Why is it important where and how you get information?

Message content change giver behaviour

XX a. In the early 19th century, Canadian Professor Herbert Marshall McLuhan (orig. Herbert Marshall McLuhan, 1911–1980) provided explanations about the radical technological changes in the mass media and their impact on consumers. Watching the transition of print media to electronic – radio and television, He saw a change in consumer habits. When reading the printed information, the user understood and received it differently than when he heard the same information on the radio or saw it on a black-and-white television screen. McLuhan then concluded that information (message) presented in a different form leads to a change in consumer habits (McLuhan, Marshall, & Quentin Fiore., 1967). Such insights from him broadened the classical understanding of the communication model. According to the most basic communication model developed by mathematicians Claude elwood Shanoon and Warren Weawer (Fig. 2), a message is information that the sender conveys to the recipient (Frigg, Roman and Hartmann, Stephan, 2009).

In compiling it, the authors relied on the operation of radio and telephone technologies and the analysis of their elements:

• Source of information – creator of the message content;
• Broadcast phase – encoding the message content and converting it into signals;
• Channel – a transmitter of signals, converting them into an expression understandable to the receiver;
• Recipient – repeater and decryptor of the encrypted message;
• Final status – the status when the message reaches the recipient.

This communication model, more popularly known as “linear”, consists of 4 parts: sender, message, channel, recipient. The authors of the communication model explain the meanings of the mentioned parts with a household example: sender – a person talking on the phone; message – information said by a person; telephone – channel (encodes the message, converts it into signals, transmits and decodes); receiver – a person listening at the other end of the cable. They noticed that when sending a message, its content may change (be distorted) due to interference in the channel during transmission – additional sounds or communication cracks (moments of silence when the recipient does not hear the information transmitted by the sender). Interference is more commonly known as “noise” (Figure 1). It is because of noise that the authors saw 3 key issues:

1. Technical – exactly how the message is transmitted.

2. Semantic – how to accurately convey the meaning of the message content.

3. Effectiveness – how the content of the received message affects the behavior of the recipient.

So the axis of the model created by Shannon and Weawer is the message. Its content and smoothness of transmission are important. Marshall McLuhan’s theory, meanwhile, shifts the essential focus from the message to the channel and focuses most on the third problem.

What is Feedforward?

Feedforward – the modification or control of a process using the expected results or consequences. According to Richards, “responsible self-programming” is a prediction of what effect a person’s words will have on him or others. In other words, a kind of self-criticism: pre-coordination of actions to avoid communication problems (McLuhan, Marshall, & David Carson. 2003). Simply put, imagine your mom invites you to go to a concert with a singer you don’t like. You don’t want to capture your mom’s feelings, but you don’t want to go to a concert either. So you’re thinking about what to do because you know from experience that mom can get angry, which you don’t want. You strategize what to do to get the desired reaction (mother’s anger). The term ‘responsible self-programming’ in the field of media technology is understood as the transmission and analysis of visual, audio and written information. After analyzing the obtained data, it is coordinated what and how can be done in the future to achieve the expected result – consumer (recipient of information) reaction, behavior (McLuhan, Marshall, and David Carson., 2003).

Habits introduced into learning “responsible self-programming” behaviors and cognitive education (established patterns of behavior in the human brain) are reconfigured to become new skills. Therefore, the results of teaching and learning in this way can be seen extremely quickly. In other words, videos act on (“reprogramm”) the self-modeling mechanism in the brain that controls our future behavior. Dowrick, P. W. (2011). This means that if the learning conditions are correct, the brain assigns new (dictated in the video) conditions and circumstances (context) to existing habits to create a future pattern of behavior (image) and response in the future. So we learn from the future faster than from the past.

Marshal McLuhan, one of Richard’s students, also explored his teacher’s favorite concept of “responsible self-programming.” The concept of “responsible self-programming” started in 1951 by I.A. Richards understood how to anticipate his actions – the strategy to achieve the result (impact on the audience) that creates the text. McLuhan, meanwhile, has interpreted this concept in his work as the basis for the notion that the consumer is new media content and the content delivery channel in new media is a modified version of the old media channel (McLuhan, Eric, & Marshall McLuhan, 2011). When comparing new and old media channels, we can use the example of an electronic and a printed book. The printed book can convey information in text and illustrations, while the electronic version of the book can present information in all possible audiovisual forms – audio (audio format), screened (films and videos), text (on the tablet, where text size, color, etc. can be changed). The information (message) conveyed by the content of the book will not change, only the user will have a different experience.

When people interact through technology, not only information and accumulated knowledge are transferred, but also new experiences are born, at the same time the social consequences of this communication process are challenged:

• loss of humanity and empathy;
• irrationality (excessive emotionality, submission to emotions and following them in making life decisions);
• consumption by oneself, another person and the environment;
• irresponsibility (use of resources, creation of simulations, broadcasting of information through the media, etc.)
• disintegration of a person / processes / phenomena / relationships / environment (search for benefits).

The peculiarities of the relationship between man and technology can also be viewed from the perspective of various disciplines, thus further delving into the ideas of other authors who supplement McLuhan’s insights.

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