitation. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,

1976.
Uncertainty and insecurity reduce awareness and increase the pow-
er of unconscious manipulation.
Schafer, Murray. The Tuning of the World. Toronto: McClelland &
Stewart, available May, 1977.
Murray Schafer foresees that instead of listening to the helter-
skelter sounds of our present environment, we may learn to har-
monize and orchestrate the ordinary sounds that surround us.
All Schafer's earlier books contain valuable exercises for training
students to be aware of sounds we tend to ignore. These books are

listed below and are available from Berandol Music Limited, 11 St.
Joseph Street, Toronto.

The Composer in the Classroom. Toronto: Berandol Music
Limited, 1965.
Ear Cleaning. Toronto: Berandol Music Limited, 1969.
The New Soundscape. Toronto: Berandol Music Limited,
1969.
When Words Sing. Toronto: Berandol Music Limited, 1970.
2
Properties
of the Media
Introduction
In Chapters Two and Three you are going to put to work the figure/
ground techniques you have been practicing in Chapter One. We are

not going to tell you over and over to analyze this or that in figure/
ground terms, but it is very important for you to use this technique at
every stage of your investigations.
Remember that figureand ground are not categories: they are

tools that will help you to discover the structure and properties of
situations.
Any change in a situation may create an entirely new figure/ground

relation. Whenyou get into the habit of analyzing every situation in
figure/ground terms, you will find that you have acquired a habit of
mental alertness.
Chapter Two is intended to help you discover the special properties of
various media. The exercises here, as in Chapter One, provide examples
of the kinds of questions that have to be asked when you are studying
the nature and effects of media. These exercises are not blueprints for
you to follow in every detail, but rather suggestions for building a type of
strategy. The precise questions you ask will have to vary from one area to
another, from one year to another, and from one 'user' of media to
another.
To make real discoveries that increase your knowledge and

understanding, you will have to do more than just ask questions.
You will have to find answers to as many of your questions as
possible from whatever persons or agencies are available.
This means thatyou may need to write letters, consult your parents and
their friends and associates, and interview dozens of people, including
businessmen, manufacturers, contractors, politicians, teachers, laborers,
designers, broadcasters, policemen, lawyers, doctors, researchers, farm-

ers. You will also find it useful to collect all sorts of statistical material for
comparison with the results of your own experiments and interviews,
since statistics provide information about both the figure and the ground
of any medium.
You should work out some system for keeping records of the informa-
tion you discover from your experiments, so that other teams and other
classes of students can benefit from your discoveries.
Begin your investigation of any medium by making a list of all its

forms. Then choose one item from your list and experiment with
it to get a deeper understanding of its characteristics.
A study of the newspaper, for example, should include a number of

scissors-and-paste experiments to determine how flexible a form the
newspaper is, which of its elements are essential and which can be left
out, and what different effects it can be made to have on its readers.
Some media permit direct manipulation more readily than others. But
although the 'hardware' of airplanes or computers seems less adaptable
to experiments than that of magazines or tape decks, you can still, in
some sense, manipulate any medium to vary the effects it produces.
Before you actually begin to work at the experiments suggested

in Chapter Two, please turn to the Introduction to Chapter Three
and read it carefully.

Each time you finish the experiments you choose to do from a section of
Chapter Two, you should read and do experiments from the correspond-
ing section of Chapter Three. By doing this, you will round out your
experience of any medium, and come to a more complete understanding
of its effects on our culture.
For Further Study:

Carpenter, Edmund. Oh, What a Blow That Phantom Gave Me. New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973.
The title points to the popular delusion that media are incapable of
administering heavy blows to the senses and the psyche.
Innis, Harold. The Bias of Communication. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1 951 ; second edition, 1 964.
The discovery that all man-made means of communication have
amazing side effects, and a study of some of these effects.
Properties of the Media 33
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.

New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964; Mentor, 1973 (paperback).
Useful for all the media covered in this text. A study of the effects
of the media themselves, independent of any program content.
1 . Motor Cars
1. On April 21, 1976, Cadillacmade the last, North American, 'big car'
convertible. Find out when convertibles were most popular and
when their popularity declined. Was the decline fairly sudden?
To get this sort of information you may have to interview sales-
men, dealers, distributors, mechanics, and consult encyclopedias and
various current and old magazines.
Make a list of all the forms and types of motor car that are
available and that have been popular in the past.
2. Note when various forms of cars appeared or disappeared, and the

period of their popularity.
How many new cars are sold each week in your area or city? How
many do the students
cars in your class and their families own?
Estimate the number of cars in your city or area now. Is the num-
ber growing? How quickly? How does your municipality plan to deal
with the problem?
Find outwhat you can about the history of roads and cars in
North America and Europe.
3. How is the history of cars related to the development of roads? How

is the use of cars related to the development of cities? What indus-
tries did the car phase out?
4. You may still be able to find people who remember the days when
there were no cars, or so few that they didn't matter. Assign one or
two teams to ask these people to tell about the early forms of cars,
including electric and steam cars, what people's reactions to them
were, and what problems drivers encountered.
5. Have one or two teams select and study several novels, such as Babbitt
and Stepping Stones, which span the period of 1875 to 1925. From
these books collect information about roads, traffic, attitudes
to cars, pedestrians and drivers. Note carefully the satisfactions of

drivers and passengers at different times within this period.
6. Elvis Presley was the first person to own a pink Cadillac: why was
that considered scandalous?
Was there a time when all cars were the same color? When did
the majority of cars begin to be colorful?
Interview a number of private drivers, professional drivers of cabs,

buses, trucks, and collectors of antique cars. Ask these people
about the satisfactions and dissatisfactions of driving.
7. Collect information by asking:
• What kinds of satisfaction do drivers find in driving?

• What driving conditions are ideal? What conditions are enjoy-
able?
• Do drivers watch other cars or other drivers?
• Do any drivers enjoy heavy traffic?
• Do drivers feel isolated in a traffic jam, or do they feel that they
are members of a group? Are they inclined to chat with other
drivers?
• Are their attitudes the same at drive-ins of various sorts?
• Do drivers think the car is useful for creating privacy?
• What kinds of grievance go with cars?
• What are the attitudes of drivers to their passengers?
• What are the attitudes of drivers to pedestrians, to policemen and
to stoplights? Are the interruptions these cause resented as cur-
tailments of the drivers' rights?
8. In the early days of motoring, a car could give to its driver a feeling of
great importance, and owners of cars were treated as special people.
Is this still true? Collect opinions and try to decide if and when the
situation changed.
9. Another early satisfaction provided by the car was the sense of 'real
freedom', both physical and emotional, that gave the driver. You
it
may have seen the hero in an old movie slam the door of a house
after an argument, jump into his car and go for a drive to 'cool off.
Do people still do this? Do characters in movies and novels do it?
Do you? Discuss.
1 0. Try to learn through interviews the satisfactions that drivers get from
their cars' different colors and kinds of decoration. If all cars were the
same color, say, dark brown or black, what would be the effecton
drivers, on car salesand on the city?
What effect have different kinds of paint jobs on a car? What
kinds of cars are not brightly colored? Are any colors reserved for
particular uses? What colors are they?
Why do we not write on our cars as people do in some other
countries? Are bumper stickers a sign that our habits are changing?
1 1 One of today's trends is to drive a car that is a hand-painted 'work of
art'. Collect information about this trend. When did it begin to
spread? What would be the effect if all vehicles were hand-painted?
Should the Prime Minister or the Queen be required to ride in one?
1 2. Through interviews and personal observation, learn all you can about
the function of radios and tape decks in cars. Try to identify the
satisfactions that drivers get from combining car and radio.
13. How do you suppose the satisfactions of driving would change, if
speed limits were rigidly set at 20 km/h in the city and 50 km/h on
the highway? Would traffic jams disappear? What is the average
speed of cars in a traffic jam?
// you can do so safely and without causing difficulties or hazards
for other drivers, try driving at these speeds and have an observer
make notes about the kind of experience it gives. Take into account
that your experience would be different, if all the drivers on the road
were limited to the same lower speeds. Would such speed limits
change cities?
1 4. Make a collection of jokes and anecdotes relating to cars and driving.
Is there a relation between the jokes and drivers' grievances?
15. What makes a car 'antique'? How old does a car have to be to be
seen as an art object? Which cars are definitely not yet antiques: last
year's? Cars five years old? Cars ten or twenty or thirty years old?
Ask people who about their special satisfac-
collect antique cars
tions. Try to arrange for a ride in a car about fifty years old, and note
carefully your sensations, such as your perception of the road and of

other cars.
Discuss antique cars in figure/ground terms. When a car is brand
new, is it a figure against the and driving? Does it
ground of cars
seem remarkable? Does it get special attention? How long does it
take for that car to merge into the general ground? Does this process
take longer for Lincolns than Toyotas, or for Chryslers than Volks-
wagens?
What causes cars to emerge again from their ground as antiques?
(The antique, like any revival, is a renewed figure.) Compare carefully
the attitudes and satisfactions of owners of new cars and of antique

cars. Since the figure— the piece of hardware— is the same, how can
you account for the differences?
16. When a car is new, a slight change of ground will make it 'old', and
.
therefore unremarkable. Later another change of ground will give it
prominence as figure again. Is this the basis of all art forms? Discuss
your answers.
Do cars change people?
1 7. Do drivers behave differently in different types of cars? For example,

would a driver tend to be elegant in a Cadillac, casual in a Chevy,
brash in an MGB? Do people change when they get behind the
wheel?
18. You may find the pedestrian's-eye view of cars a little different from
that of drivers and passengers. Discuss the viewpoint of pedestrians,
using material from your interviews.
Were drivers' attitudes to pedestrians different before the motor
car appeared?
What laws are there for pedestrians and when did they begin to
appear?
19. Try to find out through interviews if blind people, both as passengers
and as pedestrians, have different ideas about cars from sighted
people.
20. If you lived in a suburb and woke tomorrow morning to find all the
residential streets lined with parking meters, would it change your
attitude to your neighborhood? Would you want to move?
Have cars changed our society's way of life?
21 It has been said that the motor car created the suburb as we know it:
by greatly increasing the driver's mobility, the car made it possible for
people to live much farther from their work. Discuss this statement,
using information you have collected.
What other changes does the car seem to have brought about in
our society?
22. It has also been said that the car has helped to promote the pattern
of the nuclear family which consists only of parents and their depen-
dent children. Because the car provides mobility, children are able to
leave home at an early age; they usually settle away from their
parents and never return to live at home with the family. Discuss this
phenomenon, noting the function of the car in your social life.
23. Using information you have collected, discuss the following state-
ment by Kenneth Schneider in his book Autokind vs. Mankind:
Every decade of automobile history has seen the meaning

of automobiling change. If the last decade of the old cen-
tury was experimental and the first decade of the new was
developmental, the teens demonstrated the marvels of

mass production and the twenties demonstrated the mar-
vels of mass marketing (styling, annual models, the trade-in
and credit). Highway completions of the thirties made the
country mobile while the grip of automobility was still light.
Even with the distracting war years, the 1940's consoli-

dated auto advances. The fifties were times of great new
penetrations, in the auto suburbs and city centers, espe-
cially with new freeways. It may be too early to say, but
perhaps the 1960's saw the climax of the tyrannous motor
grip and the 1970's will witness a powerful reversal, (p.
229)
Could it be argued that cars have not so much changed societies as they
have proved to be peculiarly adaptable to the expression of a particular
society's needs and way of life?
24. Consider the following excerpt from Professor Marshall McLuhan's
article, "Inside on the Outside, or the Spaced-Out American":
North Americans may well be the only people in the world

who go outside to be alone and inside to be social. They go
outside to be alone both for work and for play ..Perhaps .
the most obvious and least noticed feature of going outside

to be alone in North America is seen in the role of the car in
our lives. The North American car is designed and used for
privacy. Unlike the European car, it is a big enclosed space,
well suited to the business of meditation and decision-
making . . . The motor car, then, for us, is not only a means of
transportation, but a way of achieving a deeply needed
privacy when outside.
Discuss these observations. What examples can you find of North

Americans going out of their homes to be alone? Can you find evidence
for this practice in working situations, and in the use or nonuse of car
pools and public transportation for getting to work? Can you find evi-
dence in social habits, particularly those relating to cars? Try to get
opinions from people who drive or have driven regularly in Europe and
on other continents.
For Further Study:

Brown, Jamie. Stepping Stones. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, 1975.
A fictional biography of one of the earliest Canadian manufacturers
of automobiles. Brown provides an excellent account of what it felt
like to live and to be involved with the car in the early 1 900s.
Hailey, Arthur. Wheels. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971.
The structure of work and management in the assembly-line world,
with absenteeism as a growing pattern of life.
Schneider, Kenneth R. Autokind vs. Mankind. New York: W.W. Nor-

ton & Co., 1971.
In the words of the subtitle, an "analysis of tyranny, a proposal for
and a plan for reconstruction."
rebellion, Full of amusing anecdotes
and prophecies. Very readable.
2. Newspapers
Collect all the different types of newspapers, current or historical,

that you can find.
1. How many different types of newspaper are there? How are these
types usually distinguished from one another? As an experiment,
have the class write a description of the 'ideal reader' of each type of
paper. Choose a sample of each type of newspaper. List the compo-
nents. Compare the ways the different types of newspaper vary the
weight and arrangement of these elements. How does this variation
affect the character of the newspaper?

2. What is news? Get the opinions of reporters, editors and readers.
Make a collection of news expressions: "That's news to me!" "He
made the news."
What is 'hard news', and what other kinds of news do journalists
claim to present? Is news just 'things that happen'? If an event takes
place which very few people notice, is it news? When does it be-
come news: when it is discussed over coffee in a restaurant? When
it is printed in Chatelaine or in the newspapers? When it is reported
on TV and radio?
Are the rejected stories that are not printed or reported news? Is
an event news before it is printed or broadcast? Is news something
made by the media?
What criteria are most useful for assessing a newspaper?

Developing criteria that can be applied successfully to newspapers takes
a good deal of thought. Perhaps you will have to invent your own
criteria, since newspapers as a whole are rarely criticized: people gener-
ally criticize only their news stories or their editorial policy. For this
reason, it is hard to find widely accepted standards that can be used to
analyze the whole paper.
3. Would the standards of literary criticism be appropriate criteria for
newspapers?
Would it be relevant to ask which issue is best as literature? Or to
ask which has the best ads? (This does not mean the most ads or the
funniest ads.)Would it be relevant to ask which paper mixes ads and
copy best, both overall and page by page? Remember that in judging
a newspaper you must consider the whole production and not just
one part.
One technique for developing critical strategies for examining a

medium is to try those that work with other media. Usually, this
method clearly shows differences in the media.
4. Collect all the issues of a local newspaper for a month. Look at them
all together, but don't get them jumbled. Ask:
• Which section of the paper is the best on a given day?
• Is 'best' really an applicable term? Should 'works best' be asked
instead?
• Which issue is the most satisfying?
• Which would you like to read again?
Perhaps by making a number of experiments with different newspapers

and trying out a number of critical techniques, you will discover some
which you can apply very successfully.
5. Collect seven copies of a single issue of a newspaper. Keep one
untouched for comparison with copies that you will use for your
experiments. Your purpose is to find out how much material and
what sorts of items you can remove without changing the 'feeling' or
effect of the paper. Experiment on the front page in this way:
(1 ) Cut out all the pictures and paste the columns back together without
holes.
Cut out all the headlines from two more copies and paste the
page back together, eliminating holes: in one of these copies, cut out
the pictures and their captions as well; in the other, keep the pic-
tures.
.
Remove from another copy all the printed text, but leave the
and heads. Should the holes you have made be eliminated?
pictures
Cut away the heads, pictures and dateline from another copy and
make a mobile of the pieces.
Remove the dateline from another copy. What is the effect? Does
the issue become 'timeless'? Does it become pointless?
Use the dateline you have removed to replace the dateline of an
old paper.Does this change the effect of the old paper? What is the
effecton today's paper of last week's dateline? Is the dateline figure
or ground?
(2) Compare the versions you have produced with the original news-
paper for readability and general effect. Which of your products
retain the same 'feel' as the conventional issue?
(3) Now examine the articles on the front page. How much is 'good
news'? How much is 'bad news'? Try making a front page containing
only good news and ask other students to discuss its effect. Would
they buy such a newspaper? Would they buy it more than once?
Would you buy it?
Does newspaper writing require a distinctive literary style and

format?
6. There are a great many differences between 'literary' style and 'news'
style which is sometimes called the 'pyramid style'. In order to dis-
cover some of these differences, compare the following version of a
well-known story with the version you learned as a child:
Responding to a call this afternoon from Miss R.R. Hood and

an unidentified woodsman, police investigated the shoot-
ing death of a wolf. The victim, found in the bedroom of
Miss Hood's grandmother, had a previous record of theft,
breaking and entering, and assault and battery. "A thor-
oughly big, bad wolf," police told reporters . .
Write the next two paragraphs of this story. How is the ordering of
elements of the two versions different?
Try writing the first several paragraphs of news-style versions of
other familiar tales. What kind of information is always included in
the lead paragraphs of news stories? What is the function of the lead
paragraph? Is there a 'concluding paragraph' in newspaper stories?
Explain the reason.
7. Headlines have long been considered one of the most important
elements of newspapers. Find out who writes headlines in the local
paper and to what extent he or she uses alliteration, puns and figures
of speech.Ask about the most famous, best, worst or favorite head-
How do newspaper headlines differ from magazine headlines?
lines.
Write headlines for the news-style versions of Red Riding Hood

and other tales.
A newspaper page is like a medieval painting: the size of an item does
not indicate nearness to the viewer, but rather its general importance
and significance. There no rigid distinction between foreground and
is
background, as in later art; no one item is set up as figure with everything

else as background for it. The composition of a newspaper page is some-
what the same: there is no fixed background for the components of a
page, no proper sequence in their arrangement, no story line to unify
them, no connection to join them.
8. Suppose that all the items on any given page of the paper— stories,
letters, editorials, ads, comics — were connected in theme. What
would happen? What kind of narrative sequence or logic would

result? Would the recurrence and repetition of one topic give the
effect of a conspiracy, or of paranoia, or of humor? If you listened to
pop radio for two hours at a time, or watched TV for four hours at a
time, would you experience similar feelings?
9. Choose an inside page of the newspaper with a mixture of news
stories and advertisements. Carefully remove all ruled lines and

boxes that enclose and separate items. Before repasting, see if any
rearrangements could be made to improve the organization of the
material or to increase its impact. Can you improve the readability of
the page without getting 'gimmicky'? Is there any reason why the
different elements should not be put together?
What elements of the newspaper, besides the comics and 'name'

columns, give the paper day-to-day continuity?
10. Is it the element of continuity which gives a newspaper its tone? Do

the columns and features which appear on a regular daily basis
establish the paper's tone? Do crossword puzzles affect tone? Do
chess columns or bridge columns? Is tone a hidden ground? Experi-
ment to find the effect of the newspaper without these items singly
and together.
What is the effect of removing comics? What is the effect of
doubling the usual number of comics or of putting comics on every
page? Could comics be used as columnists to introduce satire?
Are newspapers published for the general public, or for a

particular readership?
11. Collect stories printed the same day and reporting the same news
event from at least five different newspapers. Do this on a day when
some really big story breaks and gets a lot of coverage. Compare the
stories carefully and note any differences.
Assume that each paper takes pains to tailor the available informa-
tion to suit its own readers' thinking, bias and expectations: the
hidden ground which determines coverage. Comment on the
writers' assumptions about the educational and emotional level of
their readers, their biases, prejudices, expectations and, if relevant,
their political awareness or sympathies.
Could newspapers be used as a vehicle for different forms of

literature?
12. Charles Dickens and Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, both
wrote their stories for the popular press, as did a great many other
authors of their times. Select and examine some currently popular
fiction by modern authors, such as Ian Fleming, Jacqueline Susann or
Arthur Hailey. What would be the impact of their writings, if they
were presented in newspaper were to
the daily or weekly press? If a
serialize their novels, how would their character be changed by using
the newspaper-reading public as ground rather than the book-

reading public?
Experiment by choosing five pages or a chapter of some contem-
porary fiction and pasting your selection into the middle of an issue
of a newspaper. As usual, test the response of students who are not
taking part in your experiment. What happens to the story as figure
and to the paper as ground?
Truman Capote called In Cold Blood the first nonfiction novel. Is
this a sign that the book and the newspaper are merging? Are there
any other signs?
What is the function of a newspaper in the community?
1 3. The newspaper provides "an image of us . . . today". Discuss the func-

tion of the press in stimulating various levels of self-consciousness
and the importance of this awareness in creating the identity of a
city or country. Consider ways which the paper does
in this differ-
ently from other media. In what ways is the newspaper a mirror of

the social ground? Does this mirror enhance the image of ourselves
as figures? How?
14. 'Hard news' consists mostly of 'bad news'. Can the reporting of 'bad
news' do newspaper readers any good? Is reading about disasters
likely to make people thankful that they have escaped them? Is
reading about crime likely to make them think, "There, but for the
grace of Cod, go I"?
15. Arrange to visit a newspaper office in your area. If possible, have

different teams visit newspaper offices and report to the
different
class. If you can, stay and watch a typical full day at the paper, until it
is 'put to bed'.
Find out as much as you can about what goes into producing a
daily paper, how the various departments are organized, and how
they obtain and process their information into news stories or fea-
ture articles or daily columns or editorials. Ask:
• How is news researched? How is it written? What determines the

length of a story?
• What do newsmen think makes their paper different from other
papers?
• What services do they think their paper provides its readers?
• How would they characterize their paper's 'ideal reader'?
• What is the paper's political bias, national as well as local?
• What is the paper's editorial policy?
• What criteria do editors use to determine which items are pub-
lished?
• Which items or kinds of items are rejected?
(If you can, bring a collection of the rejected items back to the
classroom for study and comparison with the paper printed that
day. Could you fill a paper with those items and make it competi-
tive?)
• How is the visual layout of the various pages determined?
• Which pages have a fixed format and which are fully variable?
How important to the newspapers and to the community is their

advertising function?
16. During your visit to a newspaper office, try to find out as much as
you can about its advertising policies and practices. Ask:
• What considerations determine how much of a page will be given

and which ads will go where?
to ads,
• Has the newspaper any policy about the type of ads it will accept
and publish?
.
• Is any attention paid to the relation between the ads and the
stories that are printed?
• What proportion of the cost of each issue do the ads pay for?
• How much would each copy of the paper cost the reader, there if
were no advertisements?
17. Ask the staff of an advertising agency if newspaper ads differ in any
way from magazine- or other ads. What considerations govern the
agency's decisions to produce particular ads?
18. Can newspaper ads for bargains be considered 'good news'? Are
there any ads that would qualify as 'bad news', or that would be
reported that way?
19. Why is the newspaper the only form of media that can handle any
large amount of classified advertising? What would happen if this
advertising were no longer printed? What does classified advertising
do for its readers? Who are its readers? — that is, the hidden ground.
A paper's promotion of its own circulation can be considered one aspect
of its advertising function.
20. true, as some people have claimed, that it would be cheaper for
Is it
newspaper publishers to give their papers away than it is for them to

pay the costs of distribution and handling of circulation revenues?
Is it necessary to charge for the papers in order to sustain readers'
interest? How would readers' attitudes change, if the paper were
free?
Try some experiments of your own with newspaper ads.
21 List the types of things most advertised in the newspaper. What sorts
of things are not advertised? Try pasting color ads from magazines
for all these not-usually-advertised things over all the ads in a copy of
the paper. What is the effect? Do the new ads affect the relevance
and impact of the news?
22. Certain pages of the paper, the front page and the editorial page, for
example, seldom have ads, or have only tiny ones. Put ads of differ-
ent kinds and in on these pages, and discuss the

different quantities
effect. Conversely, eliminate the ads from a few pages that generally
carry lots of them. Repaste the material that is left so that no holes
remain. How have you changed the effect of this material?
Discuss in figure/ground terms the use of ads in organizing copy in
a newspaper. Why was little or no space given to ads on the front
page?
23. Remove all the advertisements from an entire issue of the paper.
Paste the remaining material together without holes to simulate a
paper-without-ads, like the papers and magazines the Canadian gov-

ernment printed for the troops overseas during the Second World
War. Has the readability of the paper been changed? If so, how?
Try making a newspaper just of ads, pictures, captions and head-
lines. Is it readable?
For Further Study:

Bagdikian, Ben H. The Information Machines. New York: Harper &
Row, 1971.
Useful information about statistics. A quantitative approach.
Capek, Karel. In Praise of Newspapers. London: George Allen & Unwin
Ltd., 1951.
An unusual approach to the popular newspaper as an important art
form. Capek is able to show how the ordinary newspaper is a
collage of simultaneous events, a complex Symbolist poem.
Liebling, A.J. The Press. New York: Ballantine Books, 1961.
An anecdotal report of the Inside stories' of omissions and fictions
in our newspapers.
Morris, Richard B. and Snyder, Louis L. Treasury of Great Reporting.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962.
Numerous examples of the world's best reporting techniques.
Servan-Schreiber, J-L. The Power to Inform. New York: McGraw-Hill,
1974.
A big French publisher turns a critical eye on the world-press syn-
dicates.
Thompson, Denys. Between The Lines or How to Read a Newspaper.
London: Frederick Muller Ltd., 1973.
A keen literary critic turns his eye to the press and produces a
stylistic analysis.
3. Magazines
"Half-way between the newspaper and the book"
How many kinds of magazines are there? Make a list.
1. Collect several specimens of each kind, including special-interest

magazines such as trade and professional journals for doctors, plumb-
ers, funeral directors or salesmen. Check secondhand stores and
collectors' resources.
Investigate the meanings, history and uses of the word 'magazine'.
Analyze the components of the different types of magazines you

have collected.
2. Make a list of the different types of articles and ads in the magazines
you have collected. Chart the proportion of these components in the
different types of magazines.
How would each of these magazines appear, if one of the ele-
ments were missing? Try repasting one or two in order to find out.
3. By comparing several representative magazines, find out which has
the most material meant only to entertain or 'kill time'. Read various
pieces and decide whether they are intended to inform, to entertain,
to flatter, to challenge, or to provoke the reader. Is any particular
mental ability or activity required of the reader? Is the reader ex-
pected to do anything? Would it spoil the magazine's effect, if the
reader were alert and questioning?
4. Try to learn from readers and publishers how much time a reader
spends on an average issue of a particular magazine, and how much
of that issue he or she is likely to read: one article in full, three in part,
headlines or captions of the rest? What elements of the magazine is

it assumed the reader will ignore? What indications can you find of
this assumption? Which kinds of magazines are read more fully than
others?
5. Choose from your collection a couple of scientific, trade or profes-
sional magazines in different fields and study them. Could the
readership of these magazines manage to attend to ail their content?
Would they be able to treat the content as figure? Would they have
to pay minimal attention to most of it, that is, deal with it as ground?
If readers cannot find time to read most of the contents of the
magazines, what satisfactions do they get from them?
What are the satisfactions of magazine readers?
The hidden ground for all publications is their readership. The satisfac-
tions readersexpect to get from magazines are an immensely important
concern to the people who plan and produce the various types of peri-
odicals. When you are studying a magazine, consider the whole publica-
tion as a single unit tailored with the utmost care to suit a particular
group of readers. This 'tailoring' includes appearance, texture of paper,

choice of articles and
and cover and page design.
ads,
6. Interview a variety of magazine readers and subscribers. Include
readers who read magazines for business and professional reasons, as
well as those who read magazines only for pleasure. Ask:
• How many magazines does the reader usually read in a month?

• Does the reader read all the material in the magazines, or parts of
it?
• Are there any particular kinds of material the reader always reads?
What are they?
• Are there any particular kinds of material the reader seldom or
never reads? What are they?
• How many magazines does the reader read for practical reasons?
• Are these reasons related to jobs or careers?
• How many magazines does the reader read for pleasure?
• Does the person you are interviewing receive regularly any pe-
riodicals or magazines he or she does not read? Why are they not
read?
• How many magazines does the reader read casually to avoid
boredom, at the hairdresser's, for instance, or in a dentist's office?
• Does the reader prefer to read magazines or books? Why?
• Does the reader subscribe to any magazines? Why?
• Does the reader buy regularly any magazines to which he or she
does not subscribe?
• How soon after reading does the reader discard magazines?
• Are there any magazines which the reader saves for a year? Are
there any the reader saves longer than a year? Why?
• Within the past year, has the reader begun to buy regularly any
magazine? If so, why did the reader choose that particular publi-
cation?
• Within the past year, has the reader discontinued buying any
magazine? What was the reason?
• Has the reader been buying any magazine or periodical regularly
for a period of five years or longer? What type?
• What changes in the content or format of these publications has
.
the reader noticed during the time he or she has regularly been
buying the publication?
• Have these changes increased or decreased the reader's satisfac-
tion in the publication?
• What particular satisfactions does the reader get from any of the
magazines or periodicals he or she buys or reads regularly?
• Is any of these publications the source of any particular dissatis-
factions to the reader?
Learn as much as you can about the ways that magazine

distribution is managed.
7. From your local newsstand find the name of a magazine distributor
and contact him or her. Find out who decides what magazines will
be available at a stand or store. Ask whether computers are involved

in the selection and distribution of magazines, and, if they are, in
what way.
Find out from news agents or store managers what determines the
selection of the magazines he or she offers customers. Do the sellers
of magazines see them differently from the way buyers see them?
What is the life expectancy of magazines?
8. Drawing on your own experience and your interviews with readers,

discuss which kinds of magazines are most likely to be collected or
kept by the reader. Which are most likely to be thrown away? Which
quickly become outdated? Which become outdated slowly? Select
examples of each and examine the balance of components.
9. Compare back issues of Vogue, Fortune, Time, Chatelaine, Saturday
Night, Popular Mechanics. Is an old issue as interesting or as useful as
a current issue? Or is an old issue useful in a different way? Explain
your answer.
Are magazines primarily a vehicle for advertisements?
10. Different groups of magazines advertise different sorts of things for
different groups of readers. In each group of magazines you study,

estimate the importance of the ads; use as criteria position, size and
color. What kinds of products tend to get most attention?
1 1 When you have studied the ads for these products, write as detailed
a description as you can of the audience the advertisers seem to be
speaking to. Then write another equally detailed description of the
readers of the magazine, basing your comments on your study of the
other contents of the same magazine. Are your descriptions the
same? Should they be? Check your conclusions with people you
know who actually do read the magazine. Are your conclusions
accurate?
12. Remove all the ads from several typical samples of magazines and
repaste them to eliminate holes. What effect has this on the stories?
What effect has it on the readability of the magazines?
13. Arrange to visit an advertising agency and inquire how space is
bought in magazines and what used to determine which
criteria are
magazine's readership is suitable for each client's product. Are there

other considerations in buying space?
14. Buy eight copies of a single issue of a mass-circulation magazine. Put
aside one copy (No. 1 as a master or reference copy. Use the rest for
)
your experiments.
(1) Pick another magazine of a different sort, but of the same page size,
and paste ads from it over every ad in one of the test copies (No. 2).
Consider only size when you are deciding where to paste the ads.
Do not obscure text, but cover every ad in the test copy. You might
choose to cover all the ads in an issue of Chatelaine or Cosmopoli-
tan with ads from a single issue of Playboy or to pair Vogue and
Fortune or Maclean's and the Ladies' Home Journal. Make sure all the
substitute ads are drawn from a single source.
Then leaf through the magazine. Two 'audiences' have been
brought into sudden collision: the 'audience' the ads speak to, and
the 'audience' for the magazine's format and articles. Write descrip-
tions of the two 'audiences'.
In this exercise you have replaced the usual, unnoticed, 'ignore-the-ads'
ground of the magazine with an incongruous ground. The two kinds of

components that you have brought together affect each other: each
kind serves as ground to highlight the other as figure.
This technique of creating a double figure/ground situation is

your most potent tool for creating insight and facilitating analysis.
The double figure/ground situation is also the basic structure of much

satire and most metaphor.
(2) Take four other test copies (Nos. 3 to 6) and remove all the ads. You
will need four copies, since some of the ads will have copy on the
back, and you will be preparing two versions of two types of experi-
mental copy.
Now reassemble the magazine in two ways: Nos. 3 and 4 will
contain only headlines, pictures and their captions and ads; Nos. 5
and 6 will contain only print, with the headlines and ads eliminated.
You decide whether you wish to eliminate the pictures and captions
as well. Reassemble one magazine of each pair by repasting the copy

so that no holes are left, but leave the holes in the other magazines
where you have removed material. Of course, the first method will
make the magazines much smaller.

Show the different versions to readers who don't expect what
they are going to see and discuss their reactions and opinions. For
these experiments you will need the cooperation of fresh readers:
parents, relatives and other students all make good co-testers.
(3) As before, paste over all the ads in the remaining two test copies
(Nos. 7 and 8) with ads from other single sources, but with this
difference: in No. 7 overpaste all the illustrations and ads with black-
and-white pictures; in No. 8, overpaste all the illustrations and ads
with color pictures. Note and discuss the effect of these versions on
a number of readers.
This experiment may work some magazines than with
better with
others. When it examine the character of the master
works well,
copy (No. 1) you have used and try to identify some common char-
acteristics of its readers.
Now look at the magazines with editorialized news, such as Time,

Maclean's, Financial Post.
1 5. In the same way that you clipped off the last frame of a comic strip,
cut off the last paragraph or, if necessary, the last two paragraphs of a
news article in Time or Maclean's. What sort of article remains? Is the
story different now? Or is only the reader's attitude to the story
different? What function, then, has the concluding paragraph?
16. Remove all prejudicial or value-words from a couple of feature arti-
cles. Replace the words you have removed with neutral terms. For
instance, change a sentence like "General Slag strode to the mike,"
to "General Slag walked to the mike."
How much of the language is that of a neutral newswriter? How
much is that of a writer of short stories or novels? When the value-
words have been replaced, what impact is left? Is the story still
'news'?
17. Compare the "Letters to the Editor" from various magazines. What
effect are they intended to have? Are they really intended for the
editor or are they actually intended for other letter-writers, for
readers, or for a particular author? Do they contribute anything to
the magazine-reader's understanding? What function do they per-
form for the writer?
18. Take a magazine and paste over all the stories with newspaper
stories, features, editorials, but not ads. Do not paste over any of the
magazine ads. You may have to trim the end of some of the news
stories to get them to fit; can this be done without changing the
effect of the stories? Discuss the effect of the 'new' magazine. When
the magazine is repasted with newspaper stories, is it easier to see
the contrast in styles between the two media? Discuss writing styles
of newspapers and magazines and their relation to the formats of the
two media.
Why have comics become a medium shared by both newspapers

and magazines?
'The comics' come in several forms and not all of them are comic, even
though at the root of the name is the notion of playfulness. Our concern
is mainly with periodical comic strips found in the newspapers and with
separate comic books.
The first step in the study of comics is, of course, to assemble a

large collection of exhibits and specimens.
One trick cartoonists often use in analyzing the short, funny comic strip
of the kind usually found in the daily or Sunday papers is that of eliminat-
ing the last frame or two. By doing this they eliminate the 'punchline'. At
once the front part of the strip, the 'set-up', can be seen for what it is: a
social documentary or allegory based on a grievance. Immediately the
structure of comics becomes evident.
Without the last frame, the comic strip usually presents ordinary char-
acters doing routine things. The last frame serves to sharpen the griev-
ance latent in the situation to the 'point of humor'. Very often the
grievance and the humor work together as a mild form of satire on the
reader.
19. Try this trick yourself on one or two dozen examples. Find out with
what types of comic works, and with what kinds it
strip this exercise
doesn't work.
By becoming a 'cartoonist' yourself, you will get 'inside'

experience of the medium, which will make you a much keener
analyst of the potential and the effects of comics.
20. Collect a number of comics featuring the same character— Dagwood

would make a good choice — and cut out a lot of frames showing
that character. Using these frames as elements to make new 'stories',
assemble a dozen or so four- and five-panel strips and full-page
presentations.You may ignore the word-balloons, but you should try
to make sense of the movements of the character and the develop-
ment of the plot through the strip.
Compare the amount of action that takes place in any given frame
amount that must be supplied by the reader in the intervals
with the
between the frames. You may find that it is easier to choose suitable
frames than to organize properly the intervals between them.
For Further Study:

Berger, Arthur A. The Comic-Stripped American: What Dick Tracy,
Blondie, Daddy Warbucks & Charlie Brown Tell Us About Our-
selves. New York: Walker & Co., 1974.
Complete coverage of the American comic strip.
historical
Elson, R.T. TIME, INC.:The Intimate History of a Publishing Enterprise,

1923-1941. New York: Atheneum, 1968.
A history of the stylistics and development of the Time patterns of
coverage.
Gibson, Walker. Tough, Sweet and Stuffy. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana
University Press, 1966.
One of the few studies of audiences as creators of style.
Riesman, David. The Lonely Crowd. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1950.
A study of the conflict between the Inner-directed' and the 'other-
directed' personality.
4. Books
There are a number of key people or 'consultants' who will serve as your
main sources of information for the exercises in this section: it would be
wise for you to contact them and get to know them before you need
their help. Each team should keep records of the information obtained
from these consultants to avoid bothering them needlessly, to avoid
duplication of effort, and for later reference by other teams. Your consult-
ants should, if possible, include the staff of at least one large publishing
house and one small one; several editors and promoters, and a magazine
editor;one or more distributors, reviewers and librarians; a copyright
lawyer or adviser who is a consultant for a publisher; writers of books; a
book designer; several booksellers of both new and used books, and a
collector of rare books, an 'antiquarian'.
As you meet and talk with these people in doing various exercises, ask
about the history of books and literacy. Try to find out their views about
the present status of books and literacy in our society. Are they aware of
the state of literacy in the schools? Are they affected by the situation?
What effect will have in the future? Ask each consultant to tell you
it
how he or she regards a book: as a product, a design problem, an art

object? How does the collector's attitude differ from the writer's and the
lawyer's?
Ask also what idea each consultant has about the readership of a given
book. Who studies the readership most: the writer, the publisher, the
salesman or the reviewer? Try to learn what differences there are in the
way each one looks at the book's target, the reading public. Try to get
each consultant to describe his or her 'public'. Is there, then, more than
one 'public'? What changes in the reading public have your consultants
noticed in recent years?
Ask each consultant what he or she thinks literature' is and where it
can be found. Do the answers agree? Ask what it takes to make a great
book and who is producing the greatest books today. Let each consult-
ant define 'great' as he or she wishes, in terms of sales, literary value, or
the practical use of contents. Ask a writer what satisfactions there are in
writing for a public.
As you do these exercises, keep two separate sets of notes, one for
everything you find out about the present practices of the reading public
and another for information about reading in the past. Do you know, for
example, that after Charles Dickens had finished one of his novels and
had published it, his public was so angry that they forced him to change
its ending? It is the second version Dickens wrote that we read today. Do
you know which of Dickens' novels this is? Could the public manipulate
a book in this way today? Why?
Make a list of all the different kinds of books you can find.
1. List all the kinds of books that you can find at home and in your
classroom. Visit your school library and a public library, several book-
stores that deal in new and secondhand books, and a publisher's
office,and add to your list. Be sure to include the different kinds of

reference books and guidebooks.
Ask librarians and booksellers if any new kinds of books have
become popular in recent years. Find out if there are kinds of books
that used to be popular, but are not now. If possible, examine
samples of these, so that you can report on them to your class.
Have the different kinds of books different uses and purposes?

Which are intended for reading in depth? Which are for reference?
Which of these, like the telephone book, are intended for public use?
Which are intended for private use? Are there any books not meant
primarily for reading or reference, but for show or ornament? Are

there any meant for other purposes?
2. Obtain statistics for the number of books currently in circulation. Try
to get figures for each major category of books. How many new titles
are published each year in Canada, in Great Britain, and in the United
States?
Find out all you can about the history of reading and reading
material.
As you research the history of different forms of reading material, try
some practical experiments with these forms. By doing this, you will be
able to examine each type of publication as figure, and to perceive them
together as ground for modern books.
3. By research find out what was involved in publication of a book in
ancient Greece or Rome. Ask Jewish members of your class or com-
munity to tell you something about the traditional form of their
literature.
4. Find out the dimensions of ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian

scrolls. you can, obtain from a publishing firm some old galley
If
proofs of a book it has published and a copy of the finished book as

well. Using scissors, paste and pieces of an old broomstick— and the
ends of curtain rods, if you want to make something fancy — cut and
glue the galleys into one or more scrolls.
How is the experience of reading a scroll different from the experi-
ence of reading a book? Can you read aloud more easily from a scroll
than from a book?
If all literature were in scroll form, would reading habits change?
Would the length of publications be affected? Might reading skills

improve?
Can you think of any kinds of literature that would not be accept-
able in scroll form? Would a dictionary be effective in scroll form?
What about a short story?
Would it be cheaper to publish material in scroll form? Would a
scroll need an index? Why? Without pages, does it make sense to
have page numbers?

5. Consult encyclopedias or histories of the medieval period to find out
when material began to be published in book form. What sector of
the community was largely responsible for the production of manu-
script books? What materials were used in their production? What
kinds of literature were generally published in this form? Who
owned and read these books?
6. Using black ink and a pen with a flat nib, print or write out neatly the
first chapter of a book. If the first chapter contains only a few pages,
write out the two chapters. Tear out the
first original, printed pages
that correspond to what you have printed or written and insert the
manuscript portion. Ask several people to read the book, then in-
quire:
• Did they find their experience of reading the manuscript portion

different from that of reading the printed portion? In what ways?
• one form easier to read aloud?
Is
• Is one form more memorable?

• Would some kinds of books not be readable in manuscript?
Before printing all reading was done aloud. In fact, widespread silent
reading which we take for granted is barely two centuries old. How
many people can you find who can read aloud with expression and not
just sound the words?
7. Select some current fiction and have several volunteers read at least
two chapters (twenty or thirty pages) aloud; then have them read
the same number of pages of the same book silently. Question them
carefully about any differences they noticed between the two expe-
riences. Then ask the listeners to read the same number of pages in
the same books silently, and question them about their experience,
too. Ask:
• What kinds of things did each reader notice?

• Is it easier to remember material read aloud or material read si-
lently?
• Would today's books be written any differently, if no one read
silently?
8. Before printing, every book sold was handwritten. What did printing
do to the scribe and his trade?
Read how Gutenberg and Caxton began printing on a commercial

basis. When did profits from printing become large? Who were the
first readers of print? What have on them? Why did
effect did print
printing permit a great increase in the number of books and readers?
How did the new printing industry change education? How did it
change literature, scientific studies, politics, religion?
9. By arrangement with a library or a rare-book collector, have a team
spend all available time for a week (No TV or radio!) reading only
books published 150 to 250 years ago. The team should examine
these books for their different 'feel': their texture, smell, type faces —
a collector could do a little educating here — format and construc-
tion. At the end of the week, when the members of the team have
managed to some extent to 'become' eighteenth-century readers,

discuss with them, and with the collector, if possible, the difference
between their past week's experience and their general experience

as modern readers. What have they to say about the pace and
quality of life two hundred years ago? What have they to say about
its values, and particularly the value of literacy and the satisfactions
of reading books?
From your consultants find out what publication involves today.

10. If you can, arrange to have one team or several teams visit one or
more publishing companies. Ask:
• Where do publishers get the manuscripts they publish?
• Who decides what manuscripts of those offered to the publisher
will be published?
• What is the basis of that decision?
• What services does the publisher expect to provide for an author?
• What services does the publisher expect to provide for the read-
ing public?
• When the decision has been made to publish a manuscript, what
kinds of procedures have to be carried out by the publisher, be-
fore the finished book appears on the bookstore shelves?
• How does the publishing company usually promote the sale of a
book?
11. Try to arrange to have one or more teams visit a printing plant. Ask
to have a member of the staff take your group through the plant and
tell you about the various procedures, equipment and processes
required for printing a book. If the plant uses a computer, ask to have
its part in the printing process explained.
12. Consult with book salesmen, bookstore managers and distributors.
Ask each one:
• How is the distribution of books managed today?
• How has use of the computer changed distribution procedures in
the last twenty years?

• What are the biggest problems in the book trade today?
• How are small orders for one or two copies handled? Is filling
these orders too expensive to be practical?

• What rules guide distributors in assigning different kinds of books
to different outlets, such as drugstores, supermarkets, large-
volume stores?
• How are 'remainder' copies handled today? How were they han-
dled twenty years ago? How is the remainder decision made?
• Who has the most influence in the trade today: publishers, dis-
tributors, bookstores or readers?
Learn something of the history of copyright laws.
13. When did copyrights first become a big problem? Ask your various
consultants about the effects that xeroxing has had on publishing,
book sales and royalties, and on copyright laws. Printing, when it was
new, revived all the ancient manuscripts: has xerox done the same
for rare books? Are there many more copies of rare books in circula-
tion now than before xerox?
14. Ask a team to investigate present copyright laws, summarize their
findings and present the information to the class.
What particular satisfactions does the book 'public' find in

reading and owning books?
15. Have your class construct a list of questions to find out about the
different satisfactions of book readers. Assign teams to interview as
many different sorts of readers as they can find. Discuss the results of
your survey in class. Can you find any trends or patterns in the
answers you were given?
What is a 'bestseller'?
16. Collect a number of recent and current bestsellers and study them
with your teacher. What sort of concerns and what kind of author
and readership do the contents and style of each book reflect? Ask
your various consultants what they think it takes to produce a best-
now. Ask them to give examples of bestsellers that illustrate
seller
theirviews. Have the requirements for producing a bestseller

changed? What should a bestseller do for its readership? Are there
different kinds of bestsellers? What are your consultants' opinions of
the intelligence required of the reader of a particular bestseller? Talk
with some readers of bestsellers and try to learn what kinds of
satisfactions they get from reading them.
Could books be used successfully as a vehicle for advertising in

our consumer-oriented society?
1 7. What would be the effect on the reader, if magazine-style advertise-

ments were placed in various kinds of books: dictionaries and ency-
clopedias, cookbooks, books of poetry? Would readers resent the
ads?
18. Suppose that ads were allowed in textbooks: what would be the
effect on the readers of different styles of ads? (Base your answers
on your experience in doing the figure/ground exercises with ads in
Section 3 of this chapter.) Would the printing of ads in textbooks

help or hinder studies? Would it make a difference if the ads were for
colleges and books clubs, or for toothpaste and pantyhose? What do
you think your reactions would be to the ads, after you got used to
seeing them? How would teachers, parents and the Board of Educa-
tion respond? Would these people react differently, if the publishers
could use the ads to pay for the book, and the price of texts went
down to fifty cents a copy?
What would be the purpose of publishing such ads? Would the
purpose be achieved? Discuss your answers and, if you can obtain
some discarded texts, try pasting ads into them in order to test the
reactions of different people. Ask the staff of an advertising agency
for their reactions.
19. Some novels are now published with ads in them. Try to obtain a
few for examination. Would the effect be any different, if there were
ads every five or ten pages? Would the ads become ground more
easily?
How have other media affected readers and reading habits?
20. Television really 'arrived'in North America, that is, became ground,
between 1952 and 1958. Ask the older people among your consul-
tants to discuss what changes they noticed in the public's reading
habits between 1952 and 1960. Did the public seem to lose interest
in any particular kinds of books? Did the public develop new reading
interests? Did any of their existing interests greatly increase? Did any
new kinds of books appear? When did 'coffee table books' first
become popular?
21. What can you find out about the effects radio had on reading and
the reading public when was first introduced?
it
For Further Study:

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine Books, 1963;
paperback edition, 1972.
A science-fiction fantasy concerning the enemies of the book in
the electronic age.

Chaytor, H.J. From Script to Print. Cambridge: Heffer & Sons; Toronto:
MacMillan, 1945.
A study of the strange habits of readers from classical to modern
times. Until print, reading was performance.
Coomaraswamy, A. Bugbear of Literacy. London: Dennis Dobson Ltd.,
1943.
A Hindu sage reveals the comic inadequacies of the printed word
as a source of wisdom.
Escarpit, R. The Book Revolution. Unesco, Paris and London: George
Harrap& Co., 1966.
A study of the changing functions of the book in different parts of
the world today.
Havelock, Eric. Origins of Western Literacy. Toronto: The Ontario
Institute for Studies in Education, 1 976 Monograph Series/1 4.
A study of the end of the tribal encyclopedia. The visual codifying
of the oral wisdom Greek world ended Homeric
of the ancient
epic, but began modern
and systematic, analytical thinking.
logic
McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1962.
A study of the influence of Gutenberg in creating new psychologi-
cal attitudes and new power structures in the modern world.
5. Light Bulbs
In Chapter One we suggested some experiments to determine effects of

electric light. Try some further experiments with electric lights.
Make a list of all the kinds of lighting, electric and other, that you
can think of.
1 What kinds of lighting on your list are not in common use? Who uses
electric lighting?
Make a list where you would not expect to

of situations or places
find an electric light. What does your list tell you about the light
bulb?
2. Is electric light an example of a 'medium without any content'? Is it a
ground without a figure? Or is the bulb the figure and its own light
the ground, or vice versa?
What effect has lighting on our surroundings and our activities?
3. What sort of effect has fluorescent lighting on fabric colors and

design and on fashion and clothing design? What effect has iton
makeup?
.
4. What is the effect of putting a string of lights (ground) around the

blackboard [figure), like the ring of lights an actor has around his
dressing-table mirror?
5. What is the effect when the kind of electric light used in a location is
changed? What happens, for example, when an 'atmosphere' res-

taurant or nightclub has fluorescent lights installed to replace incan-
descent lights?
What happens when a large business office puts a small lamp on

each secretary's desk and turns off the usual fluorescent lighting?
Would the kind or quality of work the secretaries do be changed?

How?
6. Why do some municipalities discourage or prohibit illuminated signs
or neon signs?
7. What is the effect of the presence or absence of clouds on city
lights? Are clouds figure by day and ground by night?
This city now doth, like a garment, wear

The beauty of the light bulb ....
(with apologies to W. Wordsworth)
8. Some artists are now investigating, not the landscape' or 'sound-

scape', but the 'lightscape' of cities. They claim that, from the air as
well as from the ground, each city has its own peculiar character and
pattern of light and color. Is this true of your city, or of particular
areas within it? Might this new notion of city-as-artform be influ-
enced by air travel?

9. Ask an Art teacher when Impressionist art began. In what way was it
different from earlier art? Ask him or her to discuss this question with
the class. When was the electric light invented? Is there a time-
connection?
Does modern lighting attempt to eliminate shadows?
10. Which kinds of lighting throw shadows and which do not? What are
the practical uses and advantages of shadow in everyday life and
work? Are there disadvantages?
1 1 Ask an artist about the function of shadows in painting. How did the
artists of the Medieval and Renaissance periods use shadow? How
do modern artists use shadow?
Turning Night into Day-

happened a long time ago.
12. Investigate the use of the lighting term 'day for night' in Hollywood
moviemaking. Why do French filmmakers call this technique la nuit
ame'r/ca/ne?
13. There are safety lights, comfort lights, morality lights, emergency
lights.Under what conditions do lights become symbolic? {Figure/
ground analysis may help you to answer this question.)
1 4. Look up Bartlett's Familiar Quotations for mentions of light in poetry
and literature. What new aspects of light can you list from the refer-
ences given?
For Further Study:

Serullaz, Maurice. Impressionist Painters. (Trans. W.J. Strachan.) Burns
& MacEachern, 1960.
An excellent introduction to the theory of light and color and its
applications by the Impressionist painters. The author is the curator

of the Impressionist collection of the Jeu de Paume museum of the
Louvre.
6. Photographs
Consultations with amateur and professional photographers will be indis-
pensible to your investigation of this topic.
Investigate early photography.
1. Ask a team to volunteer to research the history of photography and

report its findings to the class.
2. Make your own pictorial History ofPhotography by collecting ex-
amples of each of the major kinds and styles of photography and
information about each.
What have been the major changes in photography in this cen-
tury?
3. Make an old-fashioned box camera and learn to use it. Try to capture
the early photographers' sense of things. How was their sense of
things different from ours?
4. When the photograph was first being introduced, did any changes
take place in styles of literary description? Research, collect examples
and discuss any changes in figure/g round terms.
Through interviews and discussions, find out what effect the pho-
tograph has had on the work of historians and journalists.

5. What is the response to photographs of some primitive peoples,
when they see them for the first time? Do they have to be taught
how to look at photographs? Do we? Explain the reasons.
What are the uses and effects of photography in today's world?
6. Find out about the developing process and about what sorts of
possibilities for jobs there are in that area. Does photography use an
unjustifiably large amount of certain minerals?
7. What effect has photography had on the photo-offset printing pro-
cess?
Through interviews with all sorts of users, investigate the

satisfactions and rewards of photography.
8. Talk with a studio photographer and with a media photographer. In
what ways do they look at the world differently through the camera?
Have the/ ideals concerning composition and kinds of photographic
image? How do they define 'beautiful'? What do they think makes a
beautiful picture? What do they think makes an effective picture?
9. Why are some people bored silly by other people's photo or slide
collections? Are these collections figure to us, or ground? You may
wish to discuss this question, especially if you find that older people
are sometimes bored by such collections and you are not.
10. How has the photograph affected family-record keeping?
How does photography move us into the world of nonverbal

communication?
11. Research and then discuss the unexpected side effects of photogra-
phy implied in the following excerpt from Because Loved Him: The I
Life and Loves of Lillie Langtry by Noel B. Gerson:
One of the strangest phenomena of the period was the

cult of the P.B.'s, or Professional Beauties. Actually, the
name was a misnomer: the so-called P.B.'s were, almost
without exception, amateurs in virtually every sense. They
were high-born ladies, most of them married, who hap-
pened to be lovely, and who enhanced their beauty by
dressing handsomely and indulging in exceptional groom-
ing. Each inspired an enthusiastic following, much as Jac-
queline Kennedy did in a later age.
Behind the furor lay a new art, that of photography. A.

P.B. was badgered by a professional photographer, who
distributed her photos by the thousands as a form of adver-
tisement for and these pictures were seen in the
his talents,
windows of countless shops, on small billboards all over

London, and in the private homes of the poor.
The painters of London, who comprised a large and thriv-
ing colony, struck back at the photographers by doing por-
traits of the P.B.'s in oils and water colors, and for a time
further abetted the craze by making pen and ink sketches
of the ladies, which were then reproduced in large num-
bers. A number of prominent artists had made their reputa-
tions by these means.
12. Discuss the relation between photographs and the viewers' ideas of
reality. Can photographs lie? Is taking a picture an act of interpreta-
tion? Is developing, no matter how it is done, also interpretation? Is
reality something 'out there' to be matched, detail for detail, by a

photograph? Does a photograph present the viewer with present
reality, as a figure/ground situation, or with a retrieval of reality as a
figure on the ground of the photograph? Discuss the power of the
photograph to change our sense of our surroundings.
Does photography change people?

13. Try to find out what photographed has on a
effect being frequently
prominent famous actress or actor. Are some people
politician or a
photogenic and others not? Why? Suppose that everyone you met
wanted your photograph: how would that affect your sense of your
identity and your sense of importance? Would being photographed
become a ground that changed your sense of your worth and your
values?
For Further Study:

Carpenter, Edmund. Oh, What a Blow That Phantom Cave Me. New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973. (See note on p. 32.)
Culkin, John. Doing the Media. New York: The Center for Under-
standing Media, Inc., 267 West 25th Street, N.Y., N.Y. 1 0001 1 972. ,
Full of marvellous exercises and projects for making photographs,
films and videotapes. Photos in text show children doing the ex-
periments in the book. Excellent bibliography; very helpful for
those interested in making films, videotapes, photographs.
7. Films
Make a list of all the kinds of films there are.
1 . Chart the uses of all the kinds of films you have listed. Are all of them
intended to be shown in theaters?
Research the history of films.
2. Look up in film histories the meaning of some terms from the old
days of the movies:
camera obscura peep-show
pin-hole camera silents
magic lantern talkies
nickelodeon
What were the satisfactions of watching movies in these forms?
Try making some of these items in order to find out. Compare these
satisfactions with the satisfactions provided by contemporary
movies.
3. Through interviews with older people who are or have been movie-
goers and theater owners, and through library research, find out as
much as you can about the film world of the twenties, thirties and
forties. Ask about the chains of theaters, the appearances of stars,
the elaborate make-believe of theaters. (Some were decorated as

harems or as jungles.) Try to learn what the satisfactions of moviego-
ing were in those decades. What did people expect of a movie? Find
out which movies were the most successful in each decade or pe-
riod, and comment. (See Chapter Three, Section 8, Exercise 11.)
4. Try to find out how developing film technology changed acting

patterns:
• How did the introduction of 'talkies' affect the realism of films?

• How were the stars of the talkies different from the stars of the
silent films?
• Was there a 'star system' before talkies?
• What was the general effect of the introduction of sound on the
visual quality of films in the thirties?
• What effect did lighting developments have on makeup, costume
and acting patterns?
• How did the switch from studio- to location shooting affect acting
patterns?
• What was the effect of mobile microphones on stage move-
ments?
• What was the effect of mobile cameras on acting patterns?
5. Find out when Hollywood began to promote the notion, "Stars are
made, not born." Compare Hollywood's techniques for making stars
with present techniques used by advertising agencies in making
record-stars or 'bestsellers'. Visit your local newspaper and try to
discover how newspapers contribute to the process of conferring
stardom on films before they are released.
6. Are there kinds of movies that used to be made, but are no longer
made? In what ways are they different from today's movies? How
might their audiences have differed? Are there 'periods' in films?
How do movies relate to today's world?
7. How have the satisfactions demanded by movie audiences changed?

When did the change begin?
8. How many kinds of 'public' are there for films now? Have movie
theaters begun to specialize in attracting certain sectors of the pub-
lic?
Consider your own pattern of moviegoing. Do you generally go to

the movies by yourself or with one other person, or do you go with a
group? When and why are you likely to decide to go to a movie
instead of watching a film on TV?
9. If possible, watch a film being edited. Note the enormous number of
shots required to give the editor a sufficient range of effects from
which to choose. Compare this process with the rehearsals required
of a symphony orchestra in order to produce a recording.
10. Look up the notes you made when your Art teacher or your Physics
teacher told you about the additive and subtractive color processes.
(See Chapter One, Section 3, Exercise 1.) Which process do movies
use? Which process does television use? Collect examples of each
process from as many areas as you can.
Explore the effects of films by manipulating them yourself.
The classic scientific experiment is one that can be repeated anytime,

anywhere, and always produces the same The test is carried out as
result.
a figure minus any particular ground, so that no matter what the ground
in time or place, the result is uniform. This, strangely enough, establishes
one kind of truth: scientific truth, based on abstracting a figure from its
ground. (As an exercise of your own, you might try finding out just what
'truth' is to different people. To be successful, this experiment must be
done by investigators who have a mature attitude and who can go about
it with tact and diplomacy.)
Another kind of experiment involves comparing two things, or equiva-

lent parts of two things: for example, you might compare two cake mixes
or the engines in two cars. And sometimes you can find out more by
looking at one thing in two ways than by looking at two things in one
way.
Here, then, are three ways of carrying out an investigation: the classic
experiment; direct comparison and examination; study from two or
more points of view. All are valuable methods for the media student. The
following experiment is of the third type.
11. You will need:
(1) a room that can be used to show movies; all its windows must
be completely curtained;
(2) two short movies, a projector and a special screen, preferably
made of a length of white polyester crepe;
(3) desks or chairs; pencils; paper, preferably in two colors;
(4) a large audience or a number of small audiences.
Divide the viewing audience in half. Place the screen in the middle
of the room, and let half the audience watch the movies from one
side, while the other half watches from the other side. This means
that half the audience will see the light reflected from the screen in
the usual way; the other half will see the light coming 'through' the
screen, as shown in Figure 3.
You will have to improvise a screen for this experiment. White

polyester crepe is the most suitable material, but an old white bed-
sheet will do, provided that the material youis pretty thin. Before
show a film, try to make one side of your
sure that the image on
'screen' is not noticeably dimmer or fuzzier than it is on the other.
Your object is to make a test in which only one difference is present:
the way the light reaches the viewer. This means that the images on
both sides of the screen should be alike.
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Figure 3
Put the speaker in the middle of the room under the screen. The
larger the total number of people that make up the audience, the
better, but if you cannot arrange for a large audience, you can repeat
the experiment with different, smaller groups.
You should show two movies, and neither should last more than
ten minutes, or less than five minutes. Although the subject of the
movie doesn't matter, at least one of the two films should be inter-
esting or entertaining. It is generally useful to provide some variety,

so there is no need for both films to be in color, or for both of them
to be particularly interesting. There is a wide range of good, dull,
training shorts.
Once you have set upyour equipment and tested it, bring the
all
audience in, and try to them fairly equally distributed on both

get
sides of the screen. Do not tell them anything in advance that might
affect the result of your experiment. Show the first film, then ask
everyone to write page or so of comments about the experi-
half a
ence. Do not suggest what anyone should write or not write. Allow
the group ten minutes to write comments. Collect the papers and
put them in two piles, according to which side of the screen the
writer was on. Be very careful not to get the two piles of papers
mixed. Perhaps you could hand out paper of one color to the people
in front of the screen, and paper of a different color to the people
behind it.
Repeat the process with the second movie. When the audience is
writing, it is important that they do not talk or compare notes on

their experience. To get good results, you should arrange for at least
fifty or sixty viewers, twenty or thirty on each side of the screen. For
this reason, you may have to ask other classes to join in the experi-
ment.
You will have to deal with the comments as groups to find the
properties of each group of responses, so that you can learn whether
the two parts of the audience had the same experiences, or not.
Read each group of responses carefully several times. Then make
two lists, one for each group, of the things mentioned most fre-
quently and the kind of comment made. For example, if color was
remarked on often, was it described as good, bad, intense, dull,
'soapy'? If the sound track was referred to, was it annoying, interest-
ing, stupid, badly made, not synchronized? Compare the lists of
results, noting similarities and differences. Find out what a 'significant
difference' is.
Look for points of difference by asking yourselves:

• Did one group pay more attention to technical matters, such as
scripting, sound coordination, cutting, editing, shooting tech-
niques or camera angles?
• Did one group respond more emotionally to the experience? Look
for terms of color and feeling to give you clues here.
• Did one group respond more personally than the other? Did this
group talk more about themselves: what they felt like, what they
thought?
• Did one group respond more objectively than the other? Did they
seem less involved, or less emotional, than the other? Did the
films seem something outside or more distant from them, some-
thing 'going on over there', rather than something happening to
them personally?
• Did one group discuss interpretation, either of individual scenes or
of the whole film, more than the other group?
• What other differences did you find in the comments of the two
groups?
As long as the same films are shown, you can use new audiences
and deal with their reactions as you did with the reactions of the
original groups.
Summarize the results of your comparison. Does it appear that,
although everyone saw exactly the same images of the same size
and and heard the same sound in the same room at the same
color,
time, yet the experience of one group was different from that of the
other group? Do you think the result would change if you tested a
different age-group? Can you arrange to try the experiment at an
'Open House', or at a PTA meeting with an audience of parents, or at
a staff meeting with an audience of teachers? Is it true that students
from upper grades and adults, who write more easily, make for better
results?
Keep the results of this mind when you are studying

experiment in
television and the effects it new shows

has had on movies. Most of the
presented each fall on TV have been made, edited, screened, tested and
judged as movies, not as videotapes, before you see them. This is true for
most ads used on TV, except that they cost more than the shows and are
tested more extensively. Once shows appear on TV (a different me-
dium), they don't always have the predicted effects, and many fail. Verify
this yourself from your own observation and experience, on the basis of
this experiment, and in figure/ground terms.
1 2. One of the best ways to discover some of the properties of films is to
try making a movie yourself. Since there are numerous resources
available to help you in this project, we aren't going to duplicate the

work of others. We do suggest, however, that you will find the
following professional films excellent resources:
(1) any of the films of Norman McLaren, produced by the National
Film Board of Canada;
(2) Bolero by Allan Miller;
(3) Free to Be ... You and Me by Mario Thomas and Carole Hart.
1 3. What would be the effect on an audience of adding a laugh track to
a funny movie, as producers might to a TV show? For example, if
audience tracks like those used on TV were added to a Woody Allen

film, what effect might this have on the theater audience? Would
this be a successful technique on film? Explain your answer. What is
different in the two situations? What would be the relation of the

sound-track audience to the live audience of the film?
.
For Further Study:

Bluestone, George. Novels Into Film: The Metamorphosis of Fiction
into Cinema. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1957; Berkeley, Cal.: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1961 & 1968.
When a novel goes into film, it undergoes a complete meta-
morphosis. Six novels-into-film are studied in detail.
Culkin, John. Doing the Media. (See note on p. 64.)

Mayer, J. P. British Cinemas and Their Audiences. London: Dennis
Dobson, 1948.
A study of the effects of film on people's lives, based largely on the
original responses of moviegoers.
Miller, Arthur. "The Year It Came Apart," New York Magazine Vol. 8,
No. 1, Dec. 30, 1974-Jan. 6, 1975, pp. 30-44.

A study of the breaking up of the unified American theater audi-
ence in 1949 which was the first year of network television on a
large scale. A very important audience study.
Percy, Walker. The Moviegoer. New
York: A. Knopf, and Toronto:
McClelland and Stewart, 1961 Noonday, 1967 (paperback).
;
A novel in which the characters validate the real world by referring

it to situations in the films.
Sullivan, Sister Bede. Movies: Universal Language. Notre Dame, Ind.:
Fides, 1967.
A provocative approach to the use of films in schools.
8. Television and Videotape
Make a list of the kinds of television systems now available.

1 Note the characteristics of each system and the advantages or disad-
vantages of each.
Chart the selection of channels available through each kind of
television and note how the selections differ from one another. List
the services that each kind of television provides for the community.
2. Make a list of the kinds of TV sets at present available. Note the
characteristics of each and the advantages and disadvantages.
Which are the most widely used kinds?
3. List the viewer services available and the satisfactions they provide.
Drawing on your own experience, discuss the use viewers make of
these services. What do you think would happen to the audience

and its habits, if these were discontinued? Try doing without these
services yourself for a week or two, and record any consequences.
Make a list of all the kinds of television shows or programs there

now are.
4. How many kinds did you find? If there are any which are unfamiliar
to you, make a point of watching one or two samples, before you
finish working on this section. List some general characteristics of
each type of program: if possible, note some general characteristics
of the audience for each type. Is the typical viewer of each kind of
show curious about something? Is he or she bored? Does he or she
expect to be challenged, entertained, educated, made to laugh?
Does he or she expect to be introduced to 'stars'? Does the viewer
intend to use the show as background for some other activity, such
as ironing or homework?
Analyze the content of television shows.
5. Pick or two of each major type of TV show that you listed, and
one
assign ateam to watch each one for several weeks. Have each team
keep notes on all the details that are repeated from one week to the
next, and determine what percentage of material is new in an aver-
age show. Would movie audiences tolerate the same amount of
repetition? Would readers of novels? There are several series of
novels that you can use for comparison: ask your English teacher.
Set at least one team to study children's cartoons. It has been
estimated that as many as 75 percent of the frames in these shows
are stock and are reused many times, even
in the same show. Is this
sound track? What percentage of these shows seems to

true of the
be the same from one show to the next? Is there the same amount
of repetition in movie-length cartoons, such as Walt Disney's Snow
White or BambR
If most of the material of all these shows, or even a large propor-
tion of it, is repeated within each episode, as well as from one
episode to the next, ask yourselves:
• Is the content of this show very important?
• Is the repetition of material intended to give people a feeling of
security?
If the point of the show is not that it should be watched as a
movie is watched or followed mentally as a novel is read, but to
be 'worn' like clothing, is changing a TV channel like putting on a
sweater? Discuss your answer in figure/ground terms.
• What does 'cliche' mean? Are these shows simply an amalgam of

cliches? What sorts of people dislike cliches? What sorts of
people dislike these shows?
6. Just you have done with the newspaper page,

as select any one hour
of TV programming and consider everything it contains as 'the
show', as a single collage. Assume that the form of the collage has
been deliberately planned good
for reason. Ask yourself:
• Does the content of a show serve as bait to 'hook' a public?

• If the content or story line of a TV show is not particularly impor-
tant, then what does make the show important?

• Does it matter at what point in the program you start or stop
watching?
• Does it matter if you switch channels?
Answer these questions both as a viewer and as a critic.
To make your analysis even more effective, try manipulating the

elements of TV entertainment.
7. If, when you have looked at a broadcast hour in this way, you find it
awkward or clumsy, then revise and improve

you have it. When
obtained permission from the stations, videotape a sample hour of
raw material, and edit it to eliminate the compartments that separate
ad from station break and station break from show. This process is
similar to the work you did on a newspaper page, removing the
boxes surrounding ads, pictures and columns. (See Chapter Two,
Section 2, Experiment 9.) Treat the whole program as a single experi-
ence, rather than as a series of unrelated items competing for atten-
tion. Is the result more interesting? How much unnecessary material
can be eliminated? What intervals should be inserted? What items

should be rearranged?
Remove as much material as possible, until just the essence of the
experience remains. Try this with different kinds of programs: news,
sports, game shows, soap operas, documentaries.
8. Pretend you have to set up the weekly program schedule for a local
TV station or for an entirely imaginary one. First, estimate the size
and nature of the audience: who will be watching? When? Then,
calculate the number of on-air hours per day, the effect you want to
create, the sort of program offerings that will best achieve this effect,
the number and placement of ads, and the probability of keeping the
audience's attention. In what way is your schedule different from the
schedules of existing stations serving the same audience?
9. Many video artists complain that the public's approach to television

is all wrong. Television, they think, is a medium for producing images,
some of which may be pictures. These artists see TV as a way of
working directly with light, instead of with paint, and they don't see
why everybody insists that TV 'pictures' have to be pictures of
something. They regard as opportunities all the usual 'breakdowns'
of the TV image: an image rolling or flopping over on its side,
'ghosts', 'tweedy' or 'herringbone' distortions. Their argument is that

these are effects that only television provides: no other medium can
produce them. Is this contention true? Does it make artistic sense?
Does it help you to explore some aspects of the medium that you
wouldn't otherwise 'see'?
10. What opportunities arise, the various knobs and adjustments of a

if
TV set are regarded as giving the viewer compositional options?

Obviously, unless you know what you are doing, there may be a
limit to the knobs you can adjust without seriously detuning the set.
This is much more happen to a color set than a black-and-

likely to
white: on no account should convergence controls be fiddled with.
We all know the usual adjustments for contrast and brightness. But
the fine tuning on the channel, for example, can be used to turn a
picture into a cartoon of itself. Does watching the news as a cartoon
affect its meaning? What effect has turning "All in the Family" into a
cartoon? If "All in the Family" were shown in the first place in car-
toon form, would its impact be any different? If TV showed only
cartoon-style images, what effect would this have on the late show?
What effect would it have on bowling, on political campaigns and on
news?
Consider the presentation of news on television.
11. Analyze a newsand assess the amount of information it

telecast
contains by relating amount of news that would fit on a
it to the
page of a newspaper. Does TV news contain any typical items? Ask
ten or twenty viewers why they watch the news. Does it make them
feel they've been informed or brought up-to-date? How much of the
newscast do they remember an hour later?

12. How much of TV news is intended as entertainment? You might ask
newspaper reporters about this. Get a reporter to talk to your class
about TV offerings and a TV news broadcaster to talk about the
papers. What impact would the news make if it were presented
undramatically?
13. One of the bases on which networks select news is whether or not
they have any film footage to go with it. Does this indicate that the
network sees the importance of news mainly in relation to its enter-

tainment value? To increase your awareness of this element in news
telecasts, write newspaper-style reviews of four or five news pro-
grams, both local and national, as if they were entertainment shows,
assessing them for their entertainment value.
14. What is the 'anchorman', or reader of the news, for? How much of
his function is entertainment? Would he be more effective if he had
frizzy, unkempt hair, a scraggly beard and a grubby T-shirt? If he
were to appear that way, would it affect the news? Why?
One of the brand-new pieces of hardware, which is still extremely ex-
pensive, is a miniaturized, self-contained, portable camera-transmitter.
The user camera can simply sling it over his shoulder and get into
of the
the middle of news situations. The camera can transmit its signal directly
to a nearby station, or indirectly through a relay to a more distant station,
and the station can put its transmission on the air as it is being received
or with a minimal delay of a few seconds. This 'site-to-station-to-
audience' form of transmission is very like broadcasting with roving
mikes in the old days of live radio except that, because of the new
micro-circuitry, no external wires are involved. The camera-transmitter is
battery-powered.
News broadcasters and others associated with TV programming real-
ize that this camera will revolutionize news presentation. For instance, in
early 1975, a newsman hurried to the site of an air crash with one of
these cameras. He arrived amid fire, smoke, wreckage, firemen, police
investigators, onlookers, injured survivors and corpses. He immediately
began to talk to survivors and to transmit pictures of the crash-scene by
relay. Some of the survivors he spoke with died soon after. The audience
was shocked.
Why are most TV newsmen certain that this sort of technology will
transform their jobs? "It's a whole new kind of news," they say. "You
haven't time to be objective. You've got to make split-second decisions,
and they've got to be right!"
15. Compare styles of narrative reporting in the English novel over the
past two centuries.
16. Reporting used to mean being present at something and then, later,
telling someone who wasn't there what happened. Truth', fairness
and unbiased reporting all involved giving both sides of a story. With
a live camera in the middle of the action as it happens, are there two
sides, or is that concept beside the point?
The question of objectivity is also a critical one. What is objectivity? Ask

your teachers and ask reporters; ask a politician orsomeone who is
frequently in the news and ask a disk jockey. Can you find out what
objectivity used to mean both fifty and a hundred and fifty years ago?
Does it now mean 'telling it as it is'?Has there been any change in the
concept of objectivity?
17. Look up accounts of the Battle of Waterloo in English and French
histories and compare them. (For a unique study of the news-
behind-the-news about "The Charge of the Light Brigade," see Cecil
Woodham Smith's The Reason Why.)
18 Collect several examples of news stories of a hundred years ago and
compare them with stories, preferably on similar topics, taken from
similar sources today. Try to find out not just what people thought
objectivity was, but also how they thought it could be achieved.
When you have studied the material you have collected, ask your-
selves:
• Did the reporter need to put a certain distance either of space or

time between himself and the event?
• Was the reporter's attitude that of a person observing a situation,
but not participating?
• Was the language of the report charged with feeling and emotion,
or was it the language of a detached observer?
• By comparison with the old articles, how detached do today's
stories seem?
• Can a reporter with one of the new camera-transmitters —a per-
son with a TV station in his or her hand, a person with an audi-
ence of thousands of people looking over his or her shoulder as he
or she 'shoots'— can this person, wading into the middle of a
situation as it happens, be said to be objective? Is there any way
this reporter can plunge into the middle of an event and still be
detached? Can he or she be in the center of a situation and
therefore an element of it, and still deal with it as a distant 'ob-
ject'? If the reporter no longer brings a news report of an event to
an audience, but instead brings the audience to the event, how is
his function likely to change? If a reporter is no longer 'reporting',

what should he be trained to do?
How important an element of television is advertising?
The study of TV advertising can begin at any of three key points: the
advertising agency, the TV station or the home.
19. Make lists of the various sorts of items advertised on TV. What sorts
of product are most advertised? What sorts are least advertised? Are
there any products that are never advertised on TV, but are adver-
tised through other media? If so, why might these products not be
advertised on TV? What is different about them? Discuss your

answers. Does the pattern of advertising change during the day or
week?
20. What are the rulings about the minimum and maximum amounts of
time per hour that are permitted to be sold to advertisers? Is there a
rule governing the maximum number of ads, or just maximum allot-
ments of time? What are the usual lengths of TV ads? What is the
usual mixture of long and short ads? To find out the answers to the
last two questions, time TV ads at various points of the day, using a
watch with a second hand; make notes of your findings.
Ask the managers of both a broadcast station and a cable station
how much TV ads cost to run. This cost is added to the cost of
making the ad.
21. This exercise is similar to one you may have done with magazines.
Copyright laws require that you get permission from a TV station to
record the material you need. Using a videotape recorder, record a
half-hour TV show complete with all ads and station breaks. Now
pick a set of ads of exactly the same length, but for a very different
time of the day or week. Replace the ads from the show with these.
What happens to the show? Do the two audiences, one for the
original show, one for the 'new' ads, become any easier to identify
and discuss? What sorts of contrast are easy to see? What is the
effect of the evening news, when it is brought to you by the manu-
facturers of children's toys instead of the usual sponsors?
22. Using ads that, with the stations' permission, you have taped from
TV, assemble a half-hour program of ads, interrupted every ten min-
utes by a minute or two of trailers for shows. Can such a show, made
only of ads, be interesting? Italian stations used to run a full hour of
ads each night, and the show was reputed to be the most popular on
the air.
23. When you have obtained the necessary permissions, try assembling,
in any sequence, ten or fifteen ads for the same type of product: ten
ads for drain cleaners or for soap powders or for toothpaste. When a
large number of ads that focus your attention on a single item are run
together in this way, what happens? Does the advertiser become
any easier to identify, observe and discuss? Do his various methods,
his attitudes to the audience and his opinion of it become any more
obvious?
24. Try to shorten TV ads without changing their purpose or effect. Does
shortening improve any of them, or are they all as concise as they
can be?
25. How many ads can be introduced into a show without destroying it?
What happens when the time given to ads is increased from ten
minutes per hour to fifteen or twenty? Test this by using a videotape

recorder to vary the time allotted to ads within a show. Increase the
time allotted to ads by five minutes in successive experiments, until
you are using forty-five minutes of the hour for advertising. At what
point does the usual figure/ground relation between show and ad
reverse? What is the most interesting or entertaining proportion?
Do" you remember the experiment with front and rear viewing of a
film? (See Chapter Two, Section 7, Experiment 11.) What do you
think TV advertisers might do differently, if they knew about the
results of that experiment? Would the changes increase the effec-
tiveness of their advertising?
26. Arrange to visit an advertising agency and spend some time learning
about their handling of How much do various kinds of ads
TV ads.
cost to make? Are TV ads made on television or are they made on
film? Do their test audiences see them as films or as TV? How does
the agency measure audience response? What kinds of audience
studies are usually undertaken? How often? What audience consid-
erations do the advertisers think are most important?
What makes watching TV a satisfying thing to do?

27. How much time do students in your class spend watching television
in an average week? Keep separate logs in which you each try to
record accurately the total time you spend, including your casual
watching.
What programs do you find get most attention? Which
stations or
get no attention? Why? (Refer to the list of types of programs
little or
you made in Exercise 4.) Which programs will have most influence in
structuring the audience's preferences?
28. Can the students in your class be grouped into particular audiences
according to the kinds of program they watch? Are there different
audiences for different types of TV programs? If so, in what ways are
the audiences different? Are their satisfactions different? Discuss
your answers.
29. Do viewers relate to television in terms of stations or of individual
programs? Is there such a thing as a 'station audience', in anything
like the same sense that there is for radio? If so, do viewers watch
the news, as well as programs for entertainment, on their favorite
channel? Are there any recent trends to or away from the general
pattern of TV watching? If do they show that the prefer-
there are,
ences of TV- and radio audiences are developing in the same direc-
tion?
.
30. Has the relationship of the TV audience to 'news' changed? The

reporter of the past carried a report of an event he had witnessed to
a public. He or she couldn't take the public along, as the 'live' re-
porter now does. He or she carried the story back to the public (and
this is the meaning of the word 'report'). The 'live' reporter, in
literal
effect, brings the mass audience— 'mass', because all are 'there' at
exactly the same time — to the event with her or him. With the
audience in the middle of the situation, is there any possibility that
the audience can be objective? If neither the reporter nor the audi-
ence can be detached, because they are present at the event, how is
this likely to change the very concept of news?
Arrange to visit one or more television stations.
31 Make arrangements for a team to visit a broadcast TV station. If there

are many stations in your area, arrange for teams to visit several of
them. Find out:
• How do the stations see their function or influence in the commu-
nity?
• How do they differ from other television services available to the
community?
• What is their attitude to competition?
• If there are other TV stations in the area, do they consider that
they are competing for the same audience, or that they are unique
and independent?
• How realistic is their point of view?
• Do they demonstrate their viewpoint by competing with news,
prime-time shows, soap operas at the same times as the other
stations?
• What is their relation, in terms of community services, to radio, to
the press, to magazines, to movies, to schools in their area?
You may find that the TV-station people don't think of themselves
as providing community services. Perhaps they think of themselves
instead as 'packaging' shows for an audience to consume. If this is
their viewpoint, reevaluate what they have said about their role in
the community. The 'package' notion of communication is related to
the notion of transportation, in which all the attention is on figure.
There is no idea of ground or of the interplay of figure and ground.

32. What is the attitude of the people at the station to cable TV? Do
they think it has changed their function in the community? Are they
concerned about cable TV legislation? What new developments in
television are they concerned about? What do they think of pay TV?
What do they think of the possibilities of videophone or picture-

phone, a combination of television and telephone that shows you
the person to whom you are talking?
33. What is their attitude to charges about the effects of television

violence on children? Do they consider that the charges are justified?
If so, do they think the proof is adequate? Or do they think that
exactly the same charges could and should be leveled at novels,
comic books, movies, radio, and, especially, newspapers? If not, then

why not? What's special about TV?
34. What sorts of rules do the TV stations have to follow in broadcast-
ing? We don't mean technicalities about the electronic side, unless
these restrict artistic freedom, but rather rules governing procedure

and content of broadcasting. What sorts of things are they obliged to
do? What are they not allowed to do? Are there any rules they
would like to have changed? (When you are asking these questions,
always keep in mind that the rules establish the basic figure/ground
relationbetween broadcaster and audience.) Is there a maximum

number of minutes of ads that they can show per hour? Does this
period of time vary during the day or week? Is there a minimum?
Must they broadcast any other information?
35. Have they any sort of program policy, a set of guidelines that govern
their selection and arrangement of offerings to their audience?
Where do they get their programs? Are they affiliated with any other
stations or networks? If so, what effect has their affiliation on their
choice of programs? Does it affect their approach to their audience?
Does it affect their notion of their role in the community?
36. What is prime time and why is it called that? Are there other times or
blocks of time which the stations use in a particular way? If so, have
these 'times' identifiable audiences? What are the characteristics of
the various audiences?
37. Lord Thomson once said that owning a television station was like
having a license to print money. He seems to have thought that the
real function of TV is to hold the attention of people so that adver-
tisers can direct a sales pitch to them. What is the attitude at the TV
station to advertising agencies? Have stations rules about what sorts
of ads they will run, or about what sorts of product they advertise?
Have they rules about means or techniques of managing the audi-
ence's attention? Do they think ads can have harmful effects of any
kind? Do they see any relation between ads and shows?
38. Ask the people at the station to describe the typical audience they
imagine they are serving. Is this their ideal audience?
Does cable TV differ in any way from broadcast TV?
39. Arrange for a team to visit a cable TV station or two, there are any if
in your area. Ask the staff if cable TV is a new medium or just a

variation orimprovement of existing media. What can cable TV do
that other media cannot? How do the cable companies see their
function or influence in the community? What is their idea of the
community they serve? Is their audience different from a television
broadcaster's audience? Is it different from a newspaper's reader-
ship? What attitude does their station take to charges about the
effects of TV violence? Is their attitude different from the attitude of
the staff at the TV broadcasting station?
40. What sorts of rules do cable stations have to follow? What must
they do? What are they prohibited from doing? What changes in the
rules do they want? Why? Do they originate programs? If so, how
many? What kind? Why? Do they originate ads and superimpose
them over ads that are broadcast from other stations they carry?
Some Canadian cable companies do this with American stations. If
the shows are figure and the ads are ground, then are they really
changing the ground so that, in effect, the station becomes a Cana-
dian station?
41. What is the cable companies' attitude to competition? What is their
idea of their function in the community in relation to other media
such as newspaper, telephone, radio? What is their attitude to other
forms of television?
42. When cable TV was becoming very popular a few years ago, there
was some companies install two-way
talk of legislation requiring that
amplifiers on their cable lines so that clear signals could be sent to

the viewer, and by making a slight change in the viewer's equipment,
a return signal could be sent back to the station. The idea, appar-
ently, was to build into the cable system at the outset the possibility
of viewer-feedback. This could be useful as a means of determining
audience response to programs; it would also have political possibili-
ties. With such equipment, a national referendum or a plebiscite
could be taken over the entire country, or at least among those who
had cable television, at any time and for any reason. The political
implications of this possibility are staggering: it could revolutionize
the form— even the idea— of government and its decision-making
process; it could revolutionize completely the function of represen-
tatives, the nature and speed of legislation, ideas and methods of
propaganda and Were these amplifiers ever installed?
of education.
If they were, was installation made throughout an entire system or
just in parts of it? Are any of these amplifiers operable now? If so,
could anyone 'on the cable' originate and transmit images by using a
camera of his or her own that operates through his or her own cable
TV Check with your local authority to
set? find out whether you
could legally originate and transmit an image in your cable area.
Compare the possibilities of television with the possibilities of

other media.
43. When you have obtained the necessary permissions, audiotape the
sound track of a half-dozen different kinds of TV programs. At inter-
vals during the day, record the sound from a half-dozen different ads
from different shows presented at different times. Replay these au-
diotapes as if they were radio. It might be useful, though it is not
necessary, to surround them with sound taped from radio programs.
You might, for example, use the TV ads' sound in place of radio ads
on a tape of a radio show.
Classify the TV material you have used according to whether it is
'excellent radio' (that is, fully acceptable to radio broadcasters and
listeners), 'just fair radio' (that is, barely acceptable), or 'bad radio'
(that is, unacceptable for broadcast.)
Analyze the tapes in the last two categories for faults. Is the sound
from, say, "Bowling for Dollars" wrong for radio? What would it need
to make it acceptable in that medium?
When you have finished this analysis, analyze the tapes in the first
category: 'excellent radio'. Why are the shows in this group on TV? If
they are 'complete' without the use of a visible image, then why are
they good TV? Has the sponsor just assumed that TV is 'radio-with-
pictures'? By reference to the shows now on TV and their use of
sound/image relations, can you prove that such an assumption is
false? A successful sound/image relation has to go further than just

reinforcing the impression the sound makes with a 'nice picture'.
Is there proof of this in the large number of radio shows that tried
to 'make it' on TV in the early days and failed completely, because
they didn't change their pace or format?
44. Let the class select the six best TV ads currently on the air and the six
best ads on radio as well. Compare the sound from the two sets of
what ways are they different?
ads. In
45. Have movies the same effect, when they are shown in the casual, TV
ground, that they have when they are shown in theaters? Do
viewers select TV shows in the same way they select movies? Do
they consider the actor (Raymond Burr or Carroll O'Connor) or the
role (Ironside or Archie) as the more significant? Discuss the differ-
ence in audiences' attitudes to actors in TV shows and in movies.
In movies, especially those made before TV, the story line was
extremely important; so were character portrayal and character de-
velopment: in fact, movies were 'visual novels'. Is there any story line
connecting the weekly episodes of a TV series? Does the series
portray any character development? Discuss the effects of having
Mannix, or even Mike Douglas, begin to show changes of character.
46. Make up a small team of about three students and go to a movie

theater where a film is playing that draws a large audience. Buy
tickets to see the show through twice. First time around, watch the
show. Next time, closely observe the audience and its reactions, and
note your observations. Repeat the experiment at a matinee car-
toon show where the audience consists of children. What kinds of
material produce obvious audience reactions? What sorts of reac-
tions are they? How strong are they? What kinds of material do not
produce reactions? Are there times when people in the audience
move about restlessly in their seats? Are they restless all through the
film, or only at particular times? Why do you think they are restless?
Choosing a time when material of a roughly similar kind is being
shown, observe people watching TV. Again, try to watch incon-
spicuously, so that the viewers are not conscious of being watched.
Observe both adults and children. Make the same kind of notes that
you did before, but look out for any different patterns of response.
Try to work with another team-member or two: since the TV audi-
ences you study are likely to be people you know very well, an extra
pair or two of eyes may see things you don't. Keep observing the TV
audience through the showing of ads and through station-identifica-
tion breaks, since these are part of TV experience as much as trailers
and shorts are part of theater experience.
Summarize and compare the notes you have made. What kinds of
experience did each audience seem to be having? Were the audi-
ences' experiences the same or different? In what ways? Did the
members of one audience seem more conscious of themselves than
the members of the other? What evidence have you to support your
answers?
An hour or so after the show, ask people what it was about and
what they remember of it. Which group remembers the most con-
tent? Do they remember details as experiences or as parts of a story
line? Do children find it easier to 'become' a character and show you
what they remember than to tell you the story? Do adults do this? If
not, at what age does the change occur? Do children pay attention
to the commercials? At what age do they stop doing so?
47. Suppose that one of your teachers or a parent of one of the members
of your class remarked seriously among friends or colleagues at a
party,"Oh, never read, but do try to watch at least two hours of
I I
televisioneach night." What reactions would follow? Suppose this

person went on to add comments about the amount of violence in
books: "Look at all the crimes committed by readers! It's no wonder,
when you think of the sort of stuff they read!" What would happen?
You may be able to find someone who is willing to try this experi-
ment and report the results. The remarks have to be made with a
straight face and a steady voice, if the experiment is to work, and the
pretense may even have to be kept up for several days.
How does an audience track affect television?

48. Many TV shows use audiences in their presentation either by taping
their productions in front of a live audience, or by having a laugh
track added later. (Did you know that quite often the laugh tracks are
made from tapes of European nightclub audiences? Their laughter is
supposed to be heartier than ours!) What happens when this 'audi-
ence' is removed?
This is very easy to investigate: audiotape an excerpt from "All in
the Family" or "Monty Python" or some other comedy show. Care-

fully erase all between lines and replay the tape
the audience sounds
for the class. Discuss the effecton the timing or pace of the show.
When the sounds of the audience are taken away, intervals are left:
do these need to be shortened or removed? If they are shortened,
then the timing of the show is changed. Does this have any effect on
the impact of the show? Is the show still funny, or has all its humor
turned to grievance? Discuss the role of the audience as part of the
show in figure/ground terms.
49. Using tape, add audience track to ads in each of the categories you
established earlier and discuss the effect. (See Exercise 19.) Add
audience track to several types of straight shows. Discuss the effect
on the figure (the show) of adding this new ground.
Now review your first conclusions about the function of audience
tracks on the shows that use them. Ask:
• Is the laugh track intended as figure or ground!
• Does it perform the function for which it is intended?
• Have you ever heard anyone remark about it, "After a while you
don't even notice it"?
Is the audience track, like background music and other sound
effects, intended to work subliminally on the live audience by
creating 'atmosphere'? Compare the function of a TV audience

track with the function of a film atmosphere track.
Expand your experience of television by producing your own VTR

material.
50. A century ago, musicians were composing tone poems and songs
without words. Using videotape, make brief 'image poems'. You may
not have to go far to find material. Remember that objects and
actions are not necessarily poetic in themselves: the treatment of
subjects, the context and the audience's reactions can all contribute
to creating a poetic experience. In creating your image poems, limit
yourselves to a maximum time of thirty seconds, the length of a TV

ad, and aim for a professional level of quality.
If you decide, after viewing your image poems critically, that you
have achieved your aim, you might take some of your best produc-
tions to a cable TV station and ask if the station would be interested
in airing them in spots where audiences would expect commercials.
51 Using videotape and several broadcasts as material, put together a

full-length newscast without any announcers. Compare its effect
with that of an ordinary news broadcast.
52 Using a VTR either as tape or as closed-circuit TV, create an 'essay'
on architecture in your area. Because architecture is sculptural, use
the camera as your hand, not as your eyes. Use the camera as hand
both inside and outside buildings to demonstrate architectural forms.
Camera
Dance^^Area
In ,
^^P
Take-up
Outl
i ^^^ Monitor
Record Play
V© ©)
Deck 1 Deck 2
VTR VTR
Figure 4
53. Set up a camera, a monitor and two identical tape decks as illustrated
in Deck No. 1 is set at Record and passes the tape to Deck
Figure 4.
No. 2 which plays it back through the monitor. It is important that
the two decks be at the same height and level. The distance be-
tween the decks regulates the interval of delay. Ask a dance instruc-
tor to experiment with the possibilities of this equipment for teach-
ing movement.
Can the equipment be used to invent new exercises, or as a
teaching tool for ballet or other forms of dance? What is the best
postion for the monitor? What happens if the equipment is set up in
an ordinary classroom where the camera is able to shoot either

teacher or students, and everyone can see the monitor? Can the
equipment be used to improve the class's performance? In what
kinds of class is the equipment useless?
54. Set up a camera and monitor as shown in Figure 5, so that the camera
is pointing straight into the screen and the image of the screen fills
the camera's screen. A tape deck is optional for this exercise; a zoom
lens is desirable, but not absolutely necessary.
Monitor
Camera ^^^^^
T
A
(D
>• W
(«) VTR
(optional)
Figure 5
Experiment by moving the monitor to various angles, until you are

acquainted with the full range of effects you can get. Zoom and
focus at different distances, tilting the camera as you do so. Notice
that only a very tiny movement of the equipment can have dramatic
effects on the image. You can also vary the quality of the image by
using the controls for 'Contrast', 'Brightness' and 'Vertical Linearity'
on the monitor. If you have expert supervision, you may be shown
how to use 'Beam' and 'Target' on the camera. With these you have
a verycomplex instrument for generating a great variety of delicate
and precise images. Remember that "...a TV is an instrument for
making images, some of which may be pictures..." Would you
define these images as 'pictures'? Are they unique to TV?
Find out from technicians about other TV-only effects, such as
matte key and chroma key. How could these be used artistically?
Could they be used in teaching or learning? Try composing (and

taping) light ballets for different kinds of music. Baroque music makes
for a good start. Take tapes of your best productions to broadcast-
and cable TV stations for professional comment. Will they air them?
Remember to keep them as short as ads, at least at first.
For Further Study:

Culkin, John. Doing the Media. (See note on p. 64.)
Key, Wilson Bryan. Media Sexploitation. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Pren-

tice-Hall, 1976. (See note on p. 29.)
Marsh, Ken, Holzman, David and Schiff, Morton. Independent Video.
Straight Arrow Books, 625 Third Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94107
(Distributed by Simon and Schuster, Order Number 21887). Pub-
lished 1974.
"Complete Guide to the Physics, Operations, and Application of
the New Television for the Student, the Artist, and for Community
TV."
(See note on p. 33.)
Radical Software. Issues 1—5. Raindance Corporation, 8 East 12th
Street, New York City 10003.
Issue 4 has a special Canada and California section with names and
addresses of people interested in talking to other people working
with video. The magazine is filled with experiments and new ways
to use video equipment. Excellent diagrams. Most of the issues
date from 1971. Originally conceived as "The Alternative Televi-
sion Movement."
Schwartz, Tony. The Responsive Chord. Garden City, N.Y.: Double-
day, Anchor Books, 1973.
TV uses the eye as an ear. Essential for television study.
Shamberg, Michael and Raindance Corporation. Guerilla Television.

New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971. (Issue No. 6 of Radi-
cal Software.)
New ways to use television and make it work for you.
9. Radio
Make a list of all the kinds of radio broadcasting and scientific

uses of radio.
1. Chart the range of services to the community or the country that

each type provides, and make notes about the users of each type.
When were the radio networks established? What services do they
now provide?
2. 'Public radio' usually refers to AM and FM broadcasting. List the types
of program that 'public radio' stations broadcast, and make notes
about their general pace and daily format, the announcers they em-
ploy and the announcers' attitudes to the listeners.
3. Ham radio, that is, amateur radio, is probably much more complex
and more extensive than you imagine. Talk to several hams about
the range of amateur radio activities and their relation to other
branches of broadcasting and electronics. You may be able to locate
some hams through a radio parts store. The radioham is a 'broad-
caster without a public', at least in the sense that a disk jockey has a
public. Who
what is or 'out there' for the ham radio operator? In
what other media is this sort of broadcaster-audience relationship to

be found? Aside from hams, are there any other users of amateur
radio?
One of the most notable features of radio is the spoken word.

Thismay be why radio so seldom plays with speech, just as the
newspaper seldom plays with type.
4. Collect radio slang: expressions involving aspects of radio that have

passed into more common use. Note whether the slang is current,
old (that is known, but not in common use), or old-time (that is no
longer in use, like 'cat's whiskers'). In what situations is the slang
used? Does it reveal the function of radio in these situations?
5. Practice the 'radio announcer's voice' — the broadcaster's tone and

delivery — and when it is reasonably good, try using it in nonbroad-
cast situations. You might try it at a party, in a conversation or
discussion, or on the telephone. What is the effect? If the broad-
caster's voice is not proper to those situations, what ways is it
in
inappropriate? Is it 'putting on' the wrong audience? When would

the 'party voice' or the 'conversation voice' or the 'telephone voice'
be just as inappropriate to an announcer? Why?
Research the history of radio.
6. In the radio age, the time leading up to the Second World War,
programs rather than stations got the attention, and programs dif-
fered widely. They included broadcasts of music, both light and
serious, children's features, sports events, adventure episodes, the
great humorists like Jack Benny, Amos 'n Andy, Fanny Bryce, Fred
Allen, quiz shows, soap operas and suspense shows. Almost none of
these programs remain, and this fact demonstrates a tremendous
change in the interests of radio audiences.
Interview people who used to listen to these old shows. Learn
what you can about and the part radio played in
their listening habits
their world. How have audiences changed? Find out when this
change took place and what brought about the change in the au-
diences' interests. What circumstances or changes might threaten
today's radio programs?
Investigate news broadcasting.

7. Ask radio news reporters how a radio news story is put together
from incoming information, what governs rejection of items not used
and the editing of items that are used. Look for any clues of assump-
tions made about the audience, their interests, attention span or bias.
Does the news vary greatly from one station to another?
Since you will be recording copyright material, get permission from
a favorite station to tape a segment of broadcast with the news as its
central portion. Clip the newscast out and replace it with a news
broadcast of equivalent length taped from a very different type of
What is the effect? What does this experiment
station. Play the tape.
tellyou about the attitude of each station to its audience and about
the kind of audience each station has?
8. When you have arranged for the necessary permissions, try taping
news constructed for another medium and replacing a radio news
broadcast with it. Does it work? If not, what is wrong with it?
9. After obtaining the permissions you need, try constructing a news
tape which there are no announcers, just the sounds of the events
in
themselves. Why is the announcer considered necessary? What is

his role in making news 'news'? If there were no announcer, would it
be necessary to space different items on the tapes by using ads?

What impact would news have, if it were broadcast without an-
nouncers? In what way would its impact be different?
10. Find someone in your class or in your school who is adept at mimick-
ing voices, and who can mimic about six well-known people. Ask
this student to list the names of these people and number them.
Write out a script for a radio news broadcast, either a 'homemade'

broadcast or a transcript of a real one. Number the items and hand
the script to the impersonator. Ask him or her to use voice No. 1 to
read item No. 1, voice No. 2 to read item No. 2, and so on to the end
of the news. Tape the broadcast, timing it to the right length; if
possible, tape in real commercials.
What is the effect of this 'broadcast' on an audience that has no
particular expectation aboutit? What happens to the news items? Is
their impact changed? What would be the effect of asking the im-
personator to read the entire broadcast in just one or two voices?
Try it and see. Does an announcer have to read 'deadpan'? Why?
Investigate radio commercials.
11. What happens to the nature of the news and its significance to the
audiencewhen there are no commercials before, during or after it?
What happens a brief commercial follows every news item? Make
if
an audiotape to try the different effects.

12. What happens when commercials from one station are used to re-
place commercials on a quite different kind of station? When you
have arranged for the permissions you need, try it on tape, using a
favorite station's programs. Discuss the effects obtained, asking your-
selves:
• Do the characteristics of the two stations' audiences, one for the

show from Station X, the other for the ads from Station Y, become
any easier to 'see'?
• How are the two audiences different?
• How are the two audiences similar?
How do radio audiences differ from the audiences of other media

you have studied?
1 3. Ask the members of some other class in your school:
• How much time do you spend listening to the radio every day?
• Which stations or programs do you tune in?
• Which do you like best?

• Which do you never tune in?
• Do you listen to stations or programs?

Discuss the answers you get, and ask yourselves:
• Can radio listeners be grouped into 'audiences' according to their

levels of taste?
• Can they be grouped according to their age?
• To what extent do musical interests tend to reflect age groups?
• Do members of one group mind, if members of another share their
listening? Would 'teeny boppers' mind, if a 'rock head' listened in
with them, or if an adult joined their listening group?

1 4. Compare a radio news audience with the readers of newspapers and
news magazines.
If this seems difficult, try comparing the audiences for radio- and
newspaper ads. List three characteristics which they share and three
in which they differ.
Arrange to visit various radio stations.
1 5. From the public relations departments of radio stations and whatever

other sources you can find, obtain a profile of their listeners, as the
station's staff imagines them. What do the people at the station
think their broadcasting and programs do for their audiences? Which
programs' audiences are the largest?
1 6. Talk with the program directors of various radio stations. Ask them to
discuss the nature and composition of their audiences:
• Who makes up the station's audience?

• How does a director 'pull the audience together'?
• Why is this important?
• What services does the director think the station provides for its
audiences?
• How would the director describe a typical listener?
• What are the expectations of the listeners to various types of
programs?
• What does the director think are the satisfactions of the audi-
ence?
• Are there any satisfactions lacking in one type of program that are
supplied in another?
• Is the listener's attention to the broadcast expected or necessary?
Talk to show hosts, disk jockeys — perhaps one would visit the
class for a chat— and announcers, and ask the same questions about
their audiences and the 'ideal listener'.
17. Often stations present themselves to potential advertisers as decoy-

ing people into groups of listeners for advertisers to 'have a shot at'.
Is this true of the stations you Does the station's staff see any
visit?
relation between their programs and their advertisements? Have

they any policies relating to advertisements or products?
Investigate radio receiving equipment and its uses.
1 8. How many radios has your class access to? How many are owned by
class members? How many are owned by their parents? What kind
of radios are they?
1 9. The transistor radio is used very differently from a plug-in set. List the
different uses of the two types of radio. What is the reason for these
differences?
If there were no battery-powered transistor radios, would listening
habits of audiences change? Would the composition of radio audi-
ences change? Would radio stations change their tactics? In what
ways?
20. Discuss the conveniences of the earphone. Is it figure or ground 7 .
What possibilities does it create?

Is the earphone a sensible attachment for a console radio or a
table model? Why? What difference does the earphone make?
What is the effect or the significance of using the transistor radio
itself as an earphone? What are the listener's satisfactions? What is
the function of radio when it is used in this way? Is it still a mechani-

cal 'object' to listen to, or is it tending to become the listener's
'companion'?
21. Get one of the members of your class to build an old-fashioned
crystal radio set complete with cat's whiskers and earphone, but
without batteries. Use only parts that were available in the early days
of radio; don't settle for modern 'fixed crystals'. It may take a little
digging and ingenuity, but the parts can be found. When the set is
working well, let the student who made it instruct several other class
members in its operation and let each of them in turn use it to do all
radio-listening for several days or a week. Does the experience

change the sense of what radio is? Does it change program prefer-
ences?
ForFurtherStudy:
Briggs, Asa. The Birth of Broadcasting. Volume London: Oxford I.
University Press, 1961. Volume The Golden Age of Wireless,

II,
1965. Volume Ml, The War of Words, 1970.

An excellent history of broadcasting in the United Kingdom.
CB Slang Dictionary. Dell Purse Book 1109. New York: Dell Publishing
Co., Inc., 1976.
Dictionary of Citizens' Band Radio Slang that will tell you a lot
about attitudes to radio and the satisfactions of radio, as well as

popular attitudes to almost every aspect of the contemporary en-
vironment.
McDayter, Walter E., ed. A Media Mosaic: Canadian Communications
Through A Critical Eye. Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston of
Canada Ltd., 1971.
A collection of articles on all aspects of the media in Canada,
written by the communicators themselves.
McWhinnie, D. The Art of Radio. London: Faber & Faber, 1959.
A classic on radio.
10. Audiotape
Organize teams and work areas for audiotape experiments.
For most of the following exercises and projects with tape decks, you
may want to work in teams of about four students. These teams could
work simultaneously at projects in other media, such as magazines or TV,
especially if available equipment is limited. Some students will quickly
show natural facility and expertise, and they can be asked to train others
when their turn comes. For the longer projects at the end of this unit, you
may prefer to subdivide your team and do some of your work in pairs.
Teams of four students could operate in pairs, with two students
engaged in on cassettes 'in the field'. They might
collecting 'raw material'
then return with their material and help the other two students, the
'splice and edit' team, to select material and transfer or 'dub' it to 6.35
mm tape. To avoid accidental loss of valuable material, always keep your

last generation; it is best to keep all cassettes until the stage of final or
semi-final editing; then, of course, cassettes can be erased and reused.

Before the edit teams prepare the final tape, they may wish to make a
further selection and dub, if another reel-to-reel deck is available, but
they should try to keep the number of dubs to a minimum, since each
time they re-record, there is the possibility of loss of quality of sound.
Close to their work-center, the teams should fasten up a piece of string
long enough to hold at least a half-dozen clothespins: they will use these
to hold little pieces of tape during splicing and editing.
Collect equipment and materials for your experiments.
During your to radio stations, scrounge any old, reusable tape the
visits
staff can you have. Often stations keep boxes or drawers of tapes
let
from old shows and 'spots' and commercials that they no longer need. If
you can get some of these, you can use them as a resource for sound
effects. The bits of tape you erase are useful for splicing into other tapes.
Empty reels and the 'leader' tape are useful, too.
You will find the following equipment essential for your experiments:
• Several cassette decks, with microphones, batteries, and two or
three cassettes for each team.
• One reel-to-reel tape deck, with microphone, metre for reading
sound levels, tone control, and 'pause button'. A mod-

if possible,
el with a patch cord is preferable, so that sound can be dubbed
from cassette decks. If your tape deck has no patch cord, one can
easily be made.
• Tape splicer, 'leader' and splicing tape. Kits are cheap and avail-
able at most hi-fi stores.
• For a list of essential recordings, see pp. 98-99.
The following equipment is not essential, but you will find it helpful, if
you can get access to it:

• A second reel-to-reel tape deck, or separate 'record' and 'play-
back' heads for the first one, so that you can get effects of echo
and delay.
• An equalizer, for adjusting or molding the tone range and quality
of sound during dubbing.
• A bulk tape-eraser for wiping tapes clean after use. This can easily
be made from old junk TV transformers. Ask a radio station engi-
neer how to do this.
• A set of patch cords to connect all equipment.

• A professional editing block for splicing.
• A stopwatch.
Before you begin these exercises, listen, if you possibly can, to the
records of Tony Schwartz and Glenn Gould's The Latecomers and dis-
cuss them. (See pp. 98-99.)
Use the tape recorder in some familiar situations.
1 . Tape the whole of a class discussion on any subject you like. Replay
the tape, or a significant portion of it, but not just edited 'goodies',
and discuss and criticize the session.
Ask one or two members of your class to edit the entire tape
down to a maximum may be done by
length of five minutes. Editing
dubbing to another tape recorder or by using a razor blade and
editing block. As there may be no one 'right version' or 'best effect',
try editing the tape several ways, as if for a five-minute broadcast.
This could be a documentary or a satire. Do not use a narrator. Is the
result interesting? How can this sort of tape be used as a tool to
sharpen critical awareness of classes, of education, of the roles of the
student and the teacher? Would students in another part of the
school, or even in another school, find the tape interesting, instruc-
tive or useful? If not, why not? Could it be made interesting? Try
splicing in taped radio ads and introducing and ending the discussion
with music or news to simulate a real broadcast. Discuss the effect of
these additions.
2. In a poetry class, set up a tape recorder with ten to fifteen students
seated in a circleit so that the microphone can be passed
around
easily from one student to another. Choose a poem of suitable
length and let each student in turn read onto the tape a couple of
lines, a sentence, or a quatrain, at most. When the poem has been
read, play the tape once or twice and then discuss the strengths and
defects of the reading.
Have the poem read again in such a way that no one reads the
same lines as before. Play the tape and criticize it: is the meaning of
the poem any clearer? How well do the poet's sound effects, rhymes
and puns and rhythms contribute to the poem? How can the reading
be further improved? Are there musical or semantic weaknesses in
the poem? Now read the poem a third time, or try a different poem.
3. Take some of the tapes you have just made (Exercise 2) and dub in
sound effects, both to enhance the devices the poet has already
used and to change the poem's ground.
Do you find that a poem becomes easier to understand when it is
heard through another medium, in this instance, the tape recorder?
In other words, is the figure of the poem clearer to you when you
change the ground?

4. Using tape, rather than the printed page, as the means of presenting
the poem you have been reading to an audience, edit the tape for a
listener. Cut out all the material that is not absolutely necessary to
create the effect of the poem, or anything that detracts from its
meaning and effect.
Is it necessary to change the sequence of lines or of images in
order to present on tape the essential effect of the poem? If you

think that it is, try it.
Use sound effects both where they seem called for by the poem,
and where they will help to make the poem more concise. Try this
with poems written by four or five different authors of different
periods. Try to translate something of each poem's essence into
terms relevant to your audience. This is a very difficult exercise, but
try it at least: what you are really doing is updating an old situation
for a contemporary audience. You might get some help with this
exercise by looking at professional examples: for instance, Bob Dy-
lan's contemporary version of Ecclesiastes in his "Bells of Rhymney."
The tape recorder is more than just an electric memory or record, as

engineers have long known, and as you will have realized after some of
the projects you have completed. Like the microphone, the tape recorder
is a tool for dissecting and laying bare a situation.
Try making some brief tapes outside your classroom.
5. Go through the school with a tape recorder and collect the sounds of
school. Don't try to collect extraordinary sounds, but get the routine,
usual sounds that everyone generally ignores: bells and buzzers, the
opening and closing of classroom doors, sounds in the classrooms
and in the hallways, on stairs, at lockers, the sounds of conversation,
perhaps echoes — all the sounds that a student makes and hears and
never attends to; in short, the acoustic ground of school routine.
Tape ten or fifteen minutes of these sounds. This
will be difficult,
because you, too, are accustomed to ignoring them: they are your
ground, too. A blindfold student might be of some help to you.
Edit your tape down in two or three different ways, avoiding a
logical, narrative sequence. Your final tape should be from thirty
seconds to one minute long. Ask the class for suggestions to help
you edit, and eliminate any sounds that are not self-explanatory:
with this sort of exercise, severe editing is best. You should finally
have a brief tape that presents concisely some of the 'experience of

the school'.
You might try a similar process with other aspects of school life:
classroom activities, for example — but be sure to carry out this pro-
ject in cooperation with your teachers — or the cafeteria at lunch-
time, or sports events.
6. A few days before the next big holiday, collect a wide sample of
people's expectations and plans for the occasion. Edit your tape
down to a duration of thirty seconds to one minute in order to
present a collage of comments about the holiday.
7. Make a tape of young children, perhaps preschoolers. This is difficult,
because there is so much material available. For this reason, pick a

.
particular aspect of children's lives: games or fights or their com-

ments about adults or their language'. You have probably noticed
that young children have ways of communicating that are quite
different from those of adults and that are not restricted to words.
Collect a variety of children's nonverbal language, such as cries,
grunts, shouts and wordless songs, that all have clear and obvious
meanings. Edit your collection to a thirty-second tape that puts on
display part of the complex, private world of children.
It will be evident that there is no room on such brief tapes for a narrator,
and no place for introductory remarks. If a tape is accurate and well

done, the sounds will explain themselves more eloquently than any
narrator. Because they do so by relating directly to the hearer's experi-
ence, they will have greater force and impact. There is no reason, in any
of these exercises, to ease listeners in or out of their own experience
"
with, "Now here's a familiar sound we all know
first few exercises

After the in making very brief tapes, move to
more ambitious projects.
The following exercises are for producing tapes two to four minutes long.
You may need to collect a half-hour's taped material to make an ade-
quate three-minute sound portrait or essay.
8. Collect a number of students' ideas about going to school: ask how
school makes them feel; what they think the purpose of school is;
how they plan to use what they learn. Ask for comparisons between
their own school and other schools, for school jokes and school
grievances.
9. Collect material for a portrait of students: the life, loves, joys and
disappointments of the students found in the corridors of your
school. This is a larger subject than Exercise 8, because it presents the
entire lifestyle of the student.
10. Make a portrait of your family, presenting the differentmembers'
voices, thoughts and personalities and together.
individually
Making a 'family portrait' is a demanding exercise. So is making a
picture of 'where you live'. These exercises both ask students to
examine and to report on things they normally take for granted or
ignore.
1 1 Make a 'sound picture' of your home. In this exercise you can make a
'picture' of your house or apartment inside and outside, or you can
extend the 'picture' to include your whole neighborhood. Avoid
logical, narrative sequences that might distract the listener's atten-
tion from the overall effect.
Other suggestions for medium-length projects are: humor, either current

or from the past; youth or age, with conversations with old people or
young people; World War II and ideas and opinions about war held by
veterans, as well as anecdotes and accounts of their experiences; a
supermarket; a pawnshop; children and their world: games, slang,
school, their ideas about food, the 'space race', politics; a 'portrait in
depth' of one child, exploring all you can about the people and things
that matter to him or her.
Older or more ambitious or more experienced students may wish

to try more extensive projects and exercises.
These projects should be from six to eight minutes long in their final
form: keep in mind the audience's attention span and stamina! Your
initial tapes may require editing down from an hour or more of raw
material, but the same raw material may contain gems for use in briefer
projects.
An example of this kind of 'find' occurred during an interview with an
old veteran in a hospital. He had taken part in the Klondike gold rush and
recalled how he and his companions, desperate for food, had once made
porcupine soup. The interviewer was preparing a project on veterans,
and for his immediate purpose the veteran's story was of no use, but he
recorded the recipe in the veteran's wavering voice: "First, y' see, y' gotta
get a porcupine..." This portion of the tape edited down to just over
three minutes and made a delightful and entertaining item all by itself.
The local radio station loved it and often played "Porcupine Soup."
You should think of these longer projects as 'sound essays': they often
give deep insight into aspects of our milieu. In longer pieces of this kind
you will have to use some strategies to tie the different elements to-
gether and give the whole production dramatic unity. Here are some
suggestions for topics.
12. Arrange to tape on-the-bus interviews with bus drivers about their
work, the bus, the route, passengers, traffic policemen and any other
topic the drivers mention, including examples of their slang and
jokes. Separate various segments of your 'sound essay' with re-
peated, typical noises: the horn or the opening and closing of the
doors or the falling of coins into the coinbox, or combinations of
these. The repeated sounds will give unity to the different elements
of your 'essay'.
13. Make a documentary about policemen, their life at home and at

work, their problems, their image, their relations to the criminal
world, crooks they have known, cases they have been on, the worst
or best parts of being a policeman.
Another team might make a similar documentary on teachers: ask

them to tell you their reasons for choosing to be teachers, and about
changes they have seen in their profession, in students, in their
subject or its presentation, in the curriculum; ask what their views
are on the purpose of schools and education, and what they think
schools should be like; ask about problems of teachers and teacher
jokes.
Tapes of this kind, when they are edited to eliminate all but the
most revealing information and sounds, can be more incisive than
any essay, more revealing than any photograph. They tell much more
than just a person's occupation: they expose honestly, if they are
done well, the individual and the culture.
Other possible subjects for this type of documentary are students, auc-
tions, jobs, 'the old days', leisure, contemporary music, a 'portrait of a
city' or of a town.
14. Take some of the 'out-takes', bits of tape left over from the preced-
ing exercises, which contain conversations with people about them-
and their occupations. Select four or five rather different seg-
selves
ments about a half-minute in length and splice them together. Make
a typewritten transcript of what each voice says and have the class
read it and discuss their impressions of each speaker. Then play the
tape for the class. What happens? Why?
15. Arrange to take a selection of the briefer tapes — those between
fifteen seconds and two minutes long — to one of the radio stations
you visited earlier. Play your tapes for disk jockeys and for the pro-
gram director, explaining the nature of the exercises and your own
aims in making the particular tapes. Ask for their opinions of the
tapes. Are they suitable for broadcast? Would the station be inter-
ested in them as public-interest spots? Many of the livelier
airing
on the lookout for original material that will catch
stations are always
and hold the attention of their audience. They are usually pleased
when a supply of such items is offered them. Moreover, they are
usually willing to reciprocate the favor and donate tape and reels and
advice in exchange. And there is nothing to match the satisfaction
you will get from hearing something you have made presented to a
whole city!
For Further Study:

*The Sound of Children. Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, N.Y. (Manu-
factured by Capitol Records, Inc., Custom Service Department).
A Popular Photography presentation by Tony Schwartz on how to
record the sound of children. Essential for students learning how to

use audiotape.
*The Idea of North. Glenn Could. CBC Records. CBC Learning Sys-
tems, Box 500, Station A, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (Manufactured
in Canada by RCA Ltd., Department for CBC Learning Systems).
Pianist and composer Glenn Gould uses audiotaped voices of
people heading north on a train to create a composition which
expresses "the Idea of North." Essential for students studying com-
position with audiotape.
*The Latecomers. Glenn Gould. CBC Learning Systems.
Gould again uses audiotape of voices and of the sea to present a
composition expressing Newfoundland. Very useful for those stud-
ying composition with human and natural sounds.
*NEW YORK 19. Folkways Records and Service Corp., N.Y. Album No.
5558.
Conceived, recorded, edited and narrated by Tony Schwartz.
*The Vancouver Soundscape. Murray Schafer. (2 Ip set with pam-
phlet). Document No. 5 of World Soundscape Project, Sonic Re-

search Studio, Communication Studies Dept., Simon Fraser Univer-
sity, Burnaby 2, B.C., Canada. Manufactured through Ensemble Pro-
ductions Ltd., Vancouver, B.C. Record No. EPN 186.

Composer Murray Schafer produces a soundscape of the city of
Vancouver. Schafer is interested in orchestrating the sounds of our
environment and in combating noise pollution. Essential for stu-
dents studying taping of city and environmental sounds. Any work
done by students might be sent to the World Soundscape Project.
11 . Telephone
In Chapter One, telephone exercises were proposed for study in figure/

ground terms. It would be a good idea at this time to review your results
or even to rerun the exercises. (See Chapter One, Section 1 .)
Make a list of the kinds of telephone service now available.

1. In England a person can make a phone call to get a 'recipe for the
day', or a prayer, or a poem. What similar services are available where
you live? Make a list of all the 'extra services' and disservices avail-
able to telephone-users.
Conversely, what people or services can you not call either di-
rectly or at all?
2. Why do long-distance calls cost the telephone-user more than local
calls? Do they cost the telephone company more because the voice
'has to go farther'?
In fact, every single call uses the entire telphone system, and not
just one wire, since the whole system is required to handle all the
rest of the calls being made at that time. If there were only one wire,
the system would be hopelessly glutted. For this reason, every call,
no matter what distance it has to cover, requires the existence of the

entire system.
Bell Telephone has carried out experiments in which the Company
has given a town or two at a time unlimited, free, long-distance
privileges. Can you find out what happened?
3. What new developments have you noted in telephone equipment
and services?
4. What would happen to telephone habits, if there were no dials on
phones and no direct-dial service anywhere? equipment has
Dialing
transformed telephone use, but it is possible to find places where
predial conditions still continue. Of course, there are many people
who remember predial telephones. Interview some of these people
to find out about the changes that have occurred.
5. What would happen to the public's attitude to telephones, if sud-
denly there were no operators and all telephone service was auto-
matic? Recorded messages can sometimes give you a taste of this
situation. Suppose that all telephone calls were handled by one,

huge, self-regulating electronic complex with an extension in every
home and office. The telephone system would require no human
agents except for servicemen who appeared at long intervals in little
Properties of the Media 1 01
green trucks to make new phone connections. How would people

react to such telephonic automation?
6. What would happen if telephone companies were to introduce
videophone service? (Bell Telephone recently completed technology
for videophone service, but decided not to extend it to the public.)
Consider how present attitudes to the telephone would change, if
videophone were introduced. If you were 'on the air', as if you were
appearing on TV, every time you picked up the phone, how would
this alter your figure/ground relation to the phone and to your pub-
lic? Would you have more or less privacy on the videophone than on
the present type of phone? Would using the videophone be the

equivalent of meeting your friends to socialize? Ask your friends their
views about the possibility of using videophone service.
What can you discover about telephone-users?
Every new service, as it becomes available, creates a new group in soci-
ety: the group of people who use the service, and who are formed by its
use into a select body which did not exist as such before.
7. What modern telephone services constructed? Are
user-groups have
there groups in who do not use the telephone? Are there
our society
groups of people who despise or resent or fear the phone? The
European dislike of the home telephone is well known. What is the
reason?
8. Why can most people not resist answering a ringing phone? What
experiments can you invent to find out?
Make anecdotes to illustrate the lengths to which
a collection of
people go to answer the phone, and some of the suspense and
will
frustration they feel when they are unable to answer it. At what
moment does the person who answers a telephone call feel the
greatest degree of suspense? Is this 'involvement'?
9. Why do some people grit their teeth and snarl at recorded mes-
sages? What sort of people get angry at them, and what sort endure
them? When the voice on the line does not indicate any human
participation in the transaction, does the caller become merely a
mechanical device, an extension of the telephone?
10. Muzak, itself a medium worth careful attention, can be used to
'program' the feelings and productivity of people (and, it seems, of
cows and of plants). ground deliberately made to be heard, but
It is a
not listened to. Could something similar be done with the nation's
telephones? Could pleasant Muzak of the sort played on FM radio be
put on the phones to cool the national temper in a crisis, or to warm
it when an election was due? If this could be done, would it achieve
results? Make your own investigation. Your experient may have to

continue for several days to be a fair test, and it should include all
your calls, if this is possible.
Keep notes on what kinds sound track work best or least well.
of
What do tell you about the effects of
the results of your experiment
the media you have taped on the sensibilities of their hearers? Your
results may indicate, not that radio allows a greater variety of mate-
rial than the telephone, but that radio audiences find some material
congenial that telephone-users can't tolerate. (Look at the jacket of
McLuhan and Nevitt's Take Today: The Executive as Dropout.)
You might experiment in the same way with other kinds of sound
track. For example, what effect would a laugh track or prerecorded
applause have on the habits of telephone-users?
How does the telephone affect its users?
One of the notable characteristics of the telephone is its ability to in-
volve by creating intervals. This is the simple secret of the ringing tele-
phone, and it applies to what is often termed by engineers a 'shared
information space' of users.
A perceptive reporter, present at the first telegraph hook-up between
Boston and Washington, noted: "When I can say, standing here, that at
this moment in Washington, Congressman So-and-so is saying the fol-
lowing, then what have evolved is a new form of consciousness." It was

I
the speed of virtually instantaneous communication which deeply im-

pressed the early users of the telegraph. Instantaneous communication is
even more impressive when the telephone-user's voice is heard simulta-
neously in two places, though his body stays in one of them.
11. Make a collection of the ways in which phones are used in various
media: novels, short stories, radio, TV. Note specific examples. How
are phones used in movies to create or heighten suspense?
12. There seems to be a certain magic in the very name 'Bell Telephone',
which has positively influenced its success. Do you think the com-
pany would have been as successful if it had been called 'Kraphainicz
Telephone Links' or 'Alex's Phone Service' or 'Albatross Telephone
and Telegraph'?
Note that names create figure/ground situations: the name serves
as ground for the thing named. Construct experiments to find out
under what circumstances a telephone can become symbolic. What
can it symbolize?
13. Make a collection of telephone slang over a considerable period of
time. Note its meanings and, when possible, examples of its use.
Can jokes be told successfully over the phone? Are there any
kinds of jokes that don't seem funny over the phone? Have two or
three teams experiment with a 'chain' joke. The last person to be
called may write the joke down and read it or retell it to the class the
next day. Did the joke change in any way as it was being passed on?
Consider the effects of any special telephone equipment.
14. What is the figure/ground significance of the interest in antique

telephone equipment? What sorts of users share this interest? What
sorts of users are not interested in antique telephones?
15. Suppose that all telephones were known to be permanently
bugged? How would social habits change? How would business
practices change?
Could new or different uses be made of the telephone?

16. Some people have taught reading very effectively over the tele-
phone. Try teaching a child to read on the phone, using headlines
and ads from the evening paper. Each party needs to have the same
paper.
17. Suppose that a group of imaginative advertisers met with the phone
company's executives and offered the public a deal: "You can have
totally free telephone service, including long-distance calling, pro-
vided that you will allow us to play a five-second ad in every minute

of your conversation. This ad might be for anything from diapers to
Chryslers, from crowbars to pickles."
Would the public be likely to accept such an arrangement? Why?
Are there particular groups that would agree to such a procedure,
while the large majority of people would not? Make a survey in your
immediate neighborhood to find out. What does this tell you about
the telephone's relation to privacy?
Suppose that the public agreed to this proposal and got free
phone service. What kinds of ads would be needed for telephone
presentation? Could advertisers use the sort of ad now broadcast on
rock-station radio? Explain your answer.
Tape some typical ads try interjecting them in phone conver-
and
sations. What work best? What kinds are least effective?
kind of ads
What effect would this type of advertising have on telephone
Would the
users? format of such ads have to be controlled? Would
telephone-users have to be given a choice of the kinds of ads they
wished to hear, or would it be best to arrange for all to hear the same
advertising? Would the regular interruptions for advertising bring
about a change in the present conventions of telephone calling and

conversation ? Would the caller or the ad be figure? Which would be
ground?
18. Write a dozen ads for familiar products, which would be suitable for
inserting into telephone conversations. Using a tape recorder, try
playing them over your phone few days. What effect have the
for a
ads on your telephone conversations? Do you think such ads would

have to be replaced frequently? Would they have to be replaced
more frequently than radio ads? What kinds of conversation did the
telephone ads make impossible? Are any products relatively easy to
advertise on the phone? Are any impossible? Were the ads useful in
any way not directly associated with their subject matter?
How could the telephone be used most effectively in our society?
One of the difficulties created by each new medium is that it is added to

an existing situation. The old and new go to war, as were, and the
it
outcome is compromise.
19. Try to create an ideal environment for the telephone by designing a
new, 'telephone-age city' from the beginning. Start by planning the
city's layout on the basis of a most efficient telephone system. When
you have done that, add the streets, houses, public buildings and
radio stations.
This exercise will require careful study, and it should not be done
superficially. You will probably want to draw a plan to accompany a
verbal description. may not be a good idea to reorganize an exist-
It
ing city mentally: you may make too many built-in assumptions
which you will not think to question. Remember, when you are
making your plan, to avoid the absurdity of having people commute
for hours every day to get to an office where they spend much of
their time on the telephone.
For Further Study:

Goulden, Monopoly. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1 968; Pocket
J.C.
Books, (Simon and Schuster), 1970 (paperback).

Inc.
Bell, the biggest monopoly in the world, still does its thinking in
hardware terms, despite the fact that when we are on the phone,
we have no bodies. We are software (information) only.
12. Clocks
"Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she
had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket,
or awatch to take out of it down went Alice after it, never
. . .
once considering how in the world she was to get out again."
Lewis Carroll
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Find out all you can about the history of timekeeping.
1 Find out about the Roman system of hours and 'watches'. It has been
called the basis of our time system.
In the monasteries of the Middle Ages, periods of time were signaled by

bells. Each bell indicated that a new period or interval was starting, and
each period might be of a different length from all the others.
2. Read the description of bells and their social meanings in The
Waning of the Middle Ages by J. Huizinga. Read Edgar Allan Poe's
poem, "The Bells." List the kinds of bell sounds in your city today. Is
there any legislation in your area governing bell-ringing?
Mechanical timepieces brought an end to variable measurements of time

and to the 'suddenness' of recurring events: time became a gradual
passing of moments which it connected.
3. When did clocks come into general use? What devices for timekeep-
ing were used before clocks? What specific uses were made of hour-
glasses?
4. Read about the history of clocks in Lewis Mumford's Technics and
Civilization and study the figure/ground interplay between the vari-
ous kinds of clocks {figure) and the communities {ground) they
served. List the differences between visual and acoustic timemarkers.
5. At what period of our cultural history did people begin to wear
timepieces? When were wristwatches invented?
6. When were time zones established? Who was responsible for their
invention and adoption?
7. What is the process whereby astronomers regulate the world's
watches? When was Greenwich Mean Time established and what is
its significance to the world?

.
What concepts and notions of time has our culture evolved?
Our time-sense has been called the most sophisticated in the world; it
takes our children longer to acquire the time-sense of our culture than it
takes children of any other culture to acquire theirs.

8. Make a the ways there are in our culture of measuring time.
list of all
methods used by scientists. What are the very latest

Include special
developments? Keep a separate list for information you collect about
time measurement in other cultures, particularly Asian and Oriental.
9. Make a list of the properties that people in our culture ascribe to
time: for example, we think of time as 'flowing' in a direction. Add to
your you do the experiments in this section.
list as
10. Compile a list of all the usual and unusual 'time' expressions in our
culture: "I haven't time." "Just a minute." "See here, now!" If you
can, make a list of 'time' expressions used in other cultures. Do
people of those cultures use expressions we don't? Do we use ex-
pressions they don't?
Make a iist no longer current and
of 'time' expressions that are
note the period which they were used. You may get information
in
from elderly people and from historical novels.

What properties belonging to our ideas of time become evident
from your lists?
1 1 What sort of time is kept on a ship?

What is the meaning of standard time to an orbiting astronaut?
What is its meaning to an astronaut on the moon?
'Tis with our judgements as our watches, none

Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
Alexander Pope,
"Essay on Criticism"
12. Suppose that there were no centralized time-keeping authority:

what would happen to the notion of 'correct time'? (Remember that
this was the situation until relatively recently.) Might people estab-
lish individual standards of timekeeping, as they do for clothing?
13. Some years ago, C. Northcote Parkinson formulated Parkinson's Law:

"Work expands to fill the time available." This law involves two
assumptions both of which should be reflected in your list of 'time'
expressions: (1) that time is rigid or invariable, and (2) that it is a
container. Do people unaccustomed to clocks or watches make
either of these assumptions? If you cannot find any such people to
interview, consult literature. Have people who don't relate to time

through watches and clocks a sense that the reverse is true — that
time expands or contracts to fit the available work? Have they a
sense of time as a container, a big bucket that envelops all acts and
experience? Where do nonusers of timepieces get their 'time sig-
nals'?
14. By extending the principle of time measurement to the entire com-

munity, we have made the clock a kind of social tyrant. T.S. Eliot's
"The Waste Land" features the clock as a kind of mechanical fate,

like the ancient Creek goddess, Tyche (Greek T u x n ), presiding
over the time-kept city.
What other references to time and its effects can you find in
modern poetry, in modern art, modern music and in contemporary
rock music?
How do clocks and watches affect their users?
15. Are there any character traits of compulsive watch-wearers that are
not generally found among people who do not wear watches? Can it
be fairly said that a person who wears a watch for use and not just
for ornament makes the watch a part of himself or herself? Do

watch-users relate to time differently from nonusers? Do the lives
and personalities of people who habitually wear watches become

well regulated?
16. To what kinds of people do clocks and watches seem unnecessary?
To what kinds of people do they seem essential? Are these groups
always consistent in their attitudes to timepieces and in their use of
them?
Ask some members class who are accustomed to wearing
of your
watches to lend them few days to members who are not in the
for a
habit of wearing watches. Ask the two groups to keep notes on their
experience and report to the class on any changes in their sense of
time and its rigidity or flexibility.
The rural railway station had two clocks — one at each end
of the platform. The porter, asked why they always showed
different times, replied: "But, sir, why should we have two
clocks at all if they showed the same time?"
17. Is there any sort of decorum related to watches and clocks? Are
there any situations that demand them more than others? Are there
occasions when they must be ignored? Make a list of such occasions
and situations, and see if any patterns appear.
A businessman, dining with a friend, makes the gesture of

removing his wristwatch and putting it face-down on the
table, when he wishes to say dramatically, "My time is
yours."
18. Under what sorts of circumstances does 'clock time' cease to be a

serious preoccupation? What sorts of cultural pressure relegate
watches to ornamental status? When a person uses a timepiece as
jewelry, what does it indicate about his or her attitude to time?
What is the difference between 'serious' and Mickey Mouse
watches? What difference does each make to or in the user? Could
an engineer or a scientist tolerate a precision, Mickey Mouse chrono-
meter?
19. Suppose that it were the fashion for us to carry an alarm clock with
us in a pouch or purse, or to wear two or three or four watches:
would our relation to time be in any way changed? How? Ask three
or four students to try doing one of these things for a week and to
report to the class on their observations.
For Further Study:

Innis, Harold. Changing Concepts of Time. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1952.
A society that uses brick, stone or clay tablets for keeping its
records has a totally different idea of time from a society in which

paper is the material chiefly used for recording events.
Mumford, Lewis. "The Mechanical Routine" in Technics and Civiliza-
tion. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1934; 1963 (paperback).
An analysis of the effects of arbitrary, clocked routines on the
human psyche.
Technics and Civilization.
A study of the relationship between human artifacts and their
effects on the course of civilization. Complete bibliographies.

Poulet, Georges. Studies in Human Time. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins,
1956.
In contrast to geological and biological time, human time has a
special set of dimensions. At electric speeds, all time is present.
13. Computers
Find out about the kinds of computers presently available.
1 Describe briefly how each kind works. If you can, find out what kinds
of computers are made possible by present technology.

2. Compile lists of the present types of computer languages and note
their basic differences. Are there kinds of computers that could oper-
ate without mathematics?
3. Next, get a questionnaire or a test that is set up to be scored by a
computer. Examine it carefully. What kinds of questions are left out?
What kinds of questions cannot be asked, if the questionnaire is to
be scored by a computer? What does
you about the value of
this tell
computerized statistics? By finding out what cannot be done by

computer, you have taken a shortcut toward discovering what a
computer is.
Investigate the changing notion of 'research' in our culture.
4. Ask three or four people, preferably 'researchers', what 'research'

means to them. Ask educators, bankers, people in entertainment,
people in the insurance business, small businessmen, big business-
men, academic researchers, scientists, 'backyard inven-
industrialists,
tors',government officials.
Look up the word 'research' in a number of dictionaries and com-
pare the definitions with the interpretations given by the people you
have questioned. Are there surprising differences or similarities? How
far has the computer taken over quantitative research?
5. Now arrange to visit three or four offices and departments to find

out what actually goes on in the name of 'Research' or 'Research
Administration'. Ask as many people as may be appropriate:
• How much of the work of a Research Department has to do with

computers and computer systems?
• What does the word 'evaluation' mean in research?
• Is evaluation related in some way to the notion of quantity?
• Is there any element in their area of research that cannot be
measured?
Now look up the word 'evaluation' in several dictionaries, and com-

pare the definitions with the interpretations given by the people you
have questioned.
If only figure can be quantified, how can quality of life or of service
{ground) be handled by the computer?
What changes have computers made in our culture?
6. Interview your principal or vice-principal or one of your teachers to

see how the computer's speed has changed every feature of your
school.
How does the BIU (Basic Income Unit: allocation of funds per
student) relate to the computer and to enrollment figures in schools
and universities?
7. Ask an accountant or a bookkeeper about the changes that have
come into his or her world since the computer. In the past, for
example, the double entry system was generally used to record all
sorts of business transactions; by using computers, businesses can

keep many more details on record. What is the effect of these new
possibilities for more detailed records?
How does the computer make possible new forms of future pro-
jections for business programs?
8. For many years now, we have had not government by democracy,
but government by bureaucracy, thanks to the computer. Interview
two or three members
of one government department and find out
all the ways which they depend on the computer.
in
Find out from the same department:
• How many committees are working within the department at the

present time?
• What is the structure of each committee?
• Aresome people members of more than one committee?
• What percentage of her or his time does each member spend in
committee work?
Ask a member of the department how his or her job would
change, if the computer, xerox and telephone were all outlawed
tomorrow. How would it change, if only the computer and xerox
were outlawed?
Investigate some current uses of computers.
9. In what ways and to what extent do airlines and car rental agencies
depend on the computer? Would the International Air Traffic Asso-

ciation be able to function without the computer?
10. List the uses which the space program makes of the computer and
computer systems.
11. Find out what kinds of agencies keep computerized files on people.
For what segment of the population does each agency keep informa-
tion on file? What kinds of information does each keep? What hap-
pens when the computer registers erroneous information about
someone? Can anyone find out what information is on tape about
him or her? What must a person do to correct misinformation?
Investigate what people know about computers and what their

attitude is to them.
12. Make a computer questionnaire to find out what factual information

is known about computers, and what people's attitudes are to the
computer. Do you know who invented the computer and where the
first computer is now?
1 3. Visit three or four businesses and institutions in your area and ask:
• For what purposes does each want to use a computer?
• What is the computer actually used for in each business?
• What is management's attitude to the computer?
• What is labor's attitude to the computer?
When you have compiled a list of the replies to these questions,

check for common points. Do the users of the computers share
common characteristics and/or common attitudes toward the com-
puter? Outline briefly similarities and differences that appear in the
answers. Compare the work the computer is now doing with the
jobs it has replaced.
What additional use can be made of computers?

14. Scheduled school courses can be programmed by computers and the
experience they provide directed toward the job market. Does this
encourage employers to enter the educational world in order to

influence curriculum? Ask several people in personnel work their
opinion on this subject. If you have access to a business school, ask
the dean his opinion.
What use can be made of the computer's ability to predict the

future?
15. If the computer tends to project the present forward into the future,
find out how the future was projected in 1900 before computers.
(Consult H.G. Wells' The Time Machine; use a page from the 1900
projection as an example.)
16. The computer can project or predict changes in quantity of raw

materials, food, fuel, space and population, based on existing pat-
terns of use and consumption or growth.
The Club of Rome is a prominent group engaged in the prediction
of humanity's future. Its members foresee shortages of many re-
sources. Consider the advantages (ground) of such shortages {fig-
ures) for those already in control of the available resources, and the
use that can be made of computers in predicting shortages. Without
the computer would such predictions be impossible or just different?
17. Arrange to visit a large resource industry, such as an oil company.
Check with their forecasting department and find out how they
arrive at their forecasts. The new practice of predicting and project-
ing future patterns by extending current patterns has led to the
exciting game of 'futurology'. Futurology is based on the assumption
that change means more or less of what we now have. When
all
Henry Ford began the mass production of motor cars, he said, "This
will take everybody back to the country." If Ford had been able to
use the computer in 1920, would he have foreseen the same future
for the car?
ForFurtherStudy:
Fuller, R. Buckminster. Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth. New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1970.
With Sputnik, Spaceship Earth came into existence. A spacecraft is
a completely programmed human environment. This fact points to
the need to program our planet.
Hoos, Ida R. Systems Analysis in Public Policy: A Critique. Berkeley,
Cal.: University of California Press, 1972.
An account of the destruction of human values as a result of the
uses of the computer.
Weizenbaum, Joseph. Computer Power and Human Reason. San
Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Co., 1976.
Written by a respected computer expert at MIT, this stunning book
demonstrates that computers can't do the whole job.
1 4. Airplanes
Looking up at the butterfly, the caterpillar sez, "You'll never

catch me up in one of those dang things!"
Collect all the data you can about all types of aircraft.
1. Make a complete list of all the kinds of 'flying machines'. Compile a

scrapbook of photographs, drawings and useful references relating to
aircraft. Interview users of all kinds of aircraft to learn about their
satisfactions.
What support-services have airplanes 'created'?
2. Arrange to interview some airport staff and try to discover the range
and extent of supporting services: the provision of maintenance,
radio and radar, gasoline, weather reports, computer booking, park-
ing lots, real estate, food services, and so on. Find out what propor-
tion of airline traffic consists of passenger travel, and what other
services airlines provide. How much mail and freight do they handle?
How much of the cost of an air ticket actually pays for the ride, and
how much for luxury extras? Remember to take hidden costs into
account: the cost of serving coffee is not just the cost of coffee itself,
but the amount it adds to the operating costs of the airline: the extra
weight and fuel, the heating, any extra equipment needed. Luxuries
will include carpets, soundproofing, elbow room and drinks in the
first class section, stewards and stewardesses, luxurious airport wait-
ing rooms, extra baggage services and attendants. What are the
pilots' attitudes to their 'flying restaurants and theaters'?
What kinds of political and economic changes have been brought

about by air travel?
3. In Crowds and Power Elias Canetti shows how, in a crowd, every-

body is a 'nobody'. As a crowd gets bigger, the 'meaning' or signifi-
cance or identity of each member gets less and less important. If
high-speed travel squeezes populations of cities and countries to-

gether, is the effect similar to the process described by Mr. Canetti?
And are the identities of the cities and countries changed as well?
The effective population of the Toronto area is about two and a half
millions. According to published figures, Toronto is now host to nineteen

million visitors annually, and many of them arrive through Toronto Inter-
national Airport. Toronto has become one of Canada's largest conven-

tion centers, and has adapted to being host each year to an impressive
proportion of the figure for Canada's whole population, twenty-two
million people.
4. Is this sort of mammoth convention business a product of high-
speed air travel? Talk to some business executives and find out the
extent of convention-going in your area and in others that they
know of. Would it be fair to describe convention-going as a new
activity of our culture, in the same way that watching sports or
driving to work is a cultural activity?
5. Try to discover corresponding population figures for other North
American cities. Without air traffic, would business travel and related
commercial enterprises suffer serious restrictions? What would be
the effect, for example, on the hotel and restaurant businesses, if
airplanes disappeared? How many and what kinds of other support-

ing businesses would be seriously affected?
How has cheap, swift air travel affected tourism?
Air travel has opened up vast areas of the world to all forms of interna-
tional traffic. Places such as Europe, Australia, the Orient, Africa, South
America, Hawaii which might never have become a part of the United
States without been made accessible on a commercial
air travel, have all
as well as on a tourist basis. Many of these places have become interna-

tional show-cases by means of airline 'culture tours'. The self-awareness
of their residents has been changed by their exposure to the 'outside'
world.
6. To the drivers of automobiles, 'six hours away' means three hundred
miles: if their society suddenly finds itself 'six hours away' from the
whole population of Europe or Asia or Mexico or South America, and
even closer to New York and San Francisco, Halifax and Vancouver,
do you think they might begin to feel just a little crowded? Might
people begin to worry about the size of those populations? What
happens to your idea of your city, your sense of 'home', when you
know that it is just as lengthy a process to drive across Montreal as to
fly from there to Texas?
7. Examine both the change in people's habits of travel and the effects
that travel has on
and attitudes. For example, students
their lives
who have had the opportunity to go on a school trip to Europe,
South America or India, or who have driven across the country on a
family holiday, may bring to a language class or social studies- or

history- or economics class a more broadly based experience than
could someone who has never traveled.
Is there a principle in the use of the bicycle that holds the secret
of the airplane suspended within it?
Dr. Johnson, the famous compiler of the first widely accepted dictionary
of English, had little but scorn for "a new invented machine" propelled by
a man who sat in it and turned a handle to drive it forward. His comment
was, "... the man has his choice whether he will move himself alone, or
himself and the machine too." He would probably have held the same
opinion about bicycles, when they came into use. On the other hand,
when North American Indians first encountered bicycles, they were
much more impressed than when they first encountered the railway
train.
8. Try to account for the magic of the bicycle as transportation. Check

the change in structure of wings needed for gliding, on the one hand,
and for powered flight,on the other hand. Since men have sought
vainly to imitate bird flight in many periods of the past, what made
the actuality of powered flight possible in the twentieth century?

The ancients did not have the bicycle to teach them how to isolate
the equilibrium function of bird flight. Historians have not yet found
the relation between the structure of the bicycle and the plane. You
have a chance to do what they have not done.
For Further Study:

Canetti, Elias. Crowds and Power. Trans. Carol Stewart. London: Vic-
tor Gollancz Ltd.; Toronto: Doubleday, 1962.
A unique study of crowd dynamics: all crowds want to get bigger,
yet feel they are getting smaller. Canetti extends this principle to
airplanes' crowd forms.

Hailey, Arthur. Airport. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968.
A complex technology shown in dramatic action.
Keith, Ronald A. Bush Pilot With a Briefcase. Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday, 1972.
The fascinating biography of a bush pilot who went on to develop
Canadian Pacific Airlines.
Murchie, Guy. Song of the Sky. Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press,
1954.
Basic for an understanding of flying, pilots, weather, navigation, the
world of aircraft and how it grew.
.
15. Satellites
In 1957 the first satellite went into orbit. The Russians who launched it
called it 'Sputnik', a word which means 'little fellow traveler'.
Consider some of the social and political implications of this

name.
1 Is the satellite a kind of 'earth-twin' like the moon? Are satellites held
in orbit by gravity or by antigravity? If Sputnik was a small, man-
made moon, how did it change our relation to Earth?
How have the astronauts' experiences in space affected

humanity's perception of Earth?
2. When the first astronauts on the moon looked at the earth, they
were fascinated by its appearance. The inner lives of some of these
astronauts were profoundly changed by their moon-experience of
earth. To what extent did Sputnik and subsequent satellites make a
new environment of information for Planet Earth? Is the satellite a
new ground for Earth as figure? To an astronaut on the moon, is
Earth ground or figure?
This new, man-made environment has completely changed some
people's notion of the nature and status of Earth. They refer to it as
'Spaceship Earth'. Study some of the special conditions created for or
by spaceship experiments. The spaceship has been called 'the first
programmed environment'.
totally
3. When did the word and idea of 'ecology' begin to be prominent in
social discussion? Was it before or after the introduction of satellites?

Is there a figure/ground relation in this phenomenon? Consult Buck-
minster Fuller's Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth.
4. The astronauts had to take their earthly environment with them, as it
were, in order to survive in space. Did they take gravity as well as

atmosphere and nourishment? When Al Shepherd was asked, "Is
there any 'upside down' in outer space?", he replied, "Where your
feet are, that is 'down'." If a spaceship must have a complete pro-
gram of earthly services, does it follow that Spaceship Earth must also
be totally 'programmed'?
For Further Study:

Fuller, R. Buckminster. Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth. New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1970. (See note on p. 112.)
1 6. Money
Money seems always to have held great fascination for its users.
What is the basis of this fascination?
1. By interviews try to find out what are the satisfactions of wealth
today. What human benefits does it provide the user? What can it
not provide? What changes does this reflect?
"Money, so they say,

Is the root of all evil today"
Pink Floyd
2. Why does the sound of the cash register have such power in
"Money" (on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon)? Try to find out
whether the cash register has equal power to thrill shop owners. Ask
a bonded carrier what his emotions are as he transports millions of
dollars a day.
3. Does the Scripture say that 'money' or 'the love of money' is a "root
of all evil"?
Is money a necessity for our culture?
4. It is now possible to get a credit card to vouch for your honesty and
responsibilitywhen you transact business with money. Perhaps this
indicates that money is disappearing from our culture. But you if
were to wake up tomorrow morning and find that all money had
disappeared, would credit cards soon disappear too? If credit cards
were retained by a moneyless society, could you manage to do
everything with them that you now do with money?
5. Could our society return to a barter system, exchanging bicycles for
baby carriages and live cattle for groceries? Would barter take a great
deal of time to arrange? Ask local farmers why they prefer barter to
cash. Do they lose much by selling their products on the retail mar-
ket?
For Further Study:

Canetti, Elias. Crowds and Power. Trans. Carol Stewart. London: Vic-
tor Gollancz Ltd., Toronto: Doubleday Canada Ltd., 1962. (See
note on p. 115.)
Lamott, K.The Moneymakers. Toronto: Little, Brown and Co., 1969.

Stories of the richpeople in the Western world — how they made
their money and what it means to them.
Morgan, E.V. A History of Money. Penguin Books, 1 965.
A good readable history concerned with all aspects of money and
markets and governments.
*Pink Floyd. "Money" on Dark Side of the Moon. Hampshire House
Publishing Corporation, 1973. Distributed by Capitol Records.
The power of the sound of the cash register.
Adam. The Money Game. New York: Random House, 1968.
Smith,
"Describing the market as a game of musical chairs."
3
Effects of the Media:
a New Culture
Introduction
All the exercises in Chapter Two are intended to give you a firsthand
working knowledge of the media. This means learning about the prop-
erties of some of the hardware, such as TV cameras and sets, audiotape
decks, magazines. It also means learning about the range of supporting
services, including the audiences or users.
In this chapter we are going to examine the significance of the

media to their users.
'Significance' is a concept of the greatest importance to the study of

media, because it has to do with changes in the user and in his or her
culture and society. Every medium brings about changes, but the
changes are hardly ever examined. We are going to study the relation of
the media-user to the cultural and social milieu through examining
changes in that milieu and also changes in the user. And this is entirely a
figure/ground problem.
Making a study of media-users requires that you examine the

effects of any given medium on its users. Begin by making a list of
these effects.
You need to look first at those groups of people whose lives and
will
dependent on a particular medium, and who 'use'

livelihood are totally
the medium in the sense that they work 'in' and 'for' it.
Secondly, you must consider the people who are less directly depen-
dent on a given medium: people who supply and service related equip-
ment, or whose work makes possible in other ways the functioning of a
medium.
1 20 City as Classroom
By making a survey of the groups that use a particular medium,

you will learn about its penetration of the culture in which it is
operating and the dependencies it creates there.
If you first make a comprehensive list, you can then look for patterns and
structures among the figures, the particular items on your list. This is the
usual technique for studying any extensive or cultural change. The Dow
Jones Index, for example, or the weather forecast is composed by study-
ing large fields of quick-changing and interdependent data.
You will have to collect news readings and information from

every part of a situation, before you can begin to see reliable
patterns emerging.
We live so completely inside our culture, and we are so much a part of it

that it is nearly impossible for us to study it objectively. Some things are
almost too close to be noticeable.
It is obvious that a man with three arms is really quite a different
person and lives quite a different life from a man with two arms. In the
same way, societies made up entirely of one sort of people or the other
would differ just as much as the different individuals. Those societies
would be different from societies made up entirely of people who could
fly, or who could see extremely small things, or hear at great distances.
Similarly, a culture made up of people with cars would arrange its activi-
ties differently from a culture made up of cave dwellers.
One of the ways to study the effects of a particular product of

technology on a culture is to imagine what the same culture
would be like without it.
When you have considered the probable effects on the ground of your
own society and culture of withdrawing suddenly all sorts of technologi-
cal figures, you will see much more clearly the meaning of those figures
in your particular milieu. Let's take the car as an example.
The car itself, the piece of hardware with a horn and a gas tank, is not
so much a medium, as a figure that works on and changes a ground.
Between the figure and the ground of the car is the interval of interplay
that makes 'car-experience' and holds its meaning. It is for this reason
that the study of media involves study of the figure/ground relation.
Similarly, the 'medium' of the airplane is not really to be found in the
figure 'airplane', but in the relation of that figure to its ground of airports
and their environs, radar and radio, weather stations, tourism, flight con-
nections, and so on. In the same way, the 'medium' of the printed book is
Effects of the Media 121
not the figure 'book', but really consists in the relation of books to writers
and publishers, type foundries and designers, the process of paper
manufacturing and, most important, the reading public and the schools
which it helped to create.
All media study, in fact, should begin and end with considering the
users of those media, since they are the people affected. It doesn't
matter that some people may say, for instance, "TV doesn't
me. affect I
never watch it." When any device invades a society to the point of
creating a ground, it affects everyone's way of life, whether or not a
particular individual makes use of it.
For Further Study:

Carpenter, Edmund and Heyman, Ken. They Became What They Be-
held. New York: Ballantine Books, 1970.
Photography and text work together to express what it teels like to
transfer from the World to the Third World in your own city
First
(i.e., from a 'hardware' environment to a 'software' environment).
The book evokes a multi-sensory experience.

Giedion, Siegfried. Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a
New Tradition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947.
(Subsequent editions.)
Interplay between the figure of painting and the ground of archi-
tecture in our world.
Mechanization Takes Command. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1948.
A study of human artifacts from the barber chair to the meat-
packing plant as figures against the ground of a changing world.
Gombrich, Ernst H. Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of
Pictorial Presentation. New York: Pantheon Books, 1960 and 1961.
The story of the beginnings of 'realism' and the notion of 'match-
ing' versus 'making'.
.
1 . Motor Cars
Let's assume that all students live in large cities and that private motor
cars suddenly disappear. There would
be trucks and buses and mo- still
torcycles and snowmobiles, but suddenly, no cars. None. Cars haven't

stopped working: they've been removed completely. Now examine the
results.
First, consider the effect of the disappearance of cars on your

own life.
1 How would being without a car affect your use of time? Would you
have to get up earlier to get to school or catch a bus? Would you be
more or less likely to eat breakfast? Would your other eating habits
be affected? Consider how often you drive to a restaurant or drive-
in, and how your shopping patterns might change, if you had to carry
your groceries around in your lap or under your arm.
2. How might your social life be affected? Would you spend your
weekends any differently? Think how much you depend on driving
for things like dating, outdoor Con-
sports, going to drive-in movies.
sider how depend on driving to get to and from parties
often you
and to transport equipment such as stereos, guitars and amplifiers.
3. If you had no access to a car, would it affect your privacy?
4. If your access to a car lets you have friends scattered over a wide
area, would its sudden disappearance mean that you would have to
find your friends among people who live closer to your home?
Think about the changes the disappearance of the car would

make in your parents' lives and in your family situation and habits.
5. Many families with cars live a long way from their work and schools
and entertainment centers. If there were no cars, they might have to
move closer to jobs, schools and services. What changes would your
family probably have to make in jobs, education and entertainment,
if there were no cars?
6. How might the disappearance of cars affect family holidays and
camping? If there were no cars, would you still want to travel into
the country and to other cities and towns?
7. How might habits of shopping for food, clothing, books or records be
changed by the disappearance of cars?
8. The effects of being without a car would change many other aspects
of and yours. Discuss several kinds

your family's life of change that
have not yet been mentioned and the probable results in your
family's life.
Would the disappearance of cars significantly affect health and

safety?
9. It is pretty certain that without cars people would get a great deal
more exercise than they get now. Doctors agree that increased exer-
cise would be good for health and reduce heart attacks. What other
effects on health might the disappearance of cars produce?
10. With the disappearance of cars, the number of deaths and injuries
from traffic accidents would fall almost to zero. Since more people
are killed annually in traffic accidents in Canada and the United
States than have been killed in most wars, would the change in traffic
deaths significantly affect population figures?
Without cars and two-car garages, to what extent might the

quality of neighborhoods and the use of land change?
11. What would happen to communities and neighborhoods? Without

cars,would they tend to become more integrated? How might life
and work be affected in high-rise apartments and skyscraper office

buildings? Would people want to live and work in such densely
populated areas?
12. If people are going to walk or ride bicycles, and motor traffic is cut
down to an occasional truck, how necessary would the present
expensive roads and sidewalks be? Might the distances between
suburban buildings have to be changed to suit the slower pace?
Aside from the direct effects on people of removing all cars, what
would be the effects on the ecology of cities and of the
countryside?
13. For one thing, millions of acres of land would be released for use,
since most parking lots and garages would disappear. Estimate just
how much more land would be available in an average city or subur-
ban block, if none had to be reserved for cars. How would the block
look and 'feel'? Would people want to arrange its space differently?
Without cars, the need for wide streets would disappear, along with
the need for superhighways and expressways designed to handle
peak rush hour- and vacation travel.
How would the disappearance of cars affect urban areas?
If cars disappeared, at least one major city, Detroit, would become a

ghost town, as the motor industry shut down and thousands of engi-
neers, draughtsmen, secretaries, advertisers, assembly-line workers, de-
signers and maintenance people lost their jobs. The supporting industries
would be hard hit, too: heavy steel, chrome and nickel manufacturers;
producers of electronic equipment and electric devices, paints, locks,
glass, rubber, materials for upholstery. Manufacturers of tape decks and
radios would be affected,and so would the whole recording industry.
The business of stage and theater entertainment would shrink, as their
productions became less accessible to audiences.
14. If there were no cars, the ways of policing a large city would be very
different. Find out from your police department what proportion of
their men is needed for duties related to cars. These men would
suddenly be without jobs. So would millions of mechanics and gas
jockeys, parking lot attendants and laborers on road crews. The oil
companies would suffer as their service stations disappeared. Try to

find out what proportion of their business they would lose.
How would businesses and services be affected?
15. When cars disappeared, all forms of drive-ins would also disappear:
movies, banks, restaurants, dry cleaners. Hundreds of thousands of
other businesses would be closed, as demand ceased for service
stations, muffler shops, motels, parts stores, junkyards, rental
agencies, shopping plazas and different types of entertainment
centers. What other businesses and services would be affected?
16. How long would the big, new shopping centers and plazas survive?
What other sorts of merchandising might appear or reappear? How
would these changes affect your family's use of time? How would
they affect your use of time?
17. As cars disappeared, of course, some other medium would take their
place. Use of public transportation systems would soar, and these
would have to be reorganized to some extent. What sort of reorgan-
izing would be necessary? How would the production of trucks be
affected, if they had to be used for the many minor moving jobs that
people now use their cars for? How would railway and bus services
be affected? What changes in their services would airlines be likely
to make?
In what ways might our society compensate for the loss of cars ?
As cars disappeared, new habits and ways of life would appear, as we

adjusted the rest of our patterns of living, our work, school activities,
entertainment and holidays. Some of the ways of life that existed before
there were any cars might reappear: more people might move into the
center of cities; there might be a revival of interest in recreational walk-
ing and bicycling.
18. What other revivals might occur as a direct result of the car's disap-
pearance? Might the horse and buggy reappear? What would hap-
pen to boat- and steamer traffic or the old canal systems? Would
church attendance be affected?
There would be many cars. You can
other effects of the disappearance of
think of a number them and investigate them for yourselves. Of
of
course, cars will take with them a number of secondary effects which
have become a tightly embedded part of our culture's patterns. One
example of this is the assembly-line method of manufacture which was
pioneered with the Without assembly-line manufacturing, our entire
car.
business establishment would be radically different. You have already

noted that vacation patterns would change. Without the independence
and easy access to holiday areas provided by cars, people might be less
casual about where they went, and might plan to stay longer once they
had arrived. The most significant change might be in home life: people
could not leave home for an evening, a weekend or a month, as casually
as they do in their cars. With people much less readily able to come and
go to and from their homes, family members might draw closer together
and share more of their time and lives; they might give more careful
attention to the use of family living space and to providing for one
another's privacy. Relations with neighbors might become more impor-
tant, too.
Use research and interviews to work out this project in as much detail
as your time and resources will let you. When you have put all your
findings together, you will have an image of your culture without the car.
When you compare that image with our culture as it actually is, you will
be more fully aware of the overall effect of the car. It is in the changes
that the car has brought about, its effect on the work, the social patterns,
the ecology of our society, that you can best identify and understand the
meaning of the car. And this is true of the other figures that you examine.
When you have established for yourselves the meaning of the car in
our culture, you might ask yourselves a final question.
19. In Africa, some of the tribes who live in regions where the jungle is
both service and environment point-out that, "When the jungle dies,
we die." What are some of the differences between the African
jungle situation and the North American automotive situation? If our
automotive service environment disappeared, would we 'die'? Or
might we 'die', if it goes on in its present form?
2. Newspapers
If suddenly, at midnight tonight, newspapers ceased to be published or

circulated and all their records and 'morgue' files vanished, what would
be the effect on our culture and our lives?
How would the disappearance of newspapers affect personal and

private behavior patterns?
1. How would the disappearance of newspapers affect your entertain-

ment patterns? How would it affect your interest or participation in
sports? Would it affect your eating patterns or clothing styles?

Would it affect your concept of morality or your decisions about
your education? Explain. Would you
still be able to find a summer- or
part-time job? How would

you go about looking for one?
2. How would your parents' entertainment patterns be changed by the
disappearance of newspapers?
How would the disappearance of newspapers affect public

behavior patterns?
3. How would families announce births, deaths, weddings and gradua-

How would 'society' get on without gossip columnists? What
tions?
would happen to writing styles? What would happen to photo-
graphic styles and practices?
4. How would the public behavior of citizens be affected, if they had
no newspapers to 'wrap themselves in' on buses and subways in
order to create privacy?
What groups would be affected, if newspapers were withdrawn?

5. How would the disappearance of newspapers affect the reading
public? Does each newspaper create its own 'public'?
6. What would happen to a city's 'self-image', if no more newspapers

were published? What would happen to its sense of its own iden-
tity? Investigate the relation of a newspaper to the city where it is
published, and to that city's inhabitants.
What effect would the disappearance of newspapers have on our

sense of 'news'?
7. How would this loss affect our relation to the rest of the world?
What would be the present and future effect on what we call 'his-
tory'?
8. How would the disappearance of newspapers affect the work of
typesetters, reporters, editors, printers, advertising agents, news-
gathering services? What would happen to the paper industry and to
milling and logging operations? What would happen to the ecology?
(The New York Times boasts that it requires a small forest to produce
each weekend edition!)
9. If newspapers disappeared, what would happen to all other media?
Would new kinds of magazines be invented? Would old kinds be
revived? What kinds? Would people make more or different use of
the telephone, movies, cars, books, television?
10. Without ads or reviews, what would happen to the entertainment
industry in general: to theaters, drive-ins, restaurants?
11. What would happen to business investments? How would the real
estate market be affected? What would the effect be on resorts and

the travel business?
What unexpected things did you find through your

investigations? What questions did you consider a waste of time?
3. Magazines
If, while you were eating supper tonight, magazines and journals of all
kinds began to disappear, so that when you woke up in the morning all
trace of them had vanished forever, what would be the results?
How would readers be affected by the disappearance of their

favorite magazines?
1. What would happen to reading habits and literacy in our culture, if
magazines were removed? Would their readership continue to read

as much from other sources? Would they read less? Is it one of the
functions of magazines in our culture to support a wobbly literacy?
If magazines were no longer published, what would be the effect

on writing and research?
2. What would happen to literature and literary styles? Are there forms
of literature found only in magazines? What would happen to short-
story- and essay writing? Would these forms and their publics disap-
pear?
3. Get from several publishers, either in person or by writing, some
'demographies', that is, profiles of their readership. If a magazine is a
means of organizing a public and of focusing interests, what happens
to these interests when magazines disappear? Would research, con-
ferences and institutions with an interest in a particular field be
affected by the disappearance of magazines devoted to related sub-
jects?
4. What would be the effect on studies and research in sciences and
the arts, if magazines disappeared?
How would other media be affected by the disappearance of

magazines?
5. If magazines were no longer published, how much of their function

could be absorbed by books, newspapers, radio, films, without en-
tirely changing their character? Estimate to what extent the worlds of
fashion and entertainment depend on magazines.
How would business and services be affected, if magazines

disappeared?
6. Make a list of the groups directly involved in the making, distribution

and sale of magazines. Include everyone you can think of, from
loggers to editors. Estimate the number of these people who would
be jobless, if magazines disappeared. What percentage of the work
force would these people represent?
7. Are department-store- and mail-order catalogues magazines? Esti-
mate the impact of their disappearance. Consider buyers, volume of

business, store- and warehousing space, manufacturing, paper needs,
artwork and other areas that would be affected.
8. Using the information you have gathered, estimate the effect on
business, manufacturing, advertising, consumer habits of removing
magazines of all kinds. Which businesses would be most affected?
What products would be likely to disappear?
9. Find out from the post office how much of the mail handled consists
of magazines and bills for magazines. Without this load, would the
mail service improve?
4. Books
Suppose that suddenly at two o'clock tomorrow morning, books ceased

to be published and all the books in bookstores and in public and private
libraries disappeared. Suppose that, along with novels, factual books,
technical books and service books, such as phone books, encyclopedias

and dictionaries also disappeared. What effect would their loss have on
our lives and our culture?
If there were no books, what would happen to the 'reading

public'?
1. What would be the effect on conversation, on 'civilization', and on

intellectual life in general? Ask the people about you what these
terms mean to them, and make their opinions and yours the basis of
your discussion.
2. How would the disappearance of books affect leisure activities?
Make number of hours given to recreational book-
a survey of the
reading eachweek by various groups of people. Which groups spend
most time reading? Which groups spend least? Did you conclude
1 30 City as Classroom
from your survey that there was any correspondence between the
length of any group's reading time and its level or quality of literacy
or culture? If so, would the disappearance of books cause a rapid

decline in literacy and in culture?
If there were no books, what would become of the arts?
3. What would happen to literature as it is taught or practiced? What

would happen to poetry? Could the novel survive through news-
papers or magazines alone? (Charles Dickens' career and his public
deserve attention here.) Consider works by such authors as J.R.R.
Tolkien or Mazo de la Roche or John Galsworthy. Would they be

acceptable in handwritten or in newspaper form?
4. How would writing styles change? What sorts of writing would have
to disappear, and what sorts would be increased by the elimination
of books?
How would the disappearance of books affect education and

research?
5. The effect of the loss of books on various types of schools might be

considerable. Compare the effects on vocational and technical
schools with those on more academically oriented high schools.
Estimate the effects on community colleges and universities. What
would happen to the teaching of art? What would happen to the
whole field of history? To what degree are academic studies made
possible, that is, 'created' by books? Without books, could there be
any forms of reference works? Would memories improve?
6. If textbooks were removed, how would classroom routines have to
be changed? Would students' behavior in class change? Would

note-taking habits change? Would teaching styles or homework pat-
terns change? Would the meaning of 'study' and of 'learning'
change? Would the teacher become the final 'authority' about the
truth or accuracy of statements, if there were no books to refer to?
Try to find out about methods of education in some period of
Western culture before there were printed books. If we had no
books, would we be likely to revive any earlier educational practices
from preprinting cultures? In the days of manuscripts, each student
made his own book as he studied. Might this practice be revived?
7. The written examination was introduced into schools in the nine-
teenth century to give teachers a way of coping with one of the
effects of the printed book: a class of students could read hundreds
more books than any one teacher. The exam made sure that stu-
dents had learned the essential elements of a subject. If there were
no books, would written exams still be necessary? Discuss your

opinions.
8. Without books, how would people become literate? Would people
be taught to read at all? Would the number of magazines increase, or
would magazines and newspapers eventually disappear? Is the book
the necessary ground for these forms of literature?

books?
9. Consider such equipment as xerox, the computer and the telephone,

along with the theater, the movies which often use the novel as
ground, radio and television.
10. Would become popular again, as private
letter-writing writing began
to spread? What would happen to handwriting?
How would the disappearance of books affect religion,

philosophy and politics?
11. Without printed books, what would happen to religion and to lit-
urgy? Would politics be affected? How would new views about
ethics and morality be made public?
How would the withdrawal of books affect business and

employment?
12. Form an estimate of the number of people in our culture directly
involved in the writing, production, promotion and distribution of
books. How many other groups would be drastically affected if
books were to disappear?

What would happen to authors? Obviously, many writing jobs
would disappear, but what adjustments would be made among au-
thor and readers and publisher?
These questions are intended only to help you get started in mapping
the extent of the ground of books. Constantly refer to what you learned
about books in Chapter Two. What large areas of their effects in our
culture have you not examined? Either investigate or make educated

guesses about the effects on those areas of eliminating books.
Finally, draw together allyou have learned about books, and write
a general description of what our present culture would be
without them.
.
5. Light Bulbs
If it weren't for Edison, we'd all be watching TV

by candlelight...
Imagine the removal of all electric lighting.
1 Make an extensive list of functions and services that would be ended

by this event. How many of these could be supplied by another kind
of lighting?
What would be the effect on sources of power, if electricity were

no longer required for lights?
2. What would be the effect on resources of electricity?

3. What would be the effect on resources of gas? When and why is gas
lighting used today?
Make a list of other areas that would be drastically affected.
4. To what extent would the end of lighting affect TV and movies?

5. What would be the effect on sports, on work habits and routines, on
night driving, if there were no electric lighting?
6. What would happen to your family life, without electric lights?
7. How would the lack of electric lights affect architecture and 'interior
space'? Ask an architect.
8. To what extent were the wartime blackouts indicators of the func-
tion of electric lighting? How did people's social habits change dur-
ing the blackouts?
6. Photographs
Suppose that all photography were suspended indefinitely.
1. Make a list of the various kinds of images that would be removed:

you might begin with family photographs, home movies and depart-
ment-store catalogues.
What other media would be affected by the disappearance of

photographs?
2. If there were no more photographs, what would be the effect on

radio, on magazines and on textbooks? How would science and art
and art studios be affected? How would the disappearance of pho-
tography affect fashion? How would change police work?
it
3. Should television be considered a photographic medium? To what

extent does it depend on camera and film?
If photography disappeared, what areas of employment would be

affected?
4. What groups of people would be unemployed, if the photo disap-

peared?
Is photography related to human and civil rights?
5. Has everyone the right to take photographs of other people without

their permission? Does the photograph move its subject from the
private to the public domain? Find out about the reaction among
some tribes to being photographed in E. Carpenter's Oh, What a
Blow That Phantom Cave Me. (See p. 32.)
6. What differences would it make if there were no pictures of any
politician anywhere? Investigate the place of photography in creat-
ing political figures and political propaganda. Does photography en-
courage political parties to select candidates as if they were casting a
play or movie? How would the discontinuance of photography af-
fect political campaigns and the conventional notions associated
with them?
7. Films
List some of the effects that the disappearance of movies would

have on your personal and social life.
1. Would their disappearance affect your use of free time? Would it
affect relationships with your friends, your topics of conversation or

your preferences in dress or food? How would the end of the movies
affect your fantasy life?
2. What changes would take place in the lives of other members of

your family, if there were no movies?
How would other media be affected, if films were no longer

available?
3. What would happen to news coverage and reporting without

movies?
4. How would the end of the movies affect reading habits and the
production of books? Would all modern writing styles be affected by
the disappearance of movies and scenarios? If so, in what ways?
How would the disappearance of movies affect education and

research?
5. If movies disappeared, what would be the effect on values in educa-

tion? How would classroom content and methods change?
6. What would be the effect on science and research, if movies were
no longer made? Consider such scientific methods as time-lapse
photography for the study of growth and development, and the use
made of photographic data in the fields of meteorology, geography
and archaeology.
7. What would happen to methods of keeping historical records and to
the study of history?
What changes in entertainment would the loss of movies bring

about?
8. What would happen to sports? What would happen to television?

Would the theatrical stage regain its former importance? What
would happen to the popular notion of a 'star'? Would the function
of the car in relation to entertainment change? How? How would
travel be affected?
What businesses and industries would be affected by the

disappearance of movies?
9. What groups of people would be put out of work, if the movie

industry ceased to exist?
1 0. Would people's attitudes to the legal profession and to other profes-
sions change, if movies were to disappear?
How would the disappearance of movies affect 'consumerism'?
11. Would it have an effect on inflation? Would it change the concept

of 'unlimited credit' with its implication that everyone is entitled to
everything he or she sees? Would advertising methods be changed,
if movies could not be made?
12. If movies disappeared, would underdeveloped countries be af-
fected?Would they be cut off from knowledge of the 'North Ameri-

can way of life', and, they were, would this be to their advantage
if
or disadvantage? Discuss your answers.
Do you think there is a possibility that movies really might

disappear?
1 3. Is the new industry of movies book form pointing to the

in possibility
of the disappearance of the movie as a separate form?
8. Television
How would the discontinuance of television affect your life?
1 If there were no television, how would your use of time be affected?

Would your eating habits and entertainment habits change? Would
you participate more in sports or in other forms of physical activity?
Would the loss of television make a difference to your conversation
or to your social life? Would change your
it relationship to your
family?
2. What differences would the lack of television make in your home?
Would your family make any changes in their use of time or space at
home, there were no TV sets? Would their consumer preferences
if
change?
What effect would the end of television have on education?
3. How would the loss of television affect educational curricula and

educational methods?
4. How would reading ability and reading habits be affected?

television?
5. What would happen to the production of books?

6. Investigate the effect television as a ground has had on movies from
1 948 to the present time. Do you end of TV would restore
think the
the movie to its previous place in the entertainment world? Would
radio gain popularity?
What effect would the end of television have on business and

employment?
7. How would television's disappearance affect department stores,
banks, the police, stock brokers, industries and businesses? How
would it affect advertising?
8. If television were to disappear, how many people in the TV industry
would be out of work? What related industries would be affected?

9. How would the end of television affect the sports world?
How would the end of television affect national and international

politics?
10. How would the end of television affect politics and politicians, inter-
national relations, countries' images, the Cold War?
Would the end of television also mean the end of its effects?
11. Could we expect people to return to attitudes that prevailed before

the appearance of TV? Arthur Miller, for example, writing in the New
York Magazine (December 30/January 6, 1975) described "The Year
It Came Apart." His theme was that the audience for which he had
written his plays ceased to exist in 1949, the year network TV was
instituted:
An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are

exhausted, and my oneness with the Broadway audience
was among these then. What it all came down to, then,
was the assumption on all sides that the audience — indeed,

the country — was an unbreakable cultural unity, regardless
of its superficial inner conflicts.
Miller suggests that an entirely new public, a nonunified public,

came into existence in 1949.
What evidence can you find in today's television programs to

support or disprove this theory?
9. Radio
Suppose that at six-thirty tomorrow morning all radio broadcasting end-

ed: AM and FM, shortwave broadcasting, and even citizens' band and
walkie-talkie operation.
How would the end of radio affect your life and your interests?
1 Without radio broadcasting, what would happen to your private and

social life?
2. Would the discontinuance of radio affect the recording industry?
Would it affect rock music and rock culture?
How would the loss of radio affect the radio industry and related
industries?
3. If all radio were completely withdrawn, what would be the effect on

people directly involved: radio announcers, engineers, disk jockeys,
record librarians, station managers and programmers? How would
people indirectly involved be affected: manufacturers, design engi-
and repairmen? How would the record-
neers, wholesalers, retailers
ing industry and pressers and engineers and
be affected: printers
studios, performers and musicians, manufacturers of electric and mu-
sical equipment?
How would it affect the radio public, if radio were discontinued?

4. Obviously, the whole listening public would be affected by the
disappearance of radio. Youmay be able to find out some particulars
about the radio audiences of various types of programs, since both
broadcasting stations and advertisers keep careful watch over the

composition of their audiences, and are often willing to share and
discuss that information.
5. What present phenomena and institutions would disappear, if radio
disappeared? Would any former ones reappear?
Here is a list which you might use to investigate the influence of

radio on different aspects of our culture.
employment sleeping habits

music home routines
news reporting school activities
commercial motor vehicles entertainment
sports marine travel
advertising train travel
warfare theater
propaganda medical services
stock market traffic control
telephone law enforcement
air travel ambulance service
satellites fire fighting
astronomy business
radar construction work
sonar weather reporting
radio-related hobbies
10. Telephone
Suppose that, because of some kind of crisis in your world, all telephone
service were to be suspended indefinitely.
What changes would be likely to take place in your daily life?
1 . Would the loss of the telephone affect your relationships with other
people? Would it affect your relationship with your family? If so, in
what ways? Would contact with relatives decrease?

How would it change your relations with your friends? How many
of your friends would drop out of your life? Would the end of the
telephone bring about much more personal contact? If so, would
more personal contact mean more walking or more travel?
How would the loss of phones affect your relations with your
employer?
2. What changes would being without telephones make in your habits
and in your use of time? Would it affect your homework time and
your study habits? Would ceasing to use the telephone have any
effect on your posture or your language? Would gossip decline or
disappear? Would letter-writing habits change?
3. Would parent-teacher relationships change much, if teachers could
not get in touch with parents by phone?
How would the lack of telephones affect businesses and services?
4. Would business offices, as we know them, be possible without tele-
phones? Arrange to visit a wide range of business offices and note

some of the uses of the telephone in action. Ask appropriate 'con-
sultants':
• How would secretaries' work change without telephones?

• What would happen to thecomputer without the telephone?
• How would clients maintain contact with a business, if there were
no telephones?
• What would happen to the stock market without the telephone?
• How would jobs be affected if all personal orders or requests
required a written memo?
5. If people had no telephone access to medical, police and fire ser-
would it affect their choice of a place to live? Could such

vices,
community services be maintained and used effectively without the
telephone?
6. If there were no phones, would travel and vacation patterns be
changed? What effects would be felt by the entertainment industry?
What effects would be felt by resort hotels, restaurants and advertis-
ing?
7. What percentage of the work force
do you estimate depends,
wholly or in on the telephone and tele-
part, for their livelihood
phone-related services? Estimate the effect their loss would have on

other businesses such as the manufacture of copper wire, radios,
plastics, paper, and the production and operation of radios, satellites,
telegraphic equipment. What effects would there be on news-
gathering and reporting by means of newspapers, radio and televi-
sion?
.
What changes would the loss of telephones bring to civic and

political institutions?
8. How would the loss of telephones affect the organization and man-
agement of the city? Would the incidence of crime be affected?
How would the disappearance of the telephone affect the suicide
rate? Ask a policeman for his opinion.
9. What cultural institutions would experience least change, if phones

disappeared? Would it be churches, schools or libraries?
1 0. Make a list of the present phenomena that would disappear with the
disappearance of telephones.
Make a list of any former phenomena that would be likely to
reappear. Are there any areas of life where new patterns would have
to be invented?
11. Clocks
Suppose sometime between sundown and sunrise tomorrow morn-

that,
ing, all clocks, watches, chronometers and mechanical timepieces of
every sort disappeared completely and forever. Immediately, of course, a

number of expressions in every Western language would become sense-
less and useless. What other effects would there be?
How would the disappearance of clocks affect your routine

activities?
1 What would happen to school routines? What would 'on time' mean
to a student or to a class? Could computers be used in schools as
clock-substitutes?
2. Would routines in and around your home be changed? If so, how?
Would your study habits be in any way affected?
Would the loss of clocks affect social and recreational practices?
3. List social conventions or procedures that would be affected and

any
what changes would take place, if clocks disappeared.
specify
4. How would the disappearance of clocks affect entertainment? What
would happen to the organization of television and radio programs?
Would programs continue 'as long as they should' or 'as long as they
need to'? On what basis would advertisers be charged? How would
disk jockeys be affected? Could TV Guide stay as it is? Would

movie-editing and the spacing of ads be affected?
5. Would sports change if there were no timepieces? What would
happen to our notion of sports records? What would constitute an
athletic achievement?
How would transportation and travel be affected by the removal

of clocks?
6. How might motor traffic be regulated without the hour to measure

kilometres per hour? Would speeding tickets become obsolete?
7. How could the railways or the airlines function? And what changes
would they have to make, if they were to go on serving the public?
Would the arts be affected, if clocks were not available to

measure time?
8. After you have interviewed a variety of people, try to assess the
extent to which the arts of painting, music, sculpture, poetry, archi-
tecture would be affected.
12. Computers
"In accordance with your instructions, I have given birth to
twins in the enclosed envelope."
(Reply to computerized form letter.)
If computers disappeared tomorrow, how would this affect:
your choice of subjects in school;

your schedule of classes;
the format of tests and exams;
the way your work is assessed;
your attendance record;
the arrangement of the school day;
the use of credit cards;
the banking system;
the insurance industry;
consumerism;
the space program;
Ralph Nader and his statistics;
the Club of Rome;

research and development;
city planning;
futurology;
high-rise buildings;
bureaucracy;
political campaigns;
professional sports;
investment practices;
statisticians;
polls;
the sciences;
traffic;
airline operations;
mail;
mail-order business;
goods inventories;
books?
2. Would we have to cancel the future for lack of a computer, as we
would cancel a hunting expedition for lack of ammunition?
13. Airplanes
It is often said that, because of the airplane, ours is a highly mobile

culture. Suppose that at dinnertime tonight all aircraft were permanently
grounded.
What aspects of our culture would change?

1. Would the pace of everyday life be any slower or less frantic, air if
travel came to an end? Would our sense of time be affected? Would

commercial food supplies change? What kinds of perishable foods
do you get from great distances?
2. At the cultural and social levels of effect, what would become of the
world of symphony orchestras and opera and and rock music,
ballet
if there were no planes? How would various media be affected by
the disappearance of air travel? What would happen to news report-
ing and to disaster relief? Is it true that the airplane has made cities
into suburbs of one another?

Would there be any political or economic effects?
3. Without great masses of people moving freely back and forth on

airplanes, how might the relations between cities and countries
change? Would government activities and international relations be

hampered? How would military organization be affected?
4. What would happen to foreign investment patterns, if air travel
ceased? How would international and domestic diplomacy be af-
fected by the disappearance of airplanes?

5. How would road and rail and ocean travel be affected by the discon-
tinuance of flight?
6. What would happen to business, when it had to rely on slower forms
of transport for goods and mail and executives? Would management
structures be affected? Ask some big businessmen. Ask the Chamber
of Commerce, too, for any information they can supply about the
benefits of air traffic or the effects of dependence on it.
14. Satellites
Make a list of the present services that would be suspended, if all
satellites were abandoned.

1. Find out how closely telegraph and wire services are now related to
satellites.
2. Do the major networks of radio and television use satellites regularly
or occasionally?
3. Investigate the world of sports for satellite relationships.
4. Do satellites transform the globe itself into a theater in which the
entire planet is simultaneously 'on stage'?
15. Money
How would your private and social life be affected by the

disappearance of money?
1. If money were to disappear, what would happen to your sense of

values? What would happen to your eating habits? What sort of
'allowance' would you expect to get from your parents?
How would family life be affected, if money disappeared ?
2. How would accommodation be paid for, without money?

3. Is money necessary to maintain our present patterns of family life?
Without money, would Western society remain in recognizable

form, or would it return to primitive communalism?
If money ceased to exist, how would our society's economic and

employment patterns be affected?
4. How would salaries and wages appropriate to work performed be set

without money?
5. How would people distinguish between psychic and monetary in-
come in relation to work?

6. If people did not receive money for their services, would people be
much work regularly on behalf
less willing to of others?
7. How would rewards and debts be assessed?
8. Would 'economic growth' become a meaningless term, there were if
no money?
9. Many of our institutions are based on prices and on evaluation of
specialized services. Would specialization disappear, money disap- if
peared?
How would travel, business and advertising be affected?
10. Without money, how could one buy a bus ticket or a plane ticket?
Would walking be the most common way of getting about?
11. Would large and small businesses be affected differently by the
disappearance of money? What would happen to banks and bank-
ing? Would vending machines disappear? What would happen to
advertising?
What effects would the disappearance of money have on

entertainment?
12. How would entertainment and professional sports change? Would

gambling be possible without money?
16. Media Trials
Now that you have studied the properties of the various media in
Chapter Two, and some of their effects on our culture in Chapter Three,
you are in a position to put on trial the inventors or developers of specific

media, as symbolically responsible for the particular social effects of
products they invented or promoted.
To set up a trial, you will need an impartial judge, a court clerk, a
prosecuting attorney, a defense attorney, witnesses for the prosecution
and for the defense, a jury and, of course, the defendant. A separate
team should try the inventor or promoter of each medium. Again let's
take the car as an example, and demonstrate how to conduct a trial of its
inventor.
To Henry Ford, you will first need to formulate a charge. Using the
try
material you have already collected, review your suppositions about

what our culture would be like without cars, your information about how
people got along before there were cars, and what phenomena the car
has pushed out of existence. Henry Ford can be charged with the de-
struction of all that the car destroyed or replaced, and with having
insidiously changed the quality of our society's life. Specifically, he can
be charged with air pollution, noise pollution, increasing cardiac distur-
bances and general lack of fitness, and the destruction of a slower way of
life, closely-knit neighborhoods, self-sufficient communities and the coun-
tryside. He can be accused of promoting human dependence on mech-
anization, creating the assembly line, and dividing families through the
increased mobility of their members. You can add to these charges by
reviewing your lists of the effects of the car in our culture.
Once you have made your case against Ford, you can arrange a trial.
The usual format of a trial by jury is as follows:

(DThe clerk of the court reads the charge.
(2)The lawyer for the prosecution presents his case; witnesses may
be called, each of whom may be cross-examined in turn by the
lawyer for the defense.
(3)The lawyer for the defense presents his case; again, witnesses
may be called, each of whom may be cross-examined by the
lawyer for the prosecution.
(4)The lawyer for the defense presents his summation to the jury.
(5)The lawyer for the prosecution presents his summation to the

jury.
(6)The judge instructs the jury about the points of law involved.
(7)The jury decides whether the defendant is guilty, or not guilty.
(8)lf the defendant is found guilty, the judge pronounces a sentence.
For the trial of Henry Ford, you will need to appoint a judge, a court clerk
and the defendant. Except for those who are ineligible because of a
conflict of interests, the others in your class can act as jury. A team of
students can research and present both the case for the prosecution and
the case for the defense, and arrange to invite witnesses to the trial.
When you have established the charges, selected the actors and set a
date for the trial, the team handling the case for prosecution and for
defense should begin to plan the court presentations. This chiefly in-
volves the organization of evidence and the selection of witnesses to

testify for or against Henry Ford.
It would add to the authenticity of the prosecution's case, if represen-
tatives of the car-manufacturing industry could appear as witnesses. If it
is impossible for them to be physically present at your trial, you could

perhaps arrange to have a team interview them, and then ask a student
to represent them on the stand. Sometimes, too, evidence can be given
by deposition and sworn statement. People who work on the automo-
tive assembly lines might have a lot to say about their dissatisfactions.
Labor union officials might give additional information about the griev-
ances of assembly-line workers. People engaged in research and devel-
opment could testify to the percentage cost of new design features,
changing models, or the percentage cost of keeping up with competi-
tors' products.
Sales and public relations people could provide estimates of the per-
centage of the cost of the car that is spent on advertising. What percent-
age of the cost of the car is for the actual hardware {the figure), and what
percentage is for promotion of a 'big wheel' image which is the car's
ground? What importance or dignity does motorized traffic leave to the
pedestrian? What implications for the prosecution's case have the an-
swers to these questions?
The service enterprises which depend on the car might provide wit-
nesses: spare-parts dealers, used-car dealers, garage owners, gas-station
operators depend on the car and contribute to its ground. They could,
therefore, if Ford is condemned, be guilty by association.
Your local police could provide all kinds of evidence for prosecution:
the effect of the car on young people, on old people, on vacationers, on
drunk or drugged drivers,on ego-trippers: the car's relation to theft rings,
crime in parking accidents and deaths, the backlog of cases in
lots, traffic
the courts. All of these problems would demonstrate that the car can
magnify enormously humanity's potential for violence and evil.
Doctors could testify to the car's destructive effects on health. Psy-

chiatrists or social workers could provide evidence that the car can help
to divide families by providing extensive and casual mobility.
Town planners and ecologists could point out the car's unpleasant
effects on cities and countryside, and its intensification of the energy
crisis in its constant rapacity for oil-based products. The Department of
Highways could tell you how much it costs each taxpayer each day to
build and maintain roads. The Department of Transport could tell you
about the logjam of work in their organization because of the great
number of cars.
The defense lawyer will find a case almost ready-made, as all public
relations departments of the big automobile companies and all advertise-
ments continually stress the positive contributions of cars to our society.
The defense can also, of course, call users of the car to the witness
stand to point out all the good things the car does: it allows family visits
to relatives, makes shopping and errands easier, provides transportation
to and from school and work; it makes weekend vacations possible; it
provides a wider choice of residence; it gives privacy; it provides emer-
gency protection and services.
Witnesses from the car-manufacturing industry can also point out the
number of jobs created by the auto industry and its contribution to the
Cross National Product.
The basic argument for the defense of the car, as for all other media
you may put on trial, is that the car is neither good nor bad in itself: it is
only people's use of the car that can be called 'good' or 'bad'.
4
The City
as Classroom
1 . What you already know about your

society
Today's societies encompass an immense amount of information. Most

of this information has to be acquired by all the inhabitants of a particular
society so that they can survive there.
Your society exists in a man-made environment, a huge

warehouse of information, a vast resource to be mined free of
charge.
If you take time to think about your society's man-made environment,
you will probably find that you already know a great deal about it, not
because you have studied it in school, but just because you have lived in
it.
What have you already learned from your society about its
services and symbols?

1 . Here is a list of some of the things that you encounter in your society
every day. What do you already know about the language' of:
• communication networks of radio and television; (How do you

distinguish between programs and commercials? How many tech-
nical broadcasting terms do you know?)
• street signs and traffic signs and signals;
• transportation systems, their routes, fares; technical terms relating
to cars, trains, subways, buses, trucks, airplanes;
• functions of buildings? (How do you distinguish, without printed
signs, a hospital, a school, a college, an office building, a factory, a
church, a bank, a post office?)
Make notes about how you acquired this information. Your par-
entsmay be able to help you recall early activities and visits through
which you learned many of these things.
List what you already know about the language of gesture and
dress.
2. List the groups of people whose work you can identify by their
appearance. What is it that you about the work of each group?
tells
"You can be lots of different things when you grow up. All
you have to do is change your hat."
(A small boy replying to a visitor's question.)
3. How are you able to separate friendly from less friendly sorts of
people? Would you, for instance, ask street directions of a man

rushing out of a bank with a gun in his hand?
How would you select people from whom to ask city directions
during the daytime and at night?
How do you know whom to ask for help when you are shopping
in a store?
4. What would be a good way to find out where to buy a bike? Would
you consult friends or shopkeepers or the Consumer's Report?
What other kinds of information do you need to know in order to
survive a day?
5. Select three color advertisements from different magazines. Make
sure that each ad includes a picture of one or more persons. Write a
biographical sketch of three of the people in the ads. What is it that
tells you about each person's role in life?
2.Updating your knowledge outside the
classroom: continuing education
To many young people updating means keeping track of the Top

1 0', or the ratings of movies, records and tapes.
1. Are stars 'born' or 'made'? Look up the history of a rock star or a

movie star.
2. What kinds of moral instruction do you receive from listening to

popular music?
Read the last section of Plato's Republic in which he says that a
change in musical rhythms can cause a revolution. Can you make a
case for Plato's argument? Does 'rock education' educate the 'whole
person' of its listeners, or does it educate only special aspects for
special purposes?
To some extent the public updates itself by means of magazines

and newspapers.
3. Check your newspaper to find the 'Top 10' stories covered
local
every day for a month or two.

How would you expect to discover the 'Top 10' among maga-
zines?
4. Read the story about Patti Hearst in Rolling Stone (October 25,
1975). It shows on a big scale a form of brainwashing which is
widespread on a much smaller scale.
5. As we saw in Chapter Two, you can cover up the last frame of a
'funny' cartoon strip and discover the grievance that forms the
ground for the punchlines {figure). Using this method, go through
the comics in today's paper and list the social grievances you find.
Popular entertainment usually reflects the interests of large

groups of people and is a good resource for keeping in touch with
popular concerns.
6. What do you learn about your society from action pictures, from
soap operas and from situation comedies?
7. Investigate horror movies as creative responses to the sick society in
which we live. What features of the hidden ground of our society do

these movies make visible?
8. Are the young more discriminating when watching TV programs

than adults? Do the young constantly test what they watch against
their own experience? Do adults do this? Do adults consider only
ETV as educational? List the kinds of programs different groups of
people consider educational.
Examine the way the entertainment business has made the public
aware of all sorts of consumer preferences and activities.
9. Advertising agencies handle promotion for the entertainment busi-
ness. Arrange to visit an agency and try to find out what is done to
prepare the public for new hits in entertainment fields.
10. Try to get some information about audience research as a means of

determining the market potential of the public. How would a record-
ingcompany go about arranging for a song that nobody had ever
become a 'smash hit'?
heard before to
11. What is the function of the lie detector in discovering audience
responses to Top 10' recordings?
12. Try to discover parallels between the 'Top 10' in music, novels,
movies and clothing fashions.
You will remember that the movie, "The Great Gatsby," promoted
a revival of the fashions of the 1920s. Find two more examples of
such influence.
13. Review some of the changes in your own preferences over the past
two years in comics, sports, TV and music. Have other members of
your class experienced the same changes in preferences? What
should this tell you?
One of the best ways to investigate the 'information warehouse'

that is your city or town is to study a particular institution or
business at its point of service.
14. To get an idea of some aspect of the law and how it works in your
area, arrange to visit a Manpower office or go to traffic-court hear-
ings and follow a case through: observe what the law means to
people who use it.
This same method of investigation is useful for deciding where to Invest

money. If a company provides a valuable service to the society of its
time, an investment in it will succeed. To find a company likely to be

highly successful on a continuing basis is to find a company providing a
unique service.
15. Evaluate some businesses in your city or town and decide which
company would offer the best return for investment. Evaluate each
The City as Classroom 153
company on the basis of its real service to the community, its likeli-
hood of continuing, and its relationship with its employees. Ask
managers and employees about company relations.
A similar way of investigating businesses in your area and of updating
your information about business is to ask businessmen: "What business
are you in?" If a man replies that he's in the business of making glass
bottles, go and see how people are using his glass bottles, and you'll
discover that his business extends into storage. A man who thinks that
he is in the Venetian blind business, actually has a business that, viewed
more broadly, extends into light control.
16. Ask many businessmen in your area as possible the question we
as
have suggested. How many of them operate businesses that extend
beyond the fields they name? Did your survey turn up any gaps or
missing areas of service in your community? Could you use this
information to start a successful business?
Planned obsolescence is one commercial method of updating

education in a consumer society.
17. If there is a new building nearing completion in your area, ask the
architects, the contractors, the workmen, future tenants, and the
company that holds the mortgage to estimate how long the building
is designed to last, how long it will stand and when it will be obso-
lete. Does any group know for certain the answers to your ques-
tions? Compare the projected age of this new building with the age
ofsome well-known old buildings in your city.
18. Ask the same questions about the hardware (machinery) and the
software (information) of a computer system. Ask the manufacturer,
the systems analyst, the programmers and the company-user of the
system. Compare their answers.
19. Ask car-owners the same questions. Try to find out how concerned
users are with obsolescence. What advantages does planned obso-
lescence offer the user? What disadvantages does impose on the
it
user?
20. What can you learn about persons or institutions from what they
throw away? Investigate the garbage cans in your school for a few
days. Interviewsome garbagemen who have been on the force for a
long time. Why
is it that in some countries there is no garbage? Ask
an archaeologist the value of garbage-study as a way of learning

about a society.
.
Another way to continue updating your education is by the

'consumer-reporting' method.
21 Keep a continuing list of all the services in your environment. Beside

the name of each service, jot down the disservices it brings with it.
Begin by writing down the services and disservices provided by each

of the following:
banks, insurance companies, mining companies, grocery stores,
clothing stores, habitable buildings, schools, cars, planes, buses,
roads, airports, garbage collection, the legal system, fuels, home ap-
pliances, television, phones, records, radio, telegraph, magazines,
books, newspapers, professional entertainment, professional sports,
Muzak, postal services, advertising, the armed forces, international
trade.
The jet plane has created a new pattern of 'learning-by-

conference'.
Conferences bring together the representatives of businesses and profes-

sions from every part of the world. The members of the conferences
come from their various regions to educate one another
in the problems
and the progress of their fields of interest.

22. Consider the new world of business conferences and conventions as
a program for educating personnel about the changes taking place in
their operations. What kinds of public conferences are held in your
town or city? What areas of education might you experience by
attending these conferences?
A study published in 1 958 showed that

946 businesses were
in 1
spending about five times as much money

employees to educate
as the public was then spending on schools and colleges.
23. Try to find some figures for current ratios in educational spending.
You might choose to investigate the educational programs of IBM,
General Motors, a large life insurance company or any other large
company.
What sort of training do these companies provide as an everyday
part of their procedure?
24. Talk to heads of programs for in-service training in industrial manage-
ment about their priorities in their own programs. How well prepared
do they consider the graduates of our present systems of education?
25. Ask members of a graduating class of two to five years ago about
their satisfactions and dissatisfactions with what they learned in
school. Find out how far they are able to relate their school curricu-
lum to their new occupations. Do they think that education has any
value apart from its application to jobs and careers? What changes
would they like to see made in education?
26. Arrange to talk with directors of teacher-training programs and ask if
you may sit in on a few classes. Compare these programs with one
described at Antioch Law School, Washington, D.C., where law stu-
dents are required to live in the homes of inner-city families for a
period of several weeks before attending regular classes. This ap-

prenticeship for the law students is intended to help them acquire a
firsthand acquaintance with the problems of their clients, and to
learnwhat their clients know about the existing legal structure in
each community.
27. Using an 'ideal' teacher as an example, ask yourself what qualities
and characteristics fit him or her for teaching. Were these learned or
acquired at Teachers' College? Draw up a program for an ideal
Teachers' College that would produce such ideal instructors.
Have students a part in producing ideal teachers?
3. Getting to know your culture

through maps and exhibits
Making maps and exhibits is another interesting way to study

your own culture. Through your own creative work you can
discover whole new areas in your city or town.
1. Start by making an ordinary geographical map of your town; include

the topography, if you wish.
R. Murray Schafer, the Canadian composer, constantly studies 'sound-
scapes' as a way of understanding the dynamics of particular cities. He
sees 'acoustic engineering' as one of the important studies of the future.
You can learn a great deal about using sound to study environments
from Schafer's books, The New Soundscape. (See p. 29.)
2. Using tape recorders, tape the usual sounds of each distinct area in
your city or town and then make a 'sound map' of your town.
3. Ask each team to volunteer to make one or more of these maps of
vour city or town:
a mineral map;
an animal map;
a population density map;
a map showing current crime rates in each area of your town or
city;
an industrial map showing all factories and office buildings;

a map showing major shopping areas;
a map to show recreational facilities;
a political map indicating the parties represented in Federal or
Provincial Parliament in each riding;
a map of all the religious buildings;

a linguistic map.
Finally, when you have made a number of the maps suggested,
spread them all out in front of you and see if any interesting patterns
emerge.
''Museum method' offers another interesting approach to the study of
your culture. Everyone has been to a museum and seen an Innuit or an
Indian or a pioneer exhibit.
Could you make a museum exhibit for the way of life in your own
town or city? Try it.
4. Make two museum-style exhibits, one of the Grade 9 way of life, and
another of the Grade 1 2 way of life.
What criteria did you use in choosing pieces for each exhibit?
A time capsule is a box containing enough evidence and artifacts from a
civilization so that some
one thousand years in the future, could
stranger,
tell from examining the contents of the capsule what that civilization was
like.
5. Make up a time capsule of our present North American way of life,
so that someone, one thousand years from now, could infer what
our culture must have been like. There are only two rules: do not put
more than ten items in the capsule; do not include any written or
printed material.you have trouble deciding what to include
If in the
capsule, pretend thatyou are shipwrecked alone on a desert island
and write down the ten things you would miss most.
4. Exploring your culture through
its advertising
"... propaganda forms culture and in a certain sense is culture."
Jacques Ellul
Propaganda
Advertising is one of the most obvious features of our culture. We are

constantly surrounded by so much of it, from the label on the cereal box
at breakfast to the fade-out of the last commercial, as we turn off the
final TV show of the evening, that we take its bombardment for granted.
But if we examine advertising as figure, it can tell us a great deal

about our culture.
1. Make as complete a list as possible of all the different products that

are commonly advertised. Next, describe the picture of our culture
that these ads present. Is your description an accurate picture of
North American culture?
2. Look up 'cargo cults' in an encyclopedia. What is the relation of
cargo cults to advertising?
3. What is the total annual expenditure for advertising in Canada?
Compare the figure with some other figures: the government's ex-
penditure for housing, for defence, for welfare or for scientific re-
search. If you can find an economist, ask him or her to discuss the
place of advertising dollars in the national economy.
One of the common assumptions about ads is that they are

intended to sell products.
4. This assumption is easily tested. Pick up a sample copy of each of a

couple of large-circulation magazines like Maclean's or Chatelaine or
Cosmopolitan. Tear out of each magazine the first fifty ads (includ-
ing the cover which is designed to promote newsstand sales and
therefore functions as an ad) and sort them into piles according to
their approach: (1) a pile for those ads that actually tell you to buy a
particular product; (2) a pile for those ads that seem just to inform
the reader about the availability of a product; (3) another pile for
those that seem to be promoting a service rather than a product

("We service what we sell." "Let your fingers do the walking"); (4) a
pile for ads that promote a way of life or kind of society ("You've
come a long way, baby!" "Today's woman knows what she wants");
and (5) a pile for those ads that educate or teach ("Anatomy of a
Camera"). Do you need to make any other piles? Now, reexamine
the pile of overt, clear directions to BUY. What percentage of the ads
does this pile contain? In other words, what percentage of the ads
actually SELL products? If you examine magazines from the forties,
before the television age, you might find a very different sort of
pattern and set of percentages.
One of the other common assumptions about ads is that their

appeal is directed at everybody.
A conversation with a staff-member of a large advertising agency will
teach you that every ad is aimed at a specific audience. You might find it
very interesting to look at an agency's demographic data. Above all
things, an advertiser is concerned about the effect an ad will have on its
'audience'! Therefore the advertiser spends a great deal of time discover-

ing the characteristics of the ad's audience, before doing anything else.
For this reason, the first question to ask when analyzing an ad is, "Who is
the audience being addressed in this ad?"

5. To answer this question, start by listing the characteristics of the ad
in front of you. Is the ad simple, complex, romantic, logical? Was it
designed for snob-appeal, for a 'hard-sell' or 'soft-sell' approach? Are

its colors soft and subdued or loud and bright? Is its tone quiet and
insinuating or brash and blatant? Has the ad a lot of text to be read or
only a little? Is it meant to appeal to the audience's emotions or its
intellect? Does it try to create fear, pride, sex-interest, competitive

Ask yourself any other suitable questions.
feelings?
6. Now, with the ad and your list in front of you, ask yourself, "If I am
the target of this ad, what kind of reader am supposed
I to be? Am I
supposed to be literate or illiterate; alert or asleep at the switch

elite or common; serious or frivolous; up-to-date or old-fashioned
sophisticated or naive; adventurous or cautious; male or female
old or young; rich, comfortably off, or poor; aggressive or passive
amoral, moral, or immoral; a leader or a follower; an individual or a
member of a group? To what aims, needs, desires, or values of mine
is the ad appealing? Is the ad meant to sell me something, or to sell
me to myself? Is it intended to make me pamper myself, or to stir my

critical faculties? Is the ad ruined, if Iam alert and aware of its real
purpose?"
The City as Classroom 1 59
7. What aspects of the ad or the situation it presents am supposed

I to
notice as figure? What aspects am I not supposed to notice as
ground? For help with this question, consult W.B. Key's Media Sex-
ploitation. (See p. 29.)
Add your own questions, and when you have answered them all, you
will have a realistic perception of the audience for whom the ad was
intended. You should also be able to determine what the ad is really
doing, that is, the effect it is producing on its 'audience'.

8. To arrive at a more general understanding of how ads work and the
kinds of audiences at which ads are aimed, have several teams of
students select an ad from each of the piles you sorted out in Exer-
cise 4. Analyze these ads. you have access to videotape equip-
If
ment, and arrange permissions, you can also analyze TV ads. As you
discovered through your analysis of magazine ads, the advertiser
knows that he must correctly identify the audience to whom the ad
is speaking, if it is to be fully effective. It is also very important for the
advertiser to make sure that the 'speaker' of the ad establishes rap-

port with the audience. To discover the identity of the 'speaker' who
may or may not be pictured in the ad, ask yourselves:
Who is the speaker in this ad?

• Is the speaker old or young, attractive or unattractive, 'working'
or just 'relating'?
• Does the speaker present himself or herself, or impersonate
someone else?
• Is the speaker's face beautiful or handsome? Is it ugly, nonde-
script, earnest, approving, pained, excited, thoughtful?
• Is the speaker standing up or sitting down?
• Is he or she wearing ordinary clothes or a special costume?
• Is the speaker's voice high-pitched and squeaky, or low and
sexy? Is it confidential or exuberant or raspy?
• Does the speaker shout or whisper?
• Has the speaker an accent? What kind?
• How does the speaker handle rhythms? Are the words evenly
spaced? Is their tempo plodding?
• Does the speaker speak quickly or slowly? Are the words halt-
ing, jumpy or excited? Is the tone lilting, melodic, hypnotic?
What does this speaker think or pretend that he or she is doing?

• Is the speaker whispering persuasively in your ear? Is he or she
talking across a counter or walking beside you?
• Is the speaker patting you on the back or on the head? Is the
speaker trying to soothe you or to rouse you?
• Is the speaker shaking your hand or picking your pocket?
What feelings does the speaker show about the product or items
in the ad?
• Does the speaker seem deceitful, enthusiastic, bored, brash,
detached, involved, humorous, angry, seductive?
What attitude does the speaker show toward the audience?

• Does the speaker use a tone which suggests that you are wise,
intelligent, alert, passive, thoughtful, critical, educated, unedu-
cated, stupid or mindless?
• Does the speaker's tone suggest that he or she thinks himself
or herself superior, inferior or equal to you?
• Does the speaker's tone suggest that he or she thinks you are
docile or easily led?
If you put together all the answers to these questions, it should be

very easy for you to determine what effect an ad has on its 'audi-
ence'.
By analysing TV ads you can become aware of stereotypes, such

as the image of the North American homemaker, in most
advertising.
9. A quick way to discover this image is by getting permission to video-

tape all the ads from an afternoon soap opera. Next, get permission
to tape an episode from a prime-time police or detective series.
Splice the soap opera ads into the ad slots in the prime-time pro-
gram. Play back the prime-time show with the new ads in it. Do the
ads clash with the show? Are the women in the commercials even
sillier by contrast with the 'tough guys' in the detective series? Al-
most all TV ads are aimed at a stereotyped audience of the particular
shows with which they appear.
Ideally, advertising moves toward archetypal imagery.

The clue to archetype is found in Andy Warhol's famous mosaic of
Campbell's soup tins where, by mere use of numbers, the soup tin
becomes an artform. The old adage, "You feel better satisfied when you
use well-known brands," is another way of saying that by repetition and,
as it were, by incantation, the user feels a huge access of power and
energy. The user of an object that exists in great numbers puts on the
power and energy of that object, whether it is a motor car, a pair of jeans,
or a tin of Coke. The mere repetitive advertising of the McDonald's
hamburger transforms it into an 'archetype', just as the cowboy costume
worn by children and hippies transforms them into mythical people.
10. How many other examples can you find of much-repeated images
that have formed new 'archetypes' for our world? Make a list of all
the examples that you can think of.
11. When you wear your jeans, are you a walking advertisement? What
other things do you advertise without realizing it?
If you compare North American ads with ads for the same
product in foreign magazines, you will very quickly begin to note
cultural differences.
1 2. Collect some magazines published on other continents and compare

ads for several kinds of products with ads for similar products in
North American magazines. What clues to cultural differences can

you find?
By comparing a contemporary ad with an ad for the same product

used twenty years ago or fifty years ago, you will discover a great
deal about changes in our culture and corresponding changes in
its people.
13. Try an experiment similar to Number 12, if you can find ads pub-
lishedtwenty or fifty years ago. What
clues to cultural changes can
you find by comparing these ads with contemporary ads for the
same or similar products?
5. Learning about your own

culture through others
Practices in other cultures can reveal some basic facts about your
own.
In Japan, for instance, furniture is placed in the middle of a room accord-
ing to its function and the mood of the householder. Thus, Japanese
furniture is constantly being rearranged, as the Japanese change their
household environment for every occasion and mood.
North Americans, on the other hand, are likely to place all their furni-
ture around the outside of a room and leave an empty space in the
middle for people; and they change their furniture arrangements compar-
atively rarely. North Americans, it seems, understand space as a box in
which people are contained, rather than as a plastic element which

people make.
Language peculiarities also point to this North American concept of
space. In English, we say, "I am lost," if we are out in the wilds and can't
find our way home; in a similar situation, an Innuit (Inland Eskimo) hunter
says, "The house is lost." An Innuit can never himself be lost: he is
always the center; like the Japanese, he 'makes' space. But an English-
speaking person is lost, inside the container of space.
1. Find out you can about your own culture by comparing
all it with
five other cultures under these headings:
cooking;
Christmas celebrations and customs;
family structures;
male-female relationships;
clothing;
furniture;
architecture;
sports, pastimes;
arts;
language of gesture;
idioms. Consider, for example:
Chinese: ("I know it like my fingers and palm.)
Czecho- "Znam to jak sve stare boty."

slovakian: CI know it like my old boots.") >a
English: "I know it like the back of my hand." ^9
French: "Je le sais au fond." ,^»
German: "Ich kenne es wie meine eigene Hosentasche." "3"
Other languages can give fascinating insights into other cultures,

and provide a wealth of material to help you learn more about
your own culture.
2. Make a list of things you can say in another language that you can't
say in English. Ask students who speak another language fluently to
make a list of English expressions which have no equivalent in that
language, so that the class can compare notes. Is there, for instance,
an English equivalent of the French 'sympathique', or Spanish
'simpatico'? Is the idea of 'soul', in the term 'soul-music', expressible
in other languages?
E.T. Hall has written two fascinating books, which should help you
in exploring these questions: The Silent Language and The Hidden
Dimension. (See p. 28.)
Another way to discover your own culture is to contrast sound

patterns.
3. Study a painting from three different periods of your own culture.

Write down the sounds for which you see evidence in each painting.
Divide these into three categories: (1) sounds in nature and animal
sounds; (2) human sounds; (3) technological sounds. Is there a pre-
dominance of one kind of sound in each period of painting? Try to
express your findings in percentages.
Do this same exercise using a poem from each period. Try the
exercise using paintings of the same period, but from five different
cultures.
What can you learn about your own environment in this way?
Tourism provides continuing education for many people.
4. List the ways which the tourist industry has influenced your ideas
in
of other countries and cultures.

5. How many foreign-language newspapers are circulated in your city?
How many countries can you live in without leaving your own city?
Try making up guidebooks to introduce people to the various ethnic
experiences available to them within their own city. Include all the
restaurants, clubs, churches, schools, stores, where the language and
customs of each culture are practiced.
For Further Study:

Clatzer, Robert. The New Advertising: Twenty-One Successful Cam-
paigns from Schweppes to the Sierra Club. New York: The Citadel
Press, 1970.
The satisfactions in the new ads are found in the ads, not in the
products. "Love Thy Label as Thyself."
Jacobs, Jane. Death and Life of Creat American Cities. New York:
Vintage Books, 1961.
A study of the structure of human community which is now to be
found in the slum.
Key, Wilson B. Subliminal Seduction: Ad Media's Manipulation of a
Not So Innocent America. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,
1973.
(Note: use hardback edition only, as 'imbeds' cannot be seen
clearly in the softcover edition.)
A study of the role of the hidden ground in persuasive sales.
Schafer, Murray. The Book of Noise. Wellington, New Zealand: Price,
Milburn & Co. Ltd., 1970. Distributed by Berandol Music Ltd., 11 St.
Joseph Street, Toronto, Ontario.

A study of sound pollution in the modern city and how we might
defend ourselves.
Schumacher, E.F. Small Is Beautiful: [A Study of] Economics As If
People Mattered. London: Abacus, 1974; Harper & Row, 1975.

The speed-up in the electronic world is paradoxically restoring the
desire for smallness and human scale.
5
How to Relate
to Your Own Time
1 . How to remain aware
The title of the previous chapter, "The City as Classroom," can be in-
verted to read "The Classroom as City." Since the advent of electronic

media such as computers, enormous amounts of information are now
available in the classroom. We have already noted that in an age when
answers are being discovered outside the classroom, questions belong
inside the classroom; similarly, when an 'information explosion' is occur-
ring outside the classroom, the study of structures of information or
'pattern recognition' can go on inside the classroom.
All through this book, you have been studying the patterns and struc-
tures of our contemporary culture. Patterns and structures 'make sense'
of things. Understanding structures enables us all to avoid that feeling of
helplessness and frustration that makes us want to shout, "Stop the
world — I want to get off!"
Now that you have come to the last chapter in this book, we are
going to mention a few ways of maintaining your awareness of
the changing patterns in your society.
The strategies which we are going to point out should also help you to
notice new patterns in your society very quickly.
2. Slang
One strategy for remaining aware of the changing patterns

around you is to notice the slang used in current speech.
All language, verbal or nonverbal, is a way of creating relationships be-

tween people and people, people and things, or things and things.
Therefore language may be considered
a man-made technology. A
Canadian might say of an Englishman, for example, "I like the way he
nods. He really communicates agreement!" But how would the same
Canadian react to an Arab who jerks his head back to indicate assent? By
studying language technology we will learn something about its users,
just as we would learn about the users of any other technology we
studied.
There seems, indeed, to be a figure/ground 'Law of the Situation'
governing human artifacts and human language:
(DMan devises a new artifact or new word, in order to enhance
some action or to expand awareness.
(2)Every new word or artifact that is invented removes older forms
from general use.
(3)Every new invention retrieves forms that were pushed out much
earlier.
(4)Every innovation, when pushed to the limit of its acceptance,

tends to 'flip' or convert into an opposite form.
These four characteristics of human artifacts and language are not con-
nected or sequential, but simultaneous and coexistent.
By using slang as examples, you can easily study the shaping of situa-
tions by words, and the invention of words in changing situations. The
word once had the meaning of 'flashy clothing'. A 'slanging-

'slang' itself
match' is slang for a rapid exchange of strong expressions.

Slang can be considered a sort of 'no-man's land' between situations.
Slang sometimes seems to be 'where it's at', or 'where the action is'.
Slang develops in areas of experience that are changing rapidly, and
can therefore seem very dramatic and highly charged with tension. Per-
haps this is the reason that slang is the first language learned by newly
arrived immigrants. George Steiner, in his essay, "Silence and the Poet,"
notes that just before Hitler achieved absolute power in Germany, the
German language was breaking down into a slang. He suggests that the
transformation of the whole language into slang reflected the uncer-
tainty and violence that marked the social and political situation.
How to Relate to Your Own Time 167
Slang can be a device for exploring areas of uncertainty where people

are experiencing new perceptions and new awareness. Ask yourselves
why some slang is so transient. If language is an attempt to relate unfa-
miliar situations to familiar ones, the situations slang treats would seem
to be in a process of change.
1. Check this by asking yourselves whether the 'Top 10' represent a
kind of musical slang which relates a variety of changing situations to
familiar ones. Ask yourselves whether changes in clothing styles are
ways of relating the 'self with whom you are familiar to new atti-
tudes, feelings and situations.
Another way in which whole groups of attitudes are managed

verbally is by means of what has been called 'the word of the
year'.
2. Collect expressions from different languages which mean knowing

something completely: for example, "I know it inside out."What can
you find out about these cultures from these expressions?
3. Look for evidence of dramatic shock and intensity in the phrasing
and sounds of popular slang and idiom. Start with a word like 'piz-
zazz'.
4. Make a list of the brand names which have become commonplace
words, such as 'Kleenex' and 'Scotch tape'. Have they any strong
poetic or dramatic force?
5. Review popular phrases, old and new, for well-placed contrasts of
sound in vowels and consonants.
Why is 'funky' still in, and 'groovy' out?
Note the position of the strong beat or stress in these phrases.
Does it come at the beginning of the phrase or later?
6. Make a list of popular phrases in current use. Do they tend to have
some touch of exaggeration about them? If so, discuss the effect of
each expression.
7. Consider the overworked remark, "It's an honor and a privilege to be
here." Suggest some possible variations of this expression.
8. Let's see how the 'Law of the Situation' (stated on p. 166) might
elucidate a current question like, "What's going down?" Ask your-
selves:
• What does this new expression enhance, increase, or accelerate?

In is an enhanced
the question, "What's going down?", there
awareness of what is The reference goes be-
passively accepted.
yond the obvious association with food, to dress and entertain-
ment.
.
• What older expression does this question remove?

It removes the question, "What's coming off?" and the radical
situation implied in that phrase. Note that the question, "What's
coming off?" which was current in the sixties is not passive, but
"What are we doing?"
asks,
• What does the new phrase retrieve?
Do you think that retrieves the consumerism
it of the fifties'
'establishment' which was rejected in the sixties?

• By the time you see this in print, has the 'passive' tone of "What's
going down?" already converted to its opposite, active tone?
Have you noticed how key expressions can be used to

manipulate the outlook and attitude of a large group of people?
9. How do the disk jockey and the recording industry use slang to
manipulate an audience? Does this question set up a 'chicken-and-
egg' problem?
10. How do words not only describe styles, but also manipulate large
numbers of people,and so illustrate the power of language? Examine
the current words 'foxy' and 'funky', for example, to see how they
serve as ways of directing your choice of clothing.
1 1 Examine the new meanings a word like 'eh' acquires in every context
or every use. Does this apply to all expressions?
Can you explain how a word like 'waste', after long use in its literal
sense, can suddenly leap into slang use and change its meaning to
'kill'? Is "Let's waste him" the successor to "Let's rub him out"?
12. The thirties' expression, "Tough beans!" might surface again at any
time through revivals of old movies. What sort of experience is
described by this phrase?
Do you consider that slang is sophisticated language?
1 3. In the sixties, an expression like, "What's coming off?" took the place
of "What's going on?" In the seventies, the equivalent expression is,
"What's going down?" Try to outline the subtle shifts of experience

and attitude apparent in such changes.
14. Compare American and Canadian slang, and Canadian and British
slang to discover different attitudes latent in the figures of the actual

words.
15. Taking various examples of the 'word of the year' from your own
group, discuss the hidden ground or situation that provides a con-
text for each of these words or phrases.
How to Relate to Your Own Time 1 69
Note how changes in the hidden ground bring about the quick
disappearance of these words or phrases.
16. Find examples of the persistence of words and phrases because of a
situation or ground. What has kept the word 'cool' in use for the last
ten years, while the word 'decent' was a favorite for only six
months?
1 7. What are some of the best literary sources for current slang? In what
ways has Rolling Stone become an authority on current slang?
18. Make a list of traditional popular sayings with their equivalents in
current slang. Start with "A rolling stone gathers no moss" and its
equivalent in current slang, "Go with the flow."
The study of recent slang can be used as a strategy for

discovering new situations and problems in your world.
19. Examine expressions like 'hanging loose' or 'hanging in there', or
words like 'centered' or 'together' for indications of new attitudes,

new feelings, new postures, new ways of meeting the world and its
people.
20. Collect slang associated with the car over the past thirty years. Con-
sider the car as figure in a changing ground of social conversation.
21. Trace the recent history of slang used in relation to:
gangsters and crime
sports
money
movies
ethnic groups
music
the recording industry
comic strips
novels
television shows
radio
disk jockeys
current song lyrics
3. Popular Culture
Another way of updating your awareness is to pay attention to

changes in popular culture.
By studying new 'hit' records or books in figure/ground terms, it is easy to

discover new and changing social situations {ground), before these sit-
uations become obvious as figures.

Until recently it was a function of the high arts of painting, music and
poetry to make people more aware of the changing world around them.
More recently, students and critics have turned to the popular arts as
sources of the same opportunity for growth as the serious arts. These
had functioned to update the public's attitudes and perceptions by shak-
ing them free of traditional concepts and by directing their attention to
new models and new patterns. For example, in 1900 Cubism was intro-
duced. At first, it was called 'multilocational art', because there was no
single point from which it was intended to be viewed. Picasso's painting,

"Demoiselles d'Avignon" (1908), example of the multiloca-
is a familiar
tional style. A little'The Woman in the Mirror," Picasso pre-
later, in
sented simultaneously the overt and the subliminal life of his subject. As
with "Demoiselles d'Avignon," the viewer sees the way people would
like to appear, as well as the way they actually do appear.
At the same time that these painters were beginning to show the
outer and the inner lives of their subjects in a single image, Max Planck
presented quantum physics (1900). His theory replaced the concept of
connected matter with the concept of matter as a cluster of 'quanta', or
areas of energy. In the same year Sigmund Freud published The Interpre-
tation oi Dreams. His purpose was to bring our subconscious life to the
mind's surface in order to explain our conscious outlook and attitudes.
The ground of all these innovations was the new electric service of the
telegraph which, by instant transmission of messages, closed the gaps
between past, present and future and presented all these phases of time
in a single image, or under a single dateline in the newspapers.
Since the invention of radio and television, the simultaneous occur-
rence of events and their reporting has become normal experience.
We take for granted that an event occurring be known in Beirut will
and 'experienced' in New and Tokyo at the same time. In
York and Berlin
this kind of world, have the serious arts any more to tell us than the
popular arts of 'comics' and entertainment?

How to Relate to Your Own Time 171
The experience of "Jaws" and "The Towering Inferno" and "The Other
Side of the Mountain" and "Love Story" seems to be updating our emo-
tional lives in order to relate them to the changing situation in which we
live. We are all threatened by hidden forces which seem likely to swal-
low us up. New governments in the world pose dangers, like hidden
sharks in deep water. Representative government, operating on the sur-
face, has been superseded in many places by hidden governments work-
ing through the secret service. The situation portrayed in "Jaws" matches
very well the dependence on electronic information and secrecy of the
new forms of government that have evolved.
Some people may think that the experiences portrayed in "The Exor-
cist" or "Jaws" or in vampire movies are experiences outside the ordinary
range of human events. In fact, they are reflections of what we have
already been through many times, as electronic media have invaded our
entire lives. Our own nervous systems are made over to the service of
radio and television, and they return as vampires to plague us.
The question arises whether these experiences induce a new

awareness or a catharsis which brings relief from old experience.
This is a question which faces boards of censors every day: should they
or should they not permit pornography in its most fantastic forms, as a
possible relief from horrors already experienced?
1. Study the patterns of selection in the 'Top 10' records. Compare
their themes, rhythm and tempo. Do the 'Top 10' all relate to differ-
ent grounds, or is there a shared ground 7 .
Compare the 'Top 10' movies, TV shows, books and news stories.
Are there shared grounds among these?

2. Try to discover the 'Top 10' jokes, and look for the hidden grievance
or ground which supports their popularity. The ground is easy to
discover if you simply remove the figure of the punchline.
4. What good is it to be aware
"Greyat Three" illustrates the new information available to children on

TV and elsewhere. Whether by means of advertisements or pictures,
many children know more about the world at the age of three than
Methuselah did at three hundred, or even nine hundred, years of age.
.
Modern medicine may suddenly discover the means of arresting

the aging process.
1 Try to imagine what decisions you would make about education and
careers, if your doctor could suddenly guarantee that you would
remain approximately twenty-one years of age for fifty or one hun-
dred years. How would this change your ideas about your education
and your career?
Would you find it natural and desirable to plan a whole range of
diverse activities and training programs for yourself? Would you plan
to become a doctor, or an explorer, or a scientist, or an architect, or a
linguist,and to spend ten or twenty years in each of these profes-
sions? How would such an addition to your life span affect your
ideas of marriage and family? Would you entertain the idea of many
marriages and many children? What particular problems would an
increased life span pose?
At present, world events move, in a single year, through changes

that used to take decades.
More change now takes place around the world in ten years than
social
ever took place in any previous century. In the world where information
is transmitted by electric impulses which move at the speed of light,

individual life is also greatly accelerated so that, in fact, we live several
lifetimes in a relatively few years. The world is full of people who have
had many careers. If it were possible for you to have twenty different
careers, would you feel the same as if you were confronted by a choice
of thirty different kinds of ice cream?
The field of electronics, with its instant information, seems

already to have created the possibility of pursuing several
different careers in one lifetime.
The wide acceptance of continuing education seems to indicate that

learning has become a way of life.
2. Investigate the business world to see how often executives now

change their jobs.
Job mobility goes along with residential mobility. Early retirement permits
new careers. We might return to the idea of the Renaissance man of
independent means whom
wide spectrum of activities and careers
for a
was the ideal. The encyclopedic man, the all-round man of that period,
might combine the careers of soldier, diplomat, scholar and scientist.
How to Relate to Your Own Time 1 73
Note the new interest in training on the job instead of training for the
job: to create a successful careerist, get the right person first, and edu-
cate him or her later.
Knowledge is our way of life.
What changes be needed in schools, when the entire world be-

will
comes a ground knowing and learning?

for
3. Imagine yourself in charge of an espionage team with the task of
learning all about your own country, so that you can take over its
government. What kinds of knowledge would you have to acquire?
4. What evidence can you find that existing TV programs are commer-
cial efforts to update the community about what's going on, and
what its current problems are?

5. Is our country big enough for everybody to find a rural hideaway and
subsist by his or her own efforts? Could every one of us become a

Robinson Crusoe?
That's one approach to the 'future shock' problem. There's also the
approach which the Sherlock Holmes book suggest. The
stories and this
famous detective was generally bored, except when he was engaged in

solving problems of crime. For this reason, he kept himself as active as
possible in the work he had chosen.
6. Compare the satisfactions that are to be found in the actual pro-
cesses of learning with those to be found in the state of acquired
knowledge. Ask yourselves:
• Is it more enjoyable to make a macrame plant holder, for in-
stance, than to buy one?

• Are there more satisfactions in patching your own jeans than in
buying new ones?

• Ismore fun to make your own Christmas gifts than
it to buy
them?
• Would you rather repair your bicycle than take it to a bicycle-
repair shop?
• Would you prefer to maintain your own motorcycle rather than to
take it to a garage for servicing?
Have the answers to these questions any connection with the

revolt against consumerism?
In his book, The Canadian Establishment, Peter Newman describes the

situation of wealthy people who get most of the satisfaction wealth
provides from making money, and not from having money.
The people who have had the most satisfying careers in the age of
have generally been quite ordinary. What happens to the
electricity
wealthy and the great when they realize that their work and their wealth
give them less satisfaction than they expected?
The user gives meaning to the content of any situation.
7. Discuss the contention that those who are unprepared for wealth
can make only an impoverished response to their possession of it.
8. Discuss the learning situation as a preparation for satisfactions that
can never be obtained by the unprepared.

9. Interview people who make a hobby or a career of renovating old
homes, antique furniture, or boats.
10. Interview friends who make their own clothes, or their own motor-
cycles.
You will, of course, have to reach your own conclusions. But remember:
"Life is like a trumpet ... if you don't put anythinig into it, you
don't get anything out of it."
General Bibliography
General Bibliography
Artscanada "The Issue of Video Art/' October 1973. 129 Adelaide

Street West, Suite 400, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5H 1R6.
An entire issue of the magazine given over to then-current video
art.
Atwood, Margaret. Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Litera-

ture. Toronto: House of Anansi, 1972.
Margaret Atwood shows the student how to discover a cultural

ground through an examination of literature.
Beckwith, John. "Gas!" Unpublished score for twenty speaking voices.
(Copies can be ordered from Canadian Music Centre, 1263 Bay
Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.)
A musical portrait of an automobile trip through a modem city. The
vocal score can be performed even by a class of nonsingers.
Berger, Arthur A. The TV-Guided American. New York: Walker and
Co., 1976.
A guide and analysis for the top TV shows by the author of The
Comic-Stripped American.
Berton, Pierre. Hollywood's Canada: The Americanization of the Na-
tional Image. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1975.
The title says it all. One of the effects of film.
Boswell, James. The Life of Samuel Johnson. Volume 1. (p. 396.) To-
ronto: J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 1926.
Buhler, Curt. The Fifteenth Century Book: the Scribes, the Printers, the
Decorators. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1960.
Early in the age of print, buyers of printed books frequently took
them to the scriptorium to have them copied and illustrated. The
printed book was felt to be inferior in many ways.
Capra, Frank. The Name Above The Title: An Autobiography. New
York: Macmillan, 1971.
A book about the pioneer phase of film-making by one of the great
directors. Every page loaded with insights and anecdotes that re-
veal the patterns of the film's heyday.

Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the
Looking-Glass. London: Macmillan; New York: St. Martin's Press,
1958; Pocket Papermacs, 1966.
Consumer Reports. Published monthly by Consumers Union of

United States Inc., 256 Washington Street, Mount Vernon, N.Y.
10050.
A magazine that provides informed access to some of the tools of
our environment.
Dantzig, Tobias. Number: The Language of Science. New York: Mac-
millan, 1959. Revised Edition, 1962.
Includes the amazing history of zero, which could not be invented
in the ground of the Western world.
Diamant, Lincoln. The Anatomy of A Television Commercial. New
York: Hastings House, 1970.
A unique account of the elaborate stages in the process of creating
one short commercial for a Kodak camera.
Television's Classic Commercials: The Colden Years
1948-1958. New York: Hastings House, 1971.
As well as being an analysis of sixty-nine classic commercials, the
book includes a general history of American television advertising,
and production techniques. Informative and fascinating.
Doxiadis, Constantinos A. Architecture in Transition. London: Hutch-
inson and Co., 1963.
Ekistics, the art of human settlements, studies the changing pattern
of transport as an effect on city scale.
'Eliot, T.S. "Fragment of an Agon," read by Eliot on Harvard Vocarium
Records. P-1207. H.F.S. 3124. As recorded by Eliot for the Poetry
Room, Harvard College Library, 1947. The text of the poem can be
found in T.S. Eliot, Collected Poems: 1909—1962. London: Faber
& Faber, 1963.
Ellul, Jacques. Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes. New
York: A.A. Knopf, 1965 and Vintage Books, 1973.
Describes and deplores our technological society. An analysis of a
culture in action.
Frazer, Sir James C. The Colden Bough. Toronto: Macmillan, 1960.
Cerson, Noel B. Because Loved Him: The Life and Loves of Lillie
I
Langtry. New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc., 1971.

Cillett, Charlie. The Sound of The City: The Rise of Rock 'N' Roll. New
York: Dell Publishing Co., 1970; Laurel Edition, 1972.
An exploration of the figure/ground relationship between the city
and rock 'n' roll. A history of our language and our culture.
Hall, Ross H. Food For Nought: The Decline in Nutrition. Hagerstown,
Maryland: Harper and Row, 1974.
A study of the effects of modern food technology. Arguments
General Bibliography 179
against the food additive rackets are convincingly illustrated by

advertisements reproduced in the book.
Haskell, Molly. From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in
the Movies. Penguin Books, 1973.

How movies have portrayed and betrayed women.
Joyce, James. Ulysses. First published in Paris, 1922; reprinted in Pen-
guin Books, 1968.
The- Certy MacDowell passage is on page 348 of the Penguin
edition. The chapter in which it is included is a running metaphor of
clothing cliches used to present the idea of clothing as weaponry.
Kesterton, Wilfred H. A History of journalism in Canada. Toronto:
McClelland and Stewart, 1967.
The story of the press's role in establishing popular government.
Knight, Arthur. The Liveliest Art. New York: Macmillan, 1957.
"Sound gave the banks and the investment houses their first real
hold upon the motion picture industry" — typical of the fascinating
information in this book.
and Thompson, Denys. Culture and Environment. London:
Leavis, F.R.
Chattoand Windus, 1937.
The training of critical awareness. The book assumes, as did Jane
Austen, in writing of her society, that stable rural values are supe-
rior to those of the suburban and metropolitan world.
Leavis, Q.D. Fiction and The Reading Public. London: Chatto and
Windus, 1932.
A unique study of the audience of fiction.
Leavitt, Hart Day. The Writer's Eye. New York and Toronto: Bantam
Pathfinder Edition, 1968.
Learning to write by playing with unusual figure/ground relation-
ships. Excellent illustrations.
Day and Sohn, David A. Stop, Look, and Write.
Leavitt, Hart New York
and Toronto: Bantam Pathfinder Edition, 1964.
Same approach as The Writer's Eye but for a more junior class.
Lewis, Sinclair. Babbitt. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1950.
A satire of American life in the 'big city'.
Madsen, R.P. The Impact of Films: The Living Image. New York: Mac-
millan, 1973.
"The older the target audience, the more specialized becomes their
interests and abilities" — filled with such interesting discoveries and
anecdotes about the whole world of film.
Mailer, Norman. Armies of the Night. New York: New American Li-
brary, 1968 and 1971.
A personal account of a protest march and its relation to the media.
McKowen, Clark and Sparke, William. It's Only a Movie. Designed by

Mel Byars. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall J 971.
A 'pop' approach to the study of the movies. Format of the book
makes it fun to use in a senior class.
"McLaren, Norman:
Any of Norman McLaren's films distributed by the National Film
Board of Canada.
An Interview With Norman McLaren. 30 min. B&W, NFB.
An interview with McLaren by Clyde Gilmour, the movie critic.
McLaren discusses the various techniques he uses in making films

and examples from his hand-painted films are used in the inter-
view.
McLuhan, Marshall. "Inside on the Outside, or the Spaced-Out Ameri-
can." Reprinted from Journal of Communication Autumn, 1976,
Volume 26:4.
McLuhan, Marshall and Nevitt, Barrington. Take Today: The Executive
as Dropout. Toronto: Longman, Canada, Ltd., 1972.
McLuhan, Marshall and Watson, Wilfred. Cliche to Archetype. New
York: Viking Press, 1970.
A study of cliches {figures) which, when pushed to extremes, flip
into archetypes (grounds) and vice versa.

**Miller, Allan. "Bolero." 1972. Released in Canada by International
Tele-Film. 26 min. sd. col.
Zubin Mehta conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in
a performance of Ravel's "Bolero." The rehearsal and conversations

about music with Mehta and the musicians are cut into the film.
Miller, Zane L. The Urbanization of Modern America: A Brief History.
New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, Inc., 1973.
The evolution American way of life, graphically presented.
of the
Murry, John Middleton. Problem of Style. London: Oxford paperback,
No. 11,1960.
"Style is a way of seeing and knowing the world."
Newman, Peter. The Canadian Establishment. Toronto: McClelland
and Stewart, 1975.
An account of the absence of satisfactions in being wealthy.
•nicol, b.p. Canadada. Toronto: Griffin House, 1972. IPS 1004.
Niven, David. The Moon's a Balloon. London: Coronet Books, 1971;
Dell, 1973.
Hollywood seen through the eyes of an actor, who is irrepressibly
entertaining and very conscious of the media.
Packard, Vance. The Hidden Persuaders. New York: D. McKay Co.,
1957.
General Bibliography 181
Many people are enraged to discover that they have been ma-
nipulated by hidden factors in the advertising situation. Packard
studies this kind of manipulation.
Peterson, Elmer. Tristan Tzara: Dada & Surrational Theorist. New York:
Rutgers University Press, 1971.
A history of the founder of the Dada movement. An exploration of
Dada and its attempt to make poetry a way of life, to update
people's awareness. Clears up a lot of misunderstandings about
Dada.
Piaget, Jean. Structuralism. London: Routledge, Kegan Paul, 1971.
The best study of figure/ground 'gestalt' analysis. Piaget covers all
fields.
Picard, Max. The World of Silence. Trans. Stanley Godman. Chicago:

H. Regnery, 1952.
Here silence is studied as the ground for all sounds.
Pope, Alexander. "Essay on Criticism." British Book Center, 153E 78th
St., New York: 1974.
Pound, Ezra. ABC of Reading. New York: New Directions Paperbook,
1960.
The art of navigation in literature written by an "antenna of the
race."
Reed, Henry. "Naming of Parts," in A Map of Verona. London: Jona-
than Cape Ltd., 1946.
One of the clearest examples of the way a poet can make use of
shifting figure/ground relationships to sharpen an audience's ex-
perience.
Reston, James. The Artillery of the Press. New York: Harper and Row,
1967.
The role of the press in foreign policy ("a government is the only
known vessel that leaks from the top"). Offers a new slant on "fit
to print."
Richards, Ivor A. Practical Criticism. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1952;
paperback edition, 1956.
The first exploration of the reading habits of highly literate people
and the discovery of their almost complete incompetence.
Sidran, Ben. Black Talk: How the Music of Black America Created a
Radical Alternative to the Values of Western Literary Tradition.
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1 971
A study of the figure/ground relationship between black music and
American language and culture. A real resource.
Skornia, Harry J. Televsion and Society: An Inquest & Agenda for
Improvement. Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1965.

A discussion of the ethics of broadcasting, from the role of big
City as Classroom 182
business to broadcasting and international relations, and a proposal

for change.
Smith, C.W. The Reason Why. London: Constable, 1953.
Starnes, DeWitt T. and W. Classical Myth and Legend
Talbert, Ernest
in Renaissance Dictionaries. Chapel Hill: University of North Caro-
lina Press, 1955, and Westport: Greenwood Press Inc., 1973.
The first dictionaries were human interest encyclopedias until the
merely alphabetic dictionaries took over. The old dictionaries are
somewhat like the latest encyclopedic dictionaries of our own
time.
Steiner, in Language and Si-
George. "Silence and the Poet" (1966)
lence. New
Atheneum, 1967; paperback edition, 1970.
York:
The essay notes the prevalence of slang in Germany on the eve of
Hitler and the corresponding uncertainty of situations.
"Thomas, Mario and Hart, Carole. "Free to be... You and Me." Free
To Be Foundation, 1974. Released in Canada by McGraw-Hill Films.
44 min. sd. col.
Made for television, this film combines animation and photogra-
phy, mythology and documentary in a series of brilliant metaphors.
Thompson, Denys. Reading and Discrimination. London: Chatto and
Windus, 1949; revised edition, 1962.
Begins with Blake's observation, "No man can embrace True Art
until he has explored and cast out False Art." It assumes that the
world around us is worth careful study and that we should pay as
close attention to the structures of cities and buildings as to the
structures of poetry and painting. We must study both figure and
ground.
Wells, H.G. The Time Machine: An Invention. London: Heinemann,
1 971 . (Obtainable through The Book Society of Canada, Agincourt,
Ontario.)
White, Lynn, Jr. Mediaeval Technology and Social Change. London:
Oxford University Press, 1962.

The amazing tale of the stirrup's effect in creating chivalry and the
feudal system, the discovery of the horse collar and horsepower
and the creation of the city.
Whole Earth Catalogue.
Access to the tools of the planet as a resource.
Whorf, Benjamin Lee. Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writ-
ings. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1956; paperback edition, 1964.
The effect of language in shaping our awareness of our world.

General Reference 183
Yanes, Samuel and Holdorf, Cia. Big Rock Candy Mountain. New
York:A Delta Special, published by Dell Pub. Co. Inc., 1 971
A whole earth catalogue of "resources ... for our education."
*Yevtushenko, Yevgeni. The Voices of Yevtushenko and Voznesen-
sky. Monitor Records, 1 56 Fifth Avenue, New York 1 0, N.Y. MR No.
113.
denotes recording
denotes films
General Reference
Dictionaries and encyclopedias of all kinds will provide the student with
invaluable information about a culture's ideas of human artifacts and
environments through the ages, as well as a culture's perceptual bias.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations can be used to discover cultural atti-

tudes toward particular media, such as light, by reviewing all the refer-
ences to light.
Another useful book is Dictionary of Quotable Definitions. Ed. Eugene

E. Brussell. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970.
Dictionaries of the social sciences and histories of technology and
inventions are invaluable to the student of media.
Barnouw, Erik. Mass Communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart and

Winston, 1956.
Covers a wide range of media including the world of government
and sponsors. Contains the story of Sukarno of Indonesia congratu-
lating the Hollywood tycoons for creating revolutionary social fer-
ment in Asia: "...by showing ordinary people with refrigerators

and cars, [American films]had helped to build up a sense of depri-
vation of man's birthright."
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964; Mentor, 1973 (paperback).
Useful for all the media covered in this text. A study of the effects
of the media themselves, independent of any program content.
Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilization. New York: 1934. Paper-
back, 1963.
A study of the relationship between human artifacts and their
effects on the course of civilization. Complete bibliographies.

The Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, Inc. Making Contact Series, with six
volumes on different kinds of media:

A Time to Speak by Howard Stein, 1974
Electric Media by Les Brown and Sema Marks, 1974
Movies: Conversations with Peter Bogdanovich by Paul
McCluskey, 1974
Nonverbal Communication by Louis Forsdale, 1974
Print Media by Robert Trager, 1974
Visual Persuasion by Stuart Bay and William Thorn, 1974.

An excellent series filled with resources.
Patterns and structures 'make sense'
of things. Understanding structures
enables us all to avoid that feeling of
helplessness and frustration that
makes us want to shout, "Stop the
world- want to get off!"
I
When we concentrate on the structure

we can assess problems
of a situation,
more realistically and change the
situation or our response to it.
One of the ways to study the effects of

a technology on a culture is to imagine
what the same culture would be like
without it .Would we have to cancel
. .
the future for lack of a computer, as we

would cancel a hunting expedition for
lack of ammunition?
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McLUHAN

City as Classroom HUTCHON

Classroom ^co«^/^ »*' o*-» I

The Book Society of Canada Limited

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

McLuhan, Marshall, 1911-

I. Communication. 2. Mass media— Social aspects.

3. Technology— Social aspects. Hutchon, Kathryn. I.

II. McLuhan, Eric. III. Title

P90.M252 301.16 C77-001 283-3

Introduction: What's in a school?

4. Hidden grounds: how they affect our perception 1

5. Figure/ground analysis: a way to discover meaning 21

2 Properties of the Media

3 Effects of the Media: a New Culture

4 The City as Classroom

1 What you already know about your society 1 49

5 How to Relate to Your Own Time

As students in a school, do you think you have come to work?

Does the community want you to be separated from the work

Do you and your fellow students tend to regard the classroom as

How do classrooms affect your learning experience?

4. In order to discover what effect your present classroom has on your

• Was it easier in the lounge to grasp points presented by your

• Did your teacher find the different setting an advantage or a

vidual students and in the responsiveness of the class generally?

Discuss the different meanings of 'noise' in the classroom and in

the lounge. Is 'noise' in the classroom 'noise' in the lounge?

Should all schools be closed?

the community. (Look at Oliver Goldsmith's poem, "The Deserted

How has the relationship changed between work done in the

in-service training programs, adult programs for intensive language

To what extent has the community taken over the function of

8. If many people in the community work mainly at exchanging

become a continuation of the work done in school? Or, vice versa,

has schoolwork become part of the work of the community?

By talking to a variety of people, investigate what the community

person, a lawyer, a garbage collector, a cab driver. Do their answers

students as many different attitudes or ideas about the purpose of

If all the answers are available outside the classroom, is it good

In their approach to problems, Orientals tend to ask first, "What is the

In the next chapter we shall be looking at the interplay of figure and

Education: ''What remains when we have forgotten all that we

George Savile, Lord Halifax, 1633-1695

For Further Study:

Here are a few 'warm-up' exercises to sharpen your powers of

1. Receptionists are often surprised when they eventually meet some-

images, the expected or the unexpected, was the more 'real' or

Be as you can to the image you have formed of the person,

and do not let anyone else's ideas interfere.

tiny or huge? Do you 'see' an image? Is it in colors or greys? (Be

2.Figure/ground: a technique for

similar indefinite expressions.The terms 'figures' and 'foreground' and

and everything else is ground.

This interplay requires an interval or a gap, like the space between

Begin to experiment with figure/ground relationships by looking

brings to bear on painting, a satirist on situations.

The sense of configuration allows the viewer to perceive figure and

Figure 2 provides another example of figure/ground interplay: as before,

Try some figure/ground experiments that deal with a nonvisual

3. Record five or ten minutes of environmental sounds at a couple of

downtown, on your own street, in the schoolyard, in a factory, an

like to be in that place. Use the questions in Experiment 2, where

Classroom ^co«^/^ »' o-» I