Mcluhan and new communication technologies: from Posthumanism to Neuromedia (original) (raw)

2011, McLuhan Galaxy Conference. Understanding Media, Today. Ciastellardi, M., Miranda, C. y Scolari, C.A. (eds.). Barcelona: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. ISBN 978-84-938802-1-7.

In the XXI century, McLuhan's postulates have become an indispensable framework for current and future media research. With the establishment of the new intermedia paradigm, there is a growing interest in developing a neurocommunication and neuromedia system based on old researches in neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotic devices. In the early 1960s Marshall McLuhan revealed how communication technology affects cognitive organization. In the Prologue to 1962's The Gutenberg Galaxy, he announced that media are “extensions” of our human senses, bodies and minds. A key concept that nowadays must be reviewed, in fact, with neuromedia McLuhan's theories become extraordinarily visionary. Direct interaction between new media and the brain would establish a new principle for interactive communication. The medium would be our own brain, a bio-digital revolution to ensure an information exchange without filtering and trasmission error. As Caspar Stracke recalls in his essay about the age of cerebral simulation, the US Congress declared the 1990s to be the “Decade of the Brain” and approved a research program costing billions of dollars. This measure was the result of an old dream: the desire to render human thought visible in order to open up a new reliable and simultaneous communication system. For the last years many theoreticians and researchers have been working on bio-digital communication challenges. One of the most interesting proposals has been suggested by Peter Weibel, who mantains an innovative form of “genetic art”: the neurocinema (Future Cinema, MIT/ZKM, 2003). Weibel supports the possibility of generating a new net composed by interconnected brains able to receive immages and sounds through quantums or ultrasounds. It means that whereas in the nineteenth century machinery was releated to experimental physiology, the new machines of vision will be releated to neuroscience and cognitive science. With the future cinema, the cinematographic apparatus will deveice the brain, not the eye (“trompe le cerveau, not trompe l’oeil”). Weibel explains that “Thanks to pulse-based temporal codes that directly stimulate the brain with the help of neurochips or brain-chips, there would be perception without the senses, seeing without the eyes”. The result is that simulation would be replaced by stimulation, it means that the brain would become the screen. Weibel's project is not only linked to systems of Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality and 3D Vision, it is also based on new researches about “artificial senses” (Tokyo University's Yokose-Tanikawa Laboratory, 2010) and, particularly, to post-human condition in media sphere. This is an ideal context to develop and improve new interfaces through BCI Technology (Brain Computer Interface) where McLuhan's philosophical and technological perspective will turn out to be essential to redefine multidisciplinar researches about the brain and communication process from a post-organic view. In the field of brain research, at C.I.T.'s Biological Imaginig Center, Steve Potter is working on the first bi-directional, multi-channel interface based on a biochip that measures all possible stimulus reactions. Another interesting example is the Center for Biological and Computational Learning at MIT in Boston (USA), co-directed by Tomaso Poggio with the project “The MIT Intelligence Initiative”, focused on the interrelation between neurosciences and AI. In Italy, there is an innovative initiative called “Trip to the moon” leaded by Roberto Cigolani at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia di Genova. This project consists on the creation of the most perfect umanoid robot with arms and legs, eyes and skin with tactile sensitivity, a target that should be reached by 2023. These researches refresh McLuhan's “mechanical wife” or Futurist Ray Kurzweil's postulates about “technological singularity”. Instead of focusing on the development of computer sciences, current studies about neurosciences shows an increasing interest in the interrelation of the human brain and new media, following the anthropological philosophy of Marshall McLuhan. According to the Canadian theoretician, the advent of new technologies exert a gravitational effect on cognition which affects our perceptual habits and our social interactions. Neuromedia revolution revisits the difference between the languages of seeing and laguages of hearing: new interfaces for mobile reading and telecommunication or new vision machines (as 3D Holographic Transmission and Tridimensional Telepresence, Nature, Vol. 468, November 4th 2010) constitute a milestone in the theoretical revolution about media hibridation set up by McLuhan. The aim of this paper is to reflect about the repercussion of neuromedia in new communication technologies. It would be interesting to review the evolution of this interrelation from Avant-garde postulates to current imaginary. In this proposal it will be indispensable to look through McLuhan's main contribution, which still remains an essential framework for electronic media and visual culture.