Broadcast Media
technology is relatively new compared to print media. Initially, radio was
invented as a means of military and marine communication, especially over the
Atlantic Ocean. Its commercial use began through the efforts of Harold Power,
who set up the American Radio and Research Company. From the Tufts University
campus in Massachusetts, USA, Power initiated the first commercial broadcast on
March 8, 1916. The broadcast lasted three (3) hours and consisted of dance
music, a professor’s lecture, a weather report, and bedtime stories.
1922 – Philippine
radio began
-Herman set up 3 experimental 50- watt AM
stations in Manila and Pasay
1926
– Herman
consolidates this into 100 -watt AM stations
1946
– James
L. build BEC, aim to setthe first
television station in the country.
1950-1970
–
Radio was promoting long-distance education
1952
–
Bolinao Electronics Corporation (BEC) change its name to ABS
1957
–
ABS merged it with radio network, CBN. ABS-CBN became the first radio-network
1960
– Bob
Stewart started DZBB- TV Channel 7
1986
–
Maharlika Broadcasting Network change its name to PTV 4
2010
–
TV 5 was established
History
of Print Media
The History of Printingstarts as early as 3500
BCE, when the Persian and Mesopotamian civilizations used cylinder seals to certify
documents written in clay. Other early forms include block seals, pottery
imprints and cloth printing. Woodblock printing on paper originated in China around 200 CE. It led to
the development of movable type in the
eleventh century and the spread of book production in East Asia. Woodblock
printing was also used in Europe, but it was in the fifteenth century that
European printers combined movable type and alphabetic scripts to
create an economical book publishing industry.
This industry enabled the communication
of ideas and sharing of knowledge on an unprecedented scale. Alongside the
development of text printing, new and lower-cost methods of image reproduction
were developed, including lithography, screen printing and photocopying.
The large-scale
production of books did not begin in the Orient until the Ming Dynasty in the
13th century (Tsien, 1985). However, western historians give the credit to
German Johannes Gutenburg, who built a metal movable type printing press in
1439, which had a more efficient method of printing books and pamphlets.
1439 – German Johannes
Gutenberg build a metal movable type printing press
1605 – The first
newspaper in the modern sense was published by German Johann Carlous
1609
–
Another newspaper was started in Germany called “File”
-Print Media began in Philippines
1811
– First
locally produced newspaper was published “ Del
Superior Governor”
1846
– “La Esperanza” was released, a paper written
for the local Spanish community
1848
–
To rival the “La Esperanza” they released
“Diario de Manila”
1865
– First
article written about the disaster in the Philippines on the typhoon in
September 1865
1889
- “La Solidaridad” was released. It is the
nationalistic newspaper that served as the mouthpiece of the revolutionary
movement.
1900
–
The Manila Daily Bulletin was founded by an American for shipping journal
1908
– The
first newspaper magazine was founded, “The Philippine Free Press”
1945-1972
–
This era was called “The Golden Age of Philippines Journalism” by the scholars.
1972
–
Former President Marcos ordered to take over and control all private owned
newspaper
1990
– The
Manila Bulletin was set up by the foreigners.
Ethical Reflection: Postman’s Faustian Bargain
New technology is a kind of Faustian
bargain. It always gives us something, but it always takes away something
important. That’s true of the alphabet, and the printing press, and telegraph,
right up through the computer. – Neil Postman
A Faustian bargainis deal with the devil, a pact
with Satan, an agreement that allows you to have anything you've ever wanted.
And in exchange for extreme wealth or power, all you have to do is hand your
soul over to the devil for eternity. The popular theme of the Faustian bargain
started in folktales, but its stories are still told in popular films, music,
comic strips, books, and television programs today.
McLuhan’s probes stimulated
others to ponder whether specific media environments were beneficial or
destructive for those immersed in them. Neil Postman founded the media ecology
program at New York University and was regarded by many as McLuhan’s heir
apparent. Like McLuhan, Postman believed that the forms of media regulate and
even dictate what kind of content the form of a given medium can carry. For
example, smoke signals implicitly discourage philosophical argument.
New technology always presents
us with a Faustian bargain – a potential deal with the devil. Postman’s
believed that the primarytask of media
ecology is to make moral judgments.
A
new technology always presents us with a Faustian bargain – a potential deal
with the devil. As Postman was fond of saying, “Technology giveth and
technology taketh away… A new technology sometimes creates more than it
destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never
one-sided”.
The
environment of television turns everything into entertainment and everyone into
juvenile adults. Triviality trumps seriousness.
A video clip inserted above is about Neil Postman on Cyberspace, 1995
The Digital Age: Rewiring the global village
The mass
age of electronic media is becoming increasingly personalized.It is a period in human history
characterized by the shift from traditional industry that the Industrial
Revolution brought through industrialization, to an economy based on information
computerization.
When wired, magazine on
digital culture was launched in 1992, the editors declared Marshall McLuhan the
magazine’s “patron saint.” There was a sense that another revolution was
looming, as many returned to the words of McLuhan for guidance. However,
digital technology doesn’t pull the plug on the electronic age, because, quite
frankly, it still needs its power source. The digital age is wholly electronic.
With that said, there’s
no doubt that the introduction of digital technology is altering the electronic
environment. The message of electronic media is becoming increasingly
personalized. Instead of one (1) unified electronic tribe, we have a growing
number of digital tribes forming around the most specialized ideas, beliefs,
values, interests, and fetishes. Instead of mass consciousness, which McLuhan
viewed rather favorably, we have the emergence of tribal warfare mentality.
Despite the contentious nature of this tribalization of differences, many see
the benefit in the resulting decentralization of power and control.
We are living in
Digital Age as we are all using internet, social media, digital clock, computer
and etc. We are all using the gadgets that are invented in digital age.
The Electronic Age: The Rise of Global Age
Today, after more than a century of
electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a
global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is
concerned.
- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964.
It started with a device created by Samuel Morse's invention
of the telegraph and led to the telephone, the cell phone, television,
internet, DVD, video games, etc. This ability to communicate instantly returned
us to the tradition of sound and touch rather than sight. Being able to be in
constant contact with the world becomes a nosy generation where everyone knows
everyone's business and everyone's business is everyone else's.
McLuhan insisted that the electronic media retribalizing the
human race. Electronic Media bring us in touch with everyone, everywhere,
instantaneously. This age shows that feelings is more important than thinking.
What is the
Global Village?
According to Wikipedia, the term global village represents
the simplifying of the whole world into one village through the use of
electronic media. Global village is also a term to express the constituting relationship
between economics and other social sciences throughout the world. The term was
coined by Canadian media theorist, Marshall McLuhan,[1]and popularized in his books The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962) and Understanding Media (1964)
McLuhan changed the way the world thought about media and technology ever since
his use of the word in his book [2]. McLuhan described how electric technology has contracted
the globe into a village[3]because of the instantaneous movement of information from
every quarter to every point at the same time.[4]
Because electrons are mostly
invisible, our visualizations of them tell us more about our dreams than about
electrons. This cool and unusual book gathers our earliest collective dreams
about circuits and electronics, and makes them visible. It got me thinking
about our assumptions for tomorrow. I love it when a book like this makes me
see the world differently. — Kevin Kelly, senior maverick for Wired magazine and author of What Technology Wants
People use technology to fit into a digital community to
which they aren't physically connected, but mentally connected. Each social
media platform acts as a digital home for individuals, allowing people to
express themselves through the global village.
I encourage you to
watch the clip below. It was from McLuhan as he talked about the Future of
Health Technology.
The Print Age: Prototype of Industrial Evolution
If the phonetic
alphabet made visual independence possible, the printing press made it
widespread. In The Gutenberg Galaxy, McLuhan argued that the most important
aspect of movable type was its ability to reproduce the same text over and over
again, and a press run of 100,000 copies of Understanding Media suggest that he
was right. Because the print revolution demonstrated mass production of
identical products, McLuhan called it the forerunner of the industrial
revolution. He saw other unintended side effects of Guttenberg.
This is the Era where
printed books finally introduced. Same text, content or information can be read
by different people in the whole world.
With
printing came a new visual stress: the portable book. It allowed people to
carry books, so they could read in privacy isolated from others. Libraries were
created to hold these books and also gave freedom to be alienated from others and
from immediacy of their surroundings.
A clip below will give us more idea about the Print Age
The Age of Literacy: A Visual
Point of View
Turning sounds into
visible objects radically altered the symbolic environment. Suddenly, the eye
became the heir apparent. Hearing diminished in value and quality. To disagree
with this assessment merely illustrates McLuhan’s belief that a private,
left-brain “point of view” becomes possible in a world that encourages the
visual practice of reading texts.
In this era, people
will use their eyes than hearing. People will now practice to read books. Words
are no longer alive and immediate. They can be read and reread.
The picture below is the Phonetic Alphabet that was used to make it possible.
By at least the 8th century BCE the Greeks borrowed the
Phoenician alphabet and adapted
it to their own language, According to Greek legends transmitted by Herodotus,
the alphabet was brought
from Phoenicia to Greece by Cadmos.
People on this era had
more privacy than tribal era. You can get information alone just by reading and
reading than in tribal era when you are not in the group you can’t get the
information. When people learned to read, they become independent
thinkers. People had the freedom to be
alienated from others and from the immediacy of their surroundings.
People used
text and alphabets to pass the information from the author and the reader.
Proximity became less important no matter how many kilometers. People can still
receive the information. Words were no longer immediate and alive.
To know more about the Age of Literacy, click the clip below made by Mary Hermosa (June 25,2017)