The iMedium is the iMassage
27th February 2010
Evgeny Morozov offers an excellent and insightful essay on the consequences of communication technology for changing people and societies. Many people see a new communication device – radio, film, TV to computer, smartphone, iWhatever – and believe it contains a persuasion revolution. Morozov looks at the love affair some smart people have with social media and their rosy expectations for political and social change. He is not optimistic.
As a persuasion guy, I’m not either.
Realize that a communication device only carries messages. To convey is not to convince. Reach is not persuasion. Speaking is not changing. Interactivity is not change. The device always carries the message and that is the message, Marshall McLuhan nonwithstanding.
And, this extends to how devices vary in their deployment. Take the term Network. Remember it as a collection of allied transmitters that create a TV broadcast Network. Now see it as the PostModern collection of wired and wireless computers that creates a Network. Neither Networks are inherently persuasive or inherently persuasive in a New Way. They just combine different elements of human nature into new packages.
Consider the Rules.
Great Persuaders Don’t Need Rich Uncles, Kindness from Strangers, or Third Party Vote Splitters.
If you know what you are doing you don’t need the New New Thing whether in the form of Ross Perot or Steve Jobs. You just do it with your skill and make the change happen. Hitler and Mussolini used, Zounds my Good Sir, radio and newspapers, posters and pamphlets, public speaking and cinema to conquer societies and rational restraints. Imagine what more they could have done with an iPhone and twitter? Not much. They knew what they were doing as evil persuasion geniuses. Sure, the devices helped, but only as a means of carrying their message.
It’s about the Other Guy, Stupid.
Persuasion is not about devices; it is about changing the other guy. Devices may help you segment your TACTs (gee, are iAcolytes different from the rest of us?) but that’s not persuasion. You change the Other Guy with messages, not devices.
May he rest in peace, but Marshall McLuhan is dead and so is the Medium is the Message.