parallelism around like mediums according to broadcast and network
integration. That is, the telephone (cool), even though it is interactive,
allowing for significant ‘participation’ in a communicative event, is merely
a conduit for speech, but lacks the (hot) range of cues and information
involved in the face-to-face. Television, one would think is, in itself pretty
‘hot’, but compared to its ‘counterpart‘, cinema, with its imposing high-
quality screen and sound, television is actually quite cool. Christopher
Horrocks (2001) claims that the Internet has problematized the status of
television as a cool medium. Cool mediums demand high participation,
and wide bandwidth interactivity is a heightened form of participation
otherwise denied to television. Horrocks suggests that because the Internet
acts like a kind of meta-medium in combining a range of media, of which
television becomes part of its content, it renders television not so ‘cool’
anymore and the latter can be considered ‘hot’ in relation to the Internet, if
we allow it to be considered as a distinct medium.
McLuhan’s distinction between hot and cold media places the capac-
ity for a medium to convey complexity at a premium – in the volume of
information (what the cyberspace theorists would see as bandwidth), the
level of definition (e.g. the continuums that McLuhan never really wrote
about – analogue to digital) and the number of senses that it works upon.
Notably, McLuhan’s observations on hot and cool media are a remarkable
anticipation of the theoretical analysis of ‘virtual reality’.
As Nguyen and Alexander (1996) point out, for McLuhan, ‘every new
technology changes how our sense organs operate to perceive reality, and
it may be that computer technology changes not only our perception of
reality but also our very selves’ (112–13).Media, by altering the environment, evoke in us unique ratios of sense per-
ceptions. The extension of any one sense alters the way we think and act –
the way we perceive the world. When these ratios change, [individuals]
change. (McLuhan and Fiore, 1967: 41)However, notably, we are never aware of the hold which a medium has
over us when it is effective and operating. As soon as we notice a medium,
it becomes ‘old’. This is arguably why it is possible to speak of a ‘second
media age’ now that the Internet and network-interactive technologies are
more prominent – the older mediums of broadcast are rendered more
object-like, rather than invisible.Social implications
Cyberspace as a new public sphere
One of the most prominent implications of the purported ‘re-tribalization’
of the consequences of the second media age is the way in which it is said72 COMMUNICATION THEORYHolmes-03.qxd 2/15/2005 10:31 AM Page 72