I’m happy to give you my argument, but you won’t find it much different from Postman’s re: medium and message. We may have to pick away at it a bit at a time, largely because it’s the end of the semester (student papers by the zillions), and I’m in the middle of writing/editing two essays (one of which I may talk about in a blog post later today).

Quickly, to start, I need to add something to the following statement for clarity: “I would argue that content format must follow what the medium dictates, i.e. there is very little choice.” What I failed to say is that this assertion assumes that the communicator wants to use a particular medium in the most effective way and knows what that way is. For example, since TV is a picture-driven medium, one has a better chance of using the medium well by employing images than not. So the content is constrained in this way unless the communicator doesn’t care about the message or doesn’t know what the medium requires.

I’ll try to keep this going based on your responses, but do me a favor: One or two questions at a time. I do want to have this conversation with you, but I can’t let it interfere with everything else that I’m doing now. Two weeks from now, this isn’t a problem. In fact, perhaps we’ll discuss this topic at length in Nashville in two weeks.

re: research value

You bet! Go for it! I might at some point. Right now I have several projects in the works that I must finish first.

Aha!

Now, this is an argument that I am very interested in hearing. It is important, to me, to hear your argument.

Important in the way a serious student wants to transact on a topic that especially peeks his interest with someone he thinks can help him learn, discover and articulate his thoughts better.

I have not been successful in getting you to engage in such a transaction, or at least that’s my impression. The closest I got was on February 6, 2005 12:21 AM, “I will give this layers idea serious consideration.”

I see the infrastructural biases as the “dictates” of the medium. They consist of definitory and strategic rules that make that genre of medium recognizable.

It is a upper layer “communication” protocol, above the structural biases. My previous question, put off to later, was an attempt to ask how TIVO, for example, might alter the infrastructural biases.

I have tried to lay out an outline of this hypothesis here and posted it on my blog here, click on Excerpt).

I would like to know if there is, IYO, research value there. Could there be an interdisciplinary thesis in rhetoric, information theory, …, or is it old news?

“What I’m against is watching whole TV shows as a knowledge delivery method.”

Then is your complaint with content format or the medium?

If content format, then who made that choice?

Several other people have been sounding off on the Steven Johnson article I mentioned this afternoon, most of whom I found via this entry by Derek of Earth Wide Moth. Dana Stevens mentions a Salon interview with Adbusters editor Kalle…

Until I read Andy Cline’s entry at Rhetorica.net, I didn’t even know it was TV Turn-Off week.  I’ve already soaked up a few minutes of TV today, so I guess I blew that one.  Next year, next year.  Plus, with the NBA playoffs, forget it.&…

I’m a fan of smart classrooms. Our journalism lab is set up to use all available technologies. I taught in smart classrooms at Park for two years. And I taught in the computer-mediated English lab at UMKC beginning in 1996.

I have no problem using video of all sorts. I made great use of Jon Stewart’s appearance on Crossfire last semester, for example.

What I’m against is watching whole TV shows as a knowledge delivery method. I much prefer to use bits of video at a time and structure more active learning exercises around it, or use video critically, i.e. here’s an example of X, now let’s discuss.