A Crystal Ball with No Particular Point of View
McLuhan wrote:
"Our laws of media are intended to provide a ready means of
identifying the properties of and actions exerted upon ourselves by our
technologies and media and artifacts. They do not rest on any concept or
theory, but are empirical, and form a practical means of perceiving the action
and effects of ordinary human tools and services. They apply to all human
artifacts, whether hardware or software, whether bulldozers or buttons, or
poetic styles or philosophical systems."
... Or business! What makes the Laws of Media, or "Tetrads" so
powerful is that they consider two distinct, yet fundamental aspects of business
planning and strategy:
 | "The properties of ... our
technologies and media and artifacts"; and |
| "The actions exerted upon ourselves
by our technologies and media and artifacts." |
This is precisely why they work so
effectively
for
understanding and predicting
whether business strategies will be successful
and WHY.
The Tetrads help us to understand both the "thing"
itself (be it a particular technology, business process, model or concept) and
our collective response to it. (For all you left-brain types out there in the
audience, Tetrads help us understand both the supply-side and demand-side of the
equation.)
The Laws of Media Tetrads are comprised of four (are you surprised?)
questions, quoted here from McLuhan's Laws of Media: The New Science:
| "What
does the artifact ENHANCE
or intensify or make possible or accelerate? This can be asked
concerning a wastebasket, a painting, a steamroller, or a zipper, as
well as about a proposition in Euclid or a law of physics. It can be
asked about any word or phrase in any language." |
"When
pushed to the limits of its potential (another complementary action),
the new form will tend to reverse what had been its original
characteristics. What is the REVERSAL
potential of the new form?" |
| "What
recurrence or RETRIEVAL
of earlier actions and services is brought into play simultaneously by
the new form? What older, previously obsolesced ground is brought back
and inheres in the new form?" |
"If
some aspect of a situation is enlarged or enhanced, simultaneously the
old condition or unenhanced situation is displaced thereby. What is
pushed aside or OBSOLESCED
by the new 'organ'?" |
It is important to understand that the attributes or forms which answer these
four questions about the artifact, namely:
| What does "it" Extend or
intensify? |
| When extended beyond its limit, into what does "it"
Reverse
or flip? |
| What does "it" Obsolesce? |
| What formerly obsolesced form does "it" Retrieve
from the past? |
... exist simultaneously and are inherent in whatever we are considering. The
Laws of Media questions are not to be considered sequentially, or in any
particular order. The attributes of the four aspects are, in fact, complementary
to one another. Their discovery requires careful consideration and observation
of the artifact - be it tangible or intangible, an object or a
concept - in relation to its context and environment: In McLuhan's terms,
consideration of the figure in relation to
its ground.
Need I mention that working through the Tetrads is more effective in a group,
and particularly with an experienced facilitator?
Read on: Gaze Into the Ball, for
Beginners
Back to: Introduction - The New Crystal Ball
Business Transformation Quotations
of Marshall McLuhan are copyright © by the Estate of Marshall McLuhan and Gingko
Press.
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