Beyond mediation: thinking the computer otherwise

Whatever Media Studies 2.0 involves, one thing is certain, there is a need to confront and deal with new technologies, most notably computers and computer networks. Despite the fact that the discipline has largely marginalized these innovations, there has been some effort to incorporate the computer into both the theories and practices of media studies. This has been accomplished, at least in the United States, through the development of what is now called computer-mediated communication (CMC). CMC, which effectively understands the computer as a medium of human communication, does not necessarily institute a significant paradigm shift in media studies but accommodates the new technologies to existing structures, methodologies, and models. This essay contests and critiques this approach. It reviews the development of CMC, identifies its structural limitations, and provides an alternative understanding of the computer that has the potential to reorient the discipline in a much more radical fashion. Let’s begin at the end, with a statement about the end that will only be able to be properly understood at the end: the computer, despite everything we now read about new media, media convergence, and digital this and that, is neither a new form of mediated communication; an elaboration, continuation, and confluence of previous media technologies; nor a new tool in the arsenal of media production and distribution. Instead it constitutes the end of media as we have known it. In other word, the computer marks the end not just of a particular form of media, as has often been argued by scholars of both literacy and media studies (Bolter 2001; Bolter and Grusin 1999; McLuhan 1995; Ong 1995), but of a particular and paradigmatic concept of media such. I write this not to be controversial or fashionable, even though I recognize that such a statement is in fact not without considerable controversy and, from the perspective of a particular brand of theory that appends the prefix postto virtually everything (i.e., post-modern, post-industrial, and even post-media), appears to be following what many would perceive to be a kind of intellectual haut couture. Instead I write this out of a deep and serious commitment to the study of media and the discipline of what has been called media studies. ISCC_1.1_05_art_Gunkel_53-70.indd 53 9/8/09 12:17:52 PM 54 David J. Gunkel Introduction When employed for the purposes of communication, the computer has customarily been assigned one of two possible functions, both of which are dictated by a particular understanding of the process of communication. The computer has either been defined as a medium through which human interlocutors exchange information, or it has occupied, with varying degrees of success, the position of the other in communicative exchanges, becoming a participant with which human users interact. These two alternatives were initially formalized and distinguished in Robert Cathcart and Gary Gumpert’s 1985 essay ‘The Person-Computer Interaction.’ In this text, the authors differentiate communicating through a computer from communicating with a computer. The former, they argue, names all those ‘computer facilitated functions’ where ‘the computer is interposed between sender and receiver.’ The latter designates ‘person-computer interpersonal functions’ where ‘one party activates a computer which in turn responds appropriately in graphic, alphanumeric, or vocal modes establishing an ongoing sender/receiver relationship’ (Cathcart and Gumpert 1985: 114). These two alternatives were corroborated and further refined in James Chesebro and Donald Bonsall’s 1989 book, Computer-Mediated Communication. In this extended examination of the role and function of the computer, the authors detail a five-point scale that delimits the range of possibilities for ‘computer-human communication.’ The scale extends from the computer utilized as a mere medium of transmission between human interlocutors to the computer understood as an intelligent agent with whom human users interact. Although providing a more complex articulation of the intervening possibilities, Chesebro and Bonsall’s formulation remains bounded by the two possibilities initially identified by Cathcart and Gumpert. These two alternatives, which were originally associated with the prepositions through and with, effectively situate the computer in one of two positions. The computer either is a medium of communication through which human users exchange information, or it constitutes an Other with whom one communicates. Despite the early identification of these two alternatives, the field of media studies has, for better or worse, privileged one term over and against the other. With very few exceptions, media studies research has decided to address the computer as a medium through which human users interact with one another. This decision is immediately evident in and has been institutionalized by the relatively new field of computer-mediated communication, or CMC. CMC is routinely defined as any form of communication between human users that takes place through, or is facilitated by, some form of computer technology. With CMC, therefore, the computer is understood as a medium or instrument through which human users exchange messages and interact with each other. In this way, CMC does not necessarily institute anything new within the discipline of media studies but accommodates these new technologies to existing structures, methodologies, and models. Defining the computer in this manner is completely reasonable and possesses distinct theoretical advantages. At the same time, however, this approach limits our understanding of the computer, restricting it to only one of the two options initially identified by Cathcart and Gumpert. ISCC_1.1_05_art_Gunkel_53-70.indd 54 9/8/09 12:17:52 PM 55 Beyond mediation: thinking the computer otherwise The Origins of CMC Understanding and defining the computer as a medium of communication is a direct result of experiences with timeshared mainframe computers and early experiments with computer networking. First generation and early second generation mainframe computers like the UNIVAC and the IBM 650 and System/360 employed what computer scientists call ‘batch processing.’ Because these machines were designed to execute one job at a time, users were required to run their programs in batches, each particular job running from start to finish in its entirety (Kemeny 1971). Timesharing, a conglomeration of several conceptual and technological developments, dramatically altered this situation. In timesharing, the central computer is designed to be used by many simultaneous users, each accessing the machine remotely by using ‘dumb terminals’ comprised of a CRT display and keyboard (McCarthy 1962). Although timeshared systems were initially designed to permit concurrent access to and simultaneous use of a single computer, giving each individual the illusion that s/he was the sole user of the apparatus, operators and system administrators quickly discovered that this type of shared usage allowed for two kinds of communication between users. One system, eventually called ‘chat’, provided users with a kind of synchronous interpersonal and even broadcast form of communication. In chat, users exchange information in text form by typing messages on their keyboard. Because each keyboard in a timeshared system is connected to and communicates with a common computer, the keystrokes entered by one user can be simultaneously displayed on any number of CRTs wired into the system. Additionally, because each user of the central computer is assigned a separate log-in identifier, one can employ the computer’s own administrative system to discriminate between users, allowing the sender of a message to specify the destination or ‘address’ of the intended receiver(s). The earliest chat programs were designed to transmit messages between two users, creating a kind of interpersonal communication through the medium of the computer. Later enhancements supported the distribution of messages to more than one user, which allowed for the broadcasting of messages and information. The introduction and development of this form of computer-mediated communication illustrates William Gibson’s (1993) insight that ‘the street finds its own use for things’ (1993: 23). Chat programs, at least initially, were not designed and developed by the manufacturers of mainframe computers. Instead they were invented and implemented by users and administrators of these timeshared systems. The second form of computer-mediated communication fostered by timesharing was electronic messaging or what is now commonly called email. Like chat, electronic messaging capitalized on the fact that timeshared systems were supported and coordinated by a common, central computing machine. Unlike chat, however, electronic messaging provided for a form of asynchronous communication. Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon provide a succinct description of the operation of such systems in their examination of the origins of email: Researchers on the same time-sharing system each had a designated file, like an in-box, in the central machine. Colleagues could address short electronic ISCC_1.1_05_art_Gunkel_53-70.indd 55 9/8/09 12:17:52 PM 56 David J. Gunkel messages to someone else’s in-box, where only the recipient could read them. Messages could be dropped and picked up at any time. It was convenient, given the odd hours people kept. People within a single lab sent parades of one-liners back and forth, as well as longer memoranda and drafts of papers. (Hafner and Lyon 1996: 190) Employed in this fashion, the mainframe computer functioned as an automated message processing and distribution system, operating in ways that were similar to conventional forms of inter-office mail. The first electronic message program was called MAILBOX and was installed in the early 1960s on a timeshared mainframe at MIT. Like chat, this early email program was not developed by the manufacturers of the hardware and software; it too was hacked together post hoc by users and administrators of timeshared systems. The use of the computer as a form of both synchronous and asynchronous communication expanded with experiments in computer networking and the development of ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet. In 1968, J.C.R. Licklider and Robert W. Taylor published an influential and prescient article in the April edition of International Science and Technology. This article, ‘The Computer as a Communication Device,’ not only espoused the advantages of communicating through timeshared mainframes but projected the benefits of expanding these various forms of ‘computer-aided communication’ to multi-machine computer networks. Although Licklider and Taylor had only experimented with a single machine coordinating communication across a room, they predicted that the same principles and results would apply to communication between individuals thousands of miles apart (Licklider and Taylor 1999: 97). Proof of their concept was provided three years later with the Emergency Management Information Systems And Reference Index (EMISARI). Murray Turoff, who oversaw the development and implementation of this computerized conferencing system for the US Office of Emergency Preparedness (OEP), described EMISARI as a ‘computer-mediated communication system for dispersed human groups’ (Hiltz and Turoff 1978: 43). The system provided three ways for users to communicate with each other: ‘One, called “Party Line,” was a simultaneous written conversation for up to 15 persons ... The other was “Discussion,” which kept a permanent record in the computer of all entries made by participants, who were not on simultaneously. The third was messages among the contacts, which could also be attached to specific data items on tables as footnotes’ (Hiltz and Turoff 1978: 55). With these three kinds of user interaction, EMISARI provided participants with synchronous and asynchronous communication over a dedicated computer network. In the same year that EMISARI came online, Ray Tomlinson, an engineer in the employ of Bolt Baranek and Newman, created the first inter-machine email program, successfully passing an electronic message between two PDP-10 minicomputers. Electronic messaging in a timeshared system was possible because different users shared the same machine and its operating system. Tomlinson’s innovation was to devise a method for transferring an electronic message from the file system of one machine to that of another, permitting users of different systems to ISCC_1.1_05_art_Gunkel_53-70.indd 56 9/8/09 12:17:52 PM 57 Beyond mediation: thinking the computer otherwise exchange messages. This basic email system was synthesized by combining an extant electronic message program (SNDMSG) with a file transfer program (CYPNET). In the process of experimenting with this, Tomlinson selected the now ubiquitous @ symbol to distinguish the name of an individual user from that of the host computer s/he utilizes. Eventually Tomlinson used this email program to inform other researchers on ARPANET of the existence of the nascent email system and its mode of operation. Consequently, the first use of network email announced the system’s own existence (Campbell 1998: 3); the medium was, quite literally, the message. The application immediately caught on, and by 1974 it was estimated that 75 per cent of all traffic on ARPANET was email. Communication through the instrumentality of the computer, whether in the form of synchronous or asynchronous exchange, has been designated by a number of different names. In ‘The Computer as Communication Device’, Licklider and Taylor (1999) advocated use of the term ‘computeraided communication’ (CAC), which they fashioned following the precedent established in the engineering community with computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE). Other theorists and practitioners have employed the compound ‘compunications’ (Oettinger 1971), ‘computer-based communication’ (Vallee and Wilson 1976), and ‘computerized communication’ (Rogers and Rafaeli 1985). Other candidates include Zbigniew Brzezinski’s neologism ‘technotronic’, which designates ‘the impact of technology and electronics – especially in the area of computers and communication’ (Brzezinski 1970: 9), and ‘telematique’, which was introduced by Alain Minc and Simon Nora in a 1978 report commissioned by French President Giscard d’Estaing to identify the ‘increasing interconnection between computers and telecommunications’ (Nora and Minc 1980: 4). But the most popular and accepted appellation, especially in the United States, has been and continues to be ‘computer-mediated communication’. Despite its popularity, the exact origin and etymology of this phrase is not certain. What is known is that it begins to make an appearance in the midto late 1970s. In 1978, for example, Starr Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff employed the term in their extended examination of computerized conferencing, The Networked Nation: Human Communication via Computer. Although Hiltz and Turroff used the term ‘computer conferencing system’ (CCS) to name ‘any system that uses the computer to mediate communication among human beings’ (Hiltz and Turroff 1978: xix), they had also employed ‘computer-mediated communication’ as a generic designation for various forms of human communication via the computer, including, ‘computerized conferencing, computer assisted instruction, and home terminals from which white collar work can be done’ (Hiltz and Turroff 1978: 167). The phrase ‘computer-mediated communication’ was elevated to the status of a technical term in Hiltz’s subsequent collaboration with Elaine Kerr, which was undertaken for the US government’s National Science Foundation. This 1981 study was expanded and published in 1982 under the title Computer-Mediated Communication Systems: Status and Evaluation. In this text, ‘computer-mediated communication’ was defined as ‘a new form of enhanced human communication’ (Hiltz and Kerr 1982: 3). ISCC_1.1_05_art_Gunkel_53-70.indd 57 9/8/09 12:17:52 PM 58 David J. Gunkel Essentially, computer-mediated communication means that large numbers of people in business, government, education, or at home can use the computer to maintain continuous communication and information exchanges. More than a replacement for the telephone, mails, or face-to-face meetings, computer communication is a new medium for building and maintaining human relationships. (Hiltz and Kerr 1982: ix) For Hiltz and Kerr, the specific technologies that make up this new medium of human interaction includes: ‘conferencing systems, electronic message systems, and general information-communication systems designed to support “knowledge workers”’ (Hiltz and Kerr 1982: 1). Consequently, Hiltz and Kerr’s ‘computer-mediated communication’ functions as a comprehensive term, designating both synchronous and asynchronous forms of human communication through the instrumentality of the computer. Recent employments and characterizations of CMC have reiterated and solidified this general and instrumentalist definition. For Susan Herring, editor of one of the first published collection of essays addressing CMC, ‘computer-mediated communication is communication that takes place between human beings via the instrumentality of computers’ (Herring 1996: 1). And John December, editor of the now defunct Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine, answers the self-reflective question ‘What is CMC?’ with a similar definition: ‘Computer-mediated communication is a process of human communication via computers ...’ (December 1997: 1). Standard Operating Presumptions In CMC the computer is defined and functions as a medium or instrument through which human users exchange messages and interact with one another. Situating the computer in this fashion is completely reasonable and has distinct theoretical and practical advantages. First, this approach locates the computer at an identifiable position within the process model of communication, which was initially formalized by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver in The Mathematical Theory of Communication. According to Shannon and Weaver, communication is a dyadic process bounded, on the one side, by an information source or sender and, on the other side, by a receiver. These two participants are connected by a communication channel or medium through which messages selected by the sender are conveyed to the receiver (Shannon and Weaver 1963: 7–8). This rudimentary model is not only ‘accepted as one of the main seeds out of which Communication Studies has grown’ (Fiske 1994: 6) but establishes the basic elements and parameters for future elaborations and developments. Although subsequent models, like those devised by George Gerbner (1956), B. H. Wesley and M. S. MacLean (1957), and Roman Jakobson (1960), extend and complicate Shannon and Weaver’s initial concept, they retain the basic elements of senders and receivers connected by a medium that facilitates the transmission of messages. In accordance with this model, CMC locates the computer in the intermediate position of channel or medium. As such, it occupies the position granted to other forms of communication technology and is comprehended as something through which human messages pass. ISCC_1.1_05_art_Gunkel_53-70.indd 58 9/8/09 12:17:52 PM 59 Beyond mediation: thinking the computer otherwise Second, this intermediate position is substantiated and justified by the traditional understanding of the proper role and function of the technological apparatus. This can be seen, for example, in the work of Marshall McLuhan, the media theorist whose influence extends beyond traditional forms of media studies and into the new fields of CMC and cyberculture. For McLuhan, media – and the word ‘media’ encompasses a wide range of different technological devices, applying not just to the mechanisms of communication, like newspaper and radio, but all kinds of tools and instruments – are defined as ‘extensions of man.’ This is, of course, immediately evident from the title of what is considered to be one of his most influential books, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. And the examples employed throughout this text are by now familiar: the wheel is an extension of the foot, the telephone is an extension of the ear, and the television is an extension of the eye (McLuhan 1995). Understood in this way, technical mechanisms are defined as prostheses through which various human faculties come to be extended beyond their original capacity or ability. In making this argument, McLuhan does not so much introduce a new understanding of media technology but provides explicit articulation of a decision that is itself firmly rooted in the soil of the Western tradition. The concept of technology, especially the technology of information and communication, as an extension of human capabilities is evident in and deployed by Plato’s Phaedrus, where writing had been addressed and debated as an artificial supplement for speech and memory (Plato 1982: 274b–276c). This particular understanding is also evident in Martin Heidegger’s The Question Concerning Technology: We ask the question concerning technology when we ask what it is. Everyone knows the two statements that answer our question. One says: Technology is a means to an end. The other says: Technology is a human activity. The two definitions of technology belong together. For to posit ends and procure and utilize the means to them is a human activity. The manufacture and utilization of equipment, tools, and machines, the manufactured and used things themselves, and the needs and ends that they serve, all belong to