CS640K Fall 2023
Sound, Aurality, and Power
First Blog Assignment Question 




Just to get the blog going, here are set of questions pertaining to Innis and McLuhan's conception of orality, aurality, and medium theory. In your post, please address at least TWO of the questions.


















Comments

  1. Badmus idowuOctober 2, 2023 at 8:31 PM

    I will be contributing to questions two and three. Selected spoken English words, the infection vector in the radio play, fit more into Innis's space bias typology of medium bias. And it is the space bias, which in this context refers to the capacity of spoken words to cross physical boundaries, that encourages the rapid spread of disease. If the language virus had been spread through a medium with a time bias, it is likely that patient Zero and others nearby would have been the only ones to contract it. However, given that sound can travel through space (as waves) and that telephone, television, and radio broadcasting technologies can all increase the distance that sound can travel, the language virus uses the space bias of oral communication and its extension (CLSY radio transmission, telephone conversations, and even probably Television) to spread swiftly, making quarantine—which is only achievable with time-biased media as a vector—impossible.
    This brings up question number two. Radio and the telephone are extensions of oral communication, according to Couldry and Hepp's concept of mediatization, and McLuhan’s medium theory. As extensions of human senses, media have taken on a major role in all spheres of being and becoming. Hence, as media technologies with largely auditory input, oral culture, and orality are principally extended beyond space by these technologies, expanding the social, economic, political, and cultural ramifications of such oral communication. As can be inferred from the radio play, the virus might not have developed into a viral infection if it weren't for the amplifying influence of these technologies. Without radio in the 1930s, it's possible that many Germans wouldn't have been aware of Adolf Hitler's ability to incite German nationalism, which helped pave the way for World War II. Perhaps the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Rwanda wouldn't have happened without radio.

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