A Commonplace Book

Q: Where do you think he [Marshall McLuhan] was wrong, or irresponsible?

A [Neil Postman]: Well I think the whole idea of hot medium and cool medium didn't really work. I think in the end I believe Marshall gave it up after awhile. But it was interesting as almost everything he said was interesting. He was trying to construct a new kind of taxonomy for perceiving media -- and that is a taxonomy that has to deal with how any particular medium massages or affects your sensorium. But when he tried to explain this idea by categorizing media as hot and cool and then giving definitions, the foundation of the definitions was confused because sometimes he seemed to be concentrating on the mechanical reproduction, the process of a medium; sometimes he seemed to be focused on something else that was not entirely clear. Moreover, if you tried to use his own system: something like print, which he thought was a hot medium, could just as easily have been a cool medium, because that, of all media, seemed to give you the least information. That was one of the characteristics of a cool medium, that it didn't supply you hotly with lots of information so that there had to be greater participation on the part of the audience to fill in. Well, it always puzzled me that he'd call print a hot medium and as I remember, I think he also called radio a hot medium, which seemed to me to fulfill the conditions of what he meant by cool medium.

So that was kind of confusing, and it was too bad because when he became almost a cult figure and a guru of the electronic age, many people focused on this hot and cool medium distinction, and they couldn't always take it very far because they were confused. But I don't think he was disturbed about that. If I had said to him what I just said to you, he would have said, "Well, okay, if it's not straight, make up a better one." But he would have given the lead as to what to look at, and we've had students here at New York University, that have tried to invent better ones. They would have a value in their work they would have to attribute to McLuhan's inspiration.