The three views of media described so far, mediators, characteristics, and effects, might easily be used to describe media in an entirely deterministic manner. One might easily assert, on the basis of these elements alone, that one's choice of mediators leads inevitably to a set of characteristics; that the characteristics inherent to a medium deterministically constrain a medium to a specific set of effects. If our vision of media assumes that mediators or characteristics lead inevitably to predictable effects, we can easily label some media as good, some as bad, some as "hot", and some as "cold." If our view of what it is to be a medium begins with mediators or characteristics and ends with effects, our greatest insight may be that "the medium is the message."
If there is a lesson in our typology of media and subsequent test of user perceptions of media, it is that the realities of media do not always match their possibilities. Mediators merely create possibilities which are expressed as characteristics. The reality of media is determined, however, by the way media are used. When a bandwidth-poor cluster of media like publications is seen as having substantially richer content than a bandwidth-rich medium like television, the fault is not in the mediators or their characteristics. It is with the way the media are used; in the practice of using media.
Media practices are social innovations that are directed at the conduct of media. Some, like dictionary-based rules for correct spelling and meaning, apply to a variety of media. Others, like the use of "Dear ..." as a document opening and "Love," as a document closing, are specific to a single medium; in this case personal letters and, more often, love letters. The range of innovations that qualify as practices is substantial. It includes:
Many roles and statuses occur in consequence of using media, however, and are constrained, to some extent, to the media in which they are used. Broadcast radio encompasses roles of broadcaster and audience. Newspapers encompass roles of reporter, editor, advertiser, reader, and more. Small groups frequently assign roles of chairman (leader) and secretary. Almost any medium will encompass roles and relative statuses that are somewhat distinctive to that medium. Indeed, it will often be the case that media can be distinguished on the basis of the roles and statuses they encompass.
The rules of a medium include both formal and informal rules. Formal rules are more often explicitly stated rules of a medium. Informal rules are more often tacitly understood and are rarely verbalized. Formal and informal rules generally describe a continuum of rules that have varying force. Violation of the most important (and generally formal) rules may have severe consequences. Violation of less important (and more often informal) rules may result in little more than some social pressure to conform. These rules exist because participants in a medium (where participation is broadly defined to include the organization that sponsors or tolerates the medium as well as the individuals that view and contribute to the medium) wish them to exist.
Each of these practices can be regarded as a human invention which exists only in the common imagination of those those observe them. They succeed only because they are successfully communicated to, and adopted by, other people. The common ground, for each of these forms of practice, is its willing adoption by people for no apparent reason other than improved communication.
It is in the concept of practices, more than any other element of the grammar, that this study asserts the processual character of media. Practices do more than simply connect effects to mediators. They describe the process by which the people who use a medium gain control of that medium and shape it to their needs. If the effects of a medium are the "medium's message", practices are the means by which participants in a medium exert mastery over that message.
None of these varieties of media practice can be restricted to any particular grouping, whether media, media genre, organization, community, or society. Practices can exist in the consistent behavior of a single individual, the mass behavior of humanity, and at many frequently orthagonal levels in between:
One can easily name other ways of grouping the practices which can be observed in the use of media. Organizations, communities, and societies will all have varying relationships to their media, as will children and adults, men and women, day workers and night workers, etc. These groupings can obscure the relationship of practices to media. Just as there are effects of the messages that are independent of the medium, so there are practices that are largely independent of the medium.
There are, however, many practices which are so distinctly associated with specific media and genres of action within media that both media and genre can be uniquely identified by such practices. These practices, including the sequenced poetry of "Burma-shave" billboards, the discretely placed warning labels of magazine cigarette advertising, the greeting rituals of face-to-face interaction, and others, can sometimes be applied to other media with some measure of success, but are commonplace on specific media because they are effective in accomplishing specific purposes.
These media-specific practices frequently define the way we perceive media. They and other practices also define the way we use media and sometimes act to redefine the mediators, characteristics, and even effects of media.
It is in practices, more than mediators, characteristics, or effects, that we find our conception of most media. We may sometimes think of television in terms of televisions, channel selectors, remote controls, and VCRs. We may occasionally think of television in terms of broadcasters and audiences. We may even sometimes think about television in terms of such perceived effects as "couch potatoes" and "football widows".
We are more likely, however, to think of network television in terms of half hour sitcoms, hour long detective dramas, late night talk shows, late late movies, afternoon soap operas, evening news, and late afternoon reruns. This perception of television is cast in terms of characteristic processes that efficiently achieve the applications of television. These characteristic processes have well defined formats, frequently reused plots and plot elements, both stereotypic and prototypic characters, and well defined target audiences. They frequently are presented, moreover, at characteristic times during the day, based on the audience that can be reached at that time.
The same is true for a newspaper. We may occasionally think of a newspaper in terms of printing presses, writers, editors, or delivery people. We may sometimes think of newspapers in terms of their circulation. We may sometimes think of newspapers in terms of such effects as shaping public opinion or providing news and entertainment. It is much more likely, however, that we will perceive the newspaper in terms of its practices and the way we use it. Visualize someone reading a newspaper and they are likely to be reading while eating breakfast, riding on a train, or relaxing in an easy chair. Ask someone what they read in the newspaper and they are likely to mention special features like the sports section, the business section, Ann Landers, the daily comics, or the crossword puzzle. Ask someone to describe a newspaper and they will likely mention headlines, columns, and advertising.
The author's vision of the New York Times, until the feature was discontinued a few years ago, was the section B news summary. It was the first or second thing looked at every time the author opened the paper. The summary was hardly an application of the paper. It was simply a productive introduction to the rest of the paper. It shaped the author's use of the New York Times, and it is no accident that the author's subscription ended soon after the news summary disappeared. Although the author still buys the Tuesday and Sunday editions weekly, the New York Times has never been the same since.
The same is true, in different practices, for other readers, who can be expected, according to their daily practice, to typically start with the sports section, the business section, the television section, the comics, the horoscope, the advertisements, or the advice columns. Removal of a commonly-read comic strip from a newspaper can cost readership. Many newspapers in the 1970's, trapped between readers who found Doonesbury offensive and readers who built their newspaper reading habits around the comic, moved Doonesbury to their editorial section in an attempt to satisfy both. The newspaper is largely defined, for its readers, by its recurring content and their practices in reading that content.
Analogous arguments can be made for our perceptions of face to face communication. Our perception of face to face communication is not so much:
as it is in the generic process of interaction. Ask someone to define face to face communication and they will most likely describe it as two people talking to each other. Ask someone to visualize face to face communication and they will most likely imagine a template of an ordinary conversation. The very naming of the medium reflects the importance of practices to its definition. Face to face communication both describes the generic practice, within the medium, of two interactants facing each other such that each can see the face of the other.
The same is arguably true for our perception of any medium:
If our perception of media is shaped by how we use them, so too is our actual use of media shaped by the practices we create for them and observe in using them. The stereotype of the newspaper read with breakfast, in an easy chair, or on public transportation describes common patterns of interaction with a newspaper. People choose these generic processes because they are productive modes of interaction. The convention of writing the first sentence of a newspaper article to summarize the central who, what, where, when, why, and how of the rest of the story describes yet another productive pattern of interaction with a newspaper. It is selected in part because it is an effective way of writing news; in part because journalists are socialized to write that way.
The practices which govern our media apply to all participants in a medium, albeit with differing practices observed by differing classes of participant:
The newspaper reader works according to practices as well. A newspaper is read in a particular way in a particular place in a particular part of day. One may ascribe the choice to habit, but the habit will almost always turn out to reflect functional choices that are similar to the choices of others. There will be other practices governing the use of the newspaper. Complaints to the paper are sent to the editor and may be be published. The subscription needs to be paid in a particular way and on a particular schedule. The sections of a newspaper that are shared may be exchanged in a highly predictable, and almost certainly functional, manner.
Most coin-operated newspaper vending machines will let the purchaser of a single newspaper take all the newspapers in the machine. Yet we only take one, at least partly in fear of the policeman who may watching. We might easily take our neighbor's newspaper, which has most likely been thrown up their driveway, placed in their mailbox, or dropped in front of their door. Yet we don't, at least in part because we understand that a delivered newspaper is somebody's property.
Similar practices constrain the behavior of all of the participants in any medium:
These choices are inherently constraining. Decisions that help to optimize a medium for one set of applications inevitably handicap it for others. A medium that selects to serve the broadest possible (least common denominator) audience does so by both providing a useful service to that audience and avoiding offending large segments of its potential audience. These contrasting purposes will lead to difficult choices, as many productive applications will be offensive to others:
The effect of practices on the evolution of media is substantial and direct. Mediators provide possibilities, but practices shape those possibilities into realities. Practices can directly influence the effects of a medium by enhancing its effectiveness for a given application or constraining the likelihood of undesirable outcomes. They can also change a medium indirectly by creating or modifying the characteristics associated with media.
Practices are perhaps most powerful, however, when they are least direct. New mediators can be formed and old mediators modified in the wake of rules or generic practice. The conditions that lead a practice to be translated into a mediator are hardly clear-cut. This is exemplified in the following examples of practices that have been converted, in one manner or another, to mediators:
The conversion of practice to mediator is most commonly expressed in the creation of filters or controls. The conversion of practice to filter will generally entail the creation of an enforcement agent (traditionally a person, but increasingly a piece of software) who, armed with a knowledge of existing practice, ensures that a given set of practices are observed. The conversion will almost always result in well behaved, but comparatively slower, media. There is, then, a trade-off involved in the use of filters within media. Filters almost always entail a decrease in the level of interaction within the media that may or may not be offset by the more controlled appearance of the final product.
The conversion of practice to control will generally enable a participant in the medium to better control participation in the medium. Messages may be more readily delivered to specific targets. Ability to select among competing messages may be enhanced. Use of the medium may be quicker. The ability to apply the medium to specific purposes may be enhanced. These controls ultimately entail another trade-off, however. The benefits of the controls cannot be obtained unless one learns to use them.
It should come as no surprise, given the roots of practices in effects, that it can be convenient to view practices in two effect driven variants. The first of these variants, application-driven practices, develop to support the applications to which media are put. These application-driven practices encompass the patterns of behavior, including both patterns of presentation and interaction, that recur as people repeatedly apply a medium to a specific purpose. These practices are selected largely because of their perceived effectiveness in achieving the intended purpose. The study of such practices, in literature, art, and other fields, is frequently labeled as the study of "genre".
A second variant, outcome-driven practices generally develop in response to the unexpected, and frequently undesirable, side effects of using a medium. These practices are selected because they are perceived as being potentially effective in enhancing the experience of a medium (e.g. reducing recurring undesirable side effects). Such practices encompass the rules, norms, jargons, codes, and other constraints that users impose on interaction within a medium.
The differences between these variants of practices are a mirror of their similarities:
There is a temptation, in these differences, to describe these variants as distinct vocabulary points in our grammar. One might easily define all application-driven practices as generic patterns of behavior/interaction. One might, with equal or greater ease, define all outcome-driven practices as rules or norms. Indeed, we will frequently use "generic process" and "pattern of interaction" as synonyms for application-driven practice; use "rule" or "norm" as synonyms for outcome-driven practice.
The boundary between application-driven practices and outcome-driven practices, like the boundary between applications and outcomes, is difficult to draw, however. This difficulty stems, in part, from their common legacy, recurring variations in behavior:
The frequently tacit and even unconscious practice of practices compounds the problem. A romance novelist may not be conscious of the use of a generic device when the male romantic interest is initially presented as the very antithesis of the kind of person the female romantic interest is usually attracted to. A person asking for a favor may not realize they are using application-driven practices when they complement their prospective benefactor before asking for the favor or thank them for considering the request even after they've been turned down. A broadcaster that fails to use profane language usually usually won't even think about the rule that constrained that behavioral option. The individual who waits for the floor to be surrendered before responding to a discussion partner probably doesn't think about the outcome-driven practice that led to the behavior.
Practices are not always difficult to identify. Outcome-driven practices are sometimes formalized in such things as journalistic codes of ethics, editorial guidelines, rules of order, and law. Application-driven practices are sometimes converted into documented procedures, editorial formats, and organizational structures. Even without such formalizations, however, application-driven practices can frequently be distinguished from outcome-driven practices based on essential differences in the kinds of behavior they characteristically entail.
Application-driven practices most often prescribe behaviors which should enhance the effectiveness of one's use of a medium for a given purpose. They are concerned with the things one ought to do. Outcome driven practices, by contrast, most often proscribe behavior which other people find annoying or unacceptable. They are concerned with the things one ought not to do. This difference can be critical to the differentiation of application-driven practices from outcome driven practices. Where application-driven practices typically drive people to do things, outcome-driven practices typically drive people to not do things. Hence even though both forms of practice influence behavior, their effects, their propagation, and the means by which each can be observed, are different. Indeed, application and outcome-driven practices can be differentiated on the basis of at least three behavioral variations:
There is a risk, in drawing these distinctions, of overstressing the line between application-driven practices and control-driven practices; of understressing the continuum that is inherent to the distinction. One person's application may be anothers control. Practices that, at one level, are driven by the needs of an application may, at another level, be driven by a need to express control. Behaviors that begin as enhancements to an applications effectiveness may be so effective that their use becomes control driven. Hence while the next few pages will draw the distinction fairly strongly, there is a middle ground that will be explored, at least to some extent, later in this chapter.
Application-driven practices generally suggest effective ways to behave. They can, as a result, be recognized in their recurrence across a wide variety of communication events within a medium. We can recognize generic structures in romance novels because those structures recur in many such novels. The only obstacles to recognizing such structure is our willingness to read many romance novels and our ability to abstract structural similarities from our readings. We can recognize generic behavior in requests for assistance because the behavior recurs across many instances of such requests. Even though we may recognize the existence of such a pattern in examining a single prototypic case, that recognition is based in our prior experience of requesting assistance, having it requested of us, and observing third parties act out requests for assistance.
Outcome-driven practices, by contrast, generally detail ways in which we ought not behave. They can, as a result, be recognized in their violation; in the reaction people have to a behavior that we do not typically observe in the practice of using a medium. We can recognize a rule proscribing the use of profane language on television when a broadcaster's words are bleeped out or in the subsequent act of chastising or firing the broadcaster for his or her misbehavior. We can recognize a rule discouraging interruptions in conversations in the nonverbal (and sometimes overt verbal) reaction of the person who has been interrupted.
Another difference that can be exploited in distinguishing these variants of practice is the means by which individual practices evolve. Application-driven practices generally evolve through a process of emulation. When users of a medium recognize a particularly effective message, they will often seek to emulate that behavior in their own messages. One teaches speech, in part, by exposing students to examples of good speaking. Writers, painters, and other artists frequently learn to write, paint, or otherwise create art by copying the styles of other artists whom they admire.
The art of emulation should not be regarded as an uncommon skill or one that is reserved for formal training exercises. It is practiced by the little brother who observes that you can sometimes get what you want by crying. It is practiced by the boyfriend who observes that telephone conversations with a girlfriend work out better when ended with the words "I love you". It is practiced by the student who observes that students who volunteer in class often get better grades. It is practiced by the dentist who observes that small talk diffuses a patients tension. The art of emulation is not, moreover, restricted to the emulation of the behavior of others. The student of interaction in any medium, however unconscious the study may be, will often find sources of emulation in their own behavior.
Outcome-driven practices, by contrast, generally evolve through a process of negotiation. A participant in the use of a medium, having found the effect of some behavior annoying or unacceptable, will make a bid to discourage the behavior. The bid for a rule may be tacit, exposed only in a discouraging non-verbal behavior, or overt, addressed directly or indirectly to the offending party as a request for a change in the undesirable or unacceptable behavior.
Regardless of the bid's form, it will be subject to negotiation, with all the possible variations in outcome such negotiations entail. The bid may be accepted, with a resulting change in the behavior of participants in the medium. The bid may be rejected outright, sometimes with one party or the other terminating the interaction as a result. The bid may result in some intermediate level of negotiated change, with each side in the negotiation compromising somewhat in the interests of continuing interaction.
Consider, for instance, a bid for a rule that discourages conversational exchanges of more than a few lines each. One can imagine a variety of reasons for such a bid. The bidder may, seeing short conversational exchanges as being inherently lightweight, want to avoid any serious interaction. The bidder may, seeing short exchanges as discouraging the development of ideas, want to reduce the power of a more knowledgeable conversational partner. The bidder may, in response to the conversational partner's monopolization of the floor, seek to increase his or her opportunities to speak, or to reduce the relative power of the monopolizing interactant within the medium.
Note that this bid can, depending on the medium in which it is made, be communicated in a variety of ways. In a face to face exchange the bidder may lean back and look away every time the partner says more than a few lines. In a telephone conversation, the bidder may take to interrupting the partner whenever the partner says more than a few lines. In a newspaper, the bidder may write a letter to the editor, cancel their subscription, or stop their advertising. In a small group discussion, the bidder may, when she or he gets the floor, say "Let's play a game. Whoever says more than 30 words in a row first buys lunch." One can imagine, for such bids, an infinity of alternatives within these strategies as well as a wide range of entirely different strategies.
Once the bid for a rule is made, the floor opens to negotiation. Assuming the most overt of the above bids, the partner might agree to play the game or reject it outright. In a best-case response, an interaction partner might enquire "Am I talking too much?", thus opening the door to dialogue on how to resolve the underlying problem. In a worst-case response, the partner might end the interaction with a response like "Anyone who can propose such a ridiculous form of interaction doesn't merit my attention." The most typical case will probably be somewhere in between, with some mutually agreeable modification of the current rules of conversation adopted.
Assuming the least overt case, the negotiation only begins if the partner picks up on the non-verbal behavior. It doesn't matter if the partner is conscious of the behavior. It only matters that there is a reaction. The reaction may be, and probably most often starts out as being, a partial acceptance of the bid. The partner may reduce the length of exchanges. If the bidder improves his or her behavior in response to this change, the negotiation may start to wind down. If, however, the partner finds the bidder's behavior annoying, the partner may react with a bid for improved behavior.
The tacitness of the bidding and negotiation process, as outlined above, is hardly necessary. Indeed, the process is sometimes considerably more overt, even when it remains out of sight to most of those who will be affected by the outcome. This is particularly true of formal rules which will be stated overtly as a law, formal rule, or formal guideline. This process, which is generally oriented toward stating the rule in a manner which will be readily understood, will involve a series of proposed statements of the rule, accompanied by arguments for and against various nuances of such statements. For formal rules this process might easily involve executives, managers, lawyers, and other formal representatives of organizational or media policy representatives while excluding other participants in the medium.
Such overt discussion of rules can apply to informal rules as well. We will present a mechanism for such discussion in computer conferencing in a coming chapter.
The point, of course, is that the negotiation of outcome-driven practices, even when they are conducted quietly via non-verbal cues, may be observable. Where observed, such negotiations provide powerful evidence of the possibility of a rule-building interaction within a medium. Such negotiations do not guarantee a rule. There is no guarantee that a bid will be accepted or even negotiated. Where, however, one subsequently observes behavior change that is consistent with the negotiation, one can be fairly confident that a rule exists.
No similar expectations can be raised relative to emulation as practiced in application-driven rules formation. Observation of one or a few cases of emulation hardly constitutes the existence of an application-driven practice, even if it does open the possibility that a practice is evolving. The act of emulation will often be a difficult one to identify. One is far more likely to notice the recurrent pattern of an established application-driven practice than one is to identify the emulation characteristic of an emerging application-driven practice.
A third difference that can be exploited in distinguishing application and outcome-driven practices is enforcement. Once negotiated, outcome driven practices attempt to constrain behavior that, at least for informal rules, has already occurred through the choice of participants who felt it to be effective for some purpose. The purpose for which the behavior was selected will almost certainly recur, and a behavior selected once for a given purpose will almost certainly be selected again. Hence even where it is possible to gain the general agreement of all current users that a particular rule is a good idea, it can be expected that the rule will eventually be violated by someone who was not involved in the original negotiation (for informal rules) or who has not adequately considered the formal rules.
There are two principle tools by which new participants of a medium can be taught to observe the rules that have already been formulated. One of these tools is education; the act of informing a participant that may not be aware of a rule of its existence. The mechanism of such education, for formal rules, is frequently a document that formally states the rules that govern the medium. Violation of the most important rules in such documents, whether stated as a set of guidelines, an editorial policy, a code of ethics, or other list of formal rules, may include sanctions as extreme as an outright ban from use of an instance of the medium or, in an organization, termination of employment.
There may be no formal documentation of the informal rules of a medium. Education concerning informal rules will frequently involve observation and learning by doing. The education may be an informal side comment, following a first offense, to the effect that people don't act that way here. Regardless of the form that education takes, it is backed, for repeated violators and violations, by the more emphatic act of enforcement.
The near inevitability of outcome-driven practice violations leads, equally inevitably, to attempts to enforce the violated rule or other practice when it is violated repeatedly. The nature of such enforcement can be highly variable. A small group participant who violates the group's rules may find it difficult to get or keep the floor, may be counseled by some leading member of the group to shape up, or may simply be excluded from the group. A face to face interactant who violates expectations may find conversational partners creating distance, suggesting new ways to behave, or simply unwilling to interact with him or her. A newspaper reporter who fails to observe editorial guidelines may be given less interesting assignments, heavily cross checked and edited, or fired.
The boundary between educating an individual about a rule and enforcing the rule can be difficult to draw. The act of telling someone about a rule before it is violated is almost certainly one of education. The act of punishing a participant for violating a rule is almost certainly one of enforcement. The middle ground, typified by telling an individual about a violation after it occurs, can be regarded as either education or enforcement depending on one's perspective. One notes, however, that the perspective of the educator is naturally different from that of the perhaps unknowing rule violator. Conflict can easily arise from what one party regards as friendly advice and the other regards as a personal attack.
The goal of education, and usually of enforcement, is that of socializing new participants to the existing rules that govern a medium. The intent, in all but the most extreme cases, is to bring the behavior of new participants in line with the expectations of existing participants. When taken to the extreme of banning the participant from a particular use of a medium, moreover, the intent is still that of discouraging a given mode of behavior. Hence where either education or enforcement actions can be observed within a medium, they are an almost unmistakable symptom of the existence of outcome-driven practices.
There is, by contrast, generally no analogue for enforcement in the recognition of application-driven practices. Application-driven practices are generally optional behaviors that can be selected by participants if they fit their intent. A failure to act according to such practices may, then, diminish one's likelihood of success in a given act, but it will hardly invoke either the advice or wrath of other participants. There are exceptions to this expectation. A journalist who fails to invoke the proper combination of who, what, where, why, when, and how in the first sentence may find her or his copy edited; may be counseled on proper journalistic writing style. A scientist who invokes a personal pronoun in a journal submission may find the submission rejected or may be counseled on proper scientific expression.
These latter examples demonstrate the difficulties which are sometimes inherent to differentiating application-driven practices from outcome driven practices. Just as the desirable outcomes of media will sometimes be converted to applications, so it is that particularly desireable modes of application-driven behavior can be converted to control-driven behavior; that otherwise control-driven behavior can be found to be effect from the perspective of application driven practice.
This conversion process does not necessarily signal a continuum between application-driven practices and outcome-driven practices. The two forms of practice can be differentiated as being polar on several dimensions, and the conversion of application-driven practice to control-driven practice may involve greater extremity rather than less. Specifically:
If successful, the negotiation may change the behavior in some token manner, but the essential behavior will simply become more commonplace. If the negotiation is unsuccessful, the subject behavior will almost certainly continue. The process is not, then, generally a combination of emulation and negotiation. It is most often a full emulation process which is followed by a full negotiation process.
Still, there are many instances of practices whose status as application-driven or control-driven is, at best, a matter of debate. Some practices do arise in a process that combines emulation and negotiation. Some practices are only "sort of" enforced. Some informal rules are learned more through emulation than education. The more important application driven processes may entail formal education. Choosing to behave in a specific manner often is also choosing not to behave in some alternative manner. Choosing not to behave in a given manner often results in the default selection of some alternative behavior.
Hence the boundary between application-driven practices and control-driven practices is neither fixed nor well formed. Many practices can be clearly classified to one side of the line or the other using the differentiations outlined above. Others either don't classify well or insist on moving back and forth, changing from application-driven to control-driven and back according to the changing priorities of the participants in the medium. What is good practice at one point in time may be required practice at another, good practice at a third, bad practice at a forth, and so on.
It is in this ongoing process of practice definition, redefinition, and refinement that practices make their greatest contribution to our understanding of what a medium is. A medium is ultimately nothing more than a communication tool. We use a medium to both create and receive messages, and the practices we evolve for media encompass both acts. If practices are dynamic and variable, so too will our perception of the medium they govern be dynamic and variable. If practices are static and unchanging, so too will be our perception of the medium.
There may be value, at this juncture, in stepping back from media, and considering the effect of practices in a case where the mediators are simple and the resultant practices are complex. Although the hammer is hardly a communication medium, and more mediator than medium at that, one can readily see the importance of practices to media in a detailed consideration of the analogous practices surrounding the use of a hammer. Consider:
This evolution in the use of hammers is also an evolution in the perception of hammers; in the definition of what a hammer is, how it is used, and what is good for. The hammer is not the only mediator that defines what a hammer is. It is also defined by nails, wood, walls, completed projects, injured fingers, and other things. Our definition of the hammer is not, at any point in the process, cast exclusively in terms of mediators, however. Hammers have, from the beginning, been experienced as a tool for hitting things. This essential characteristic is refined over time as we use the hammer and discover both the things we can do with it (applications) and the things a hammer can do to us (outcomes).
This process of this discovery is worked out in the practices of hammer use we generate and learn as our experience with a hammer increases. The practices start will socialized rules of hammer use. We learn what shouldn't be hit with a hammer, and later what should be. As our experience with the hammer grows, however, we evolve generic processes -- particular ways of setting nails, holding nails, swinging the hammer, etc. As our experience with different applications of hammers grow, the rules and generic processes differentiate. The actions we take when working with wallboard are different than the ones we take when working with framing, shaping metal, building furniture, breaking up concrete, or splitting wood. This process of discovery never ends. New materials and situations inevitably entail modified hammering technique. Even without such changes, even the experienced carpenter can be expected to refine hammer use so long as he or she continues to use hammers.
In summary, our perception of the hammer changes with each refinement of the practices rules and practices that surround its use. A tool for hitting things becomes a tool for nailing things becomes a tool for driving nails becomes a tool for building and shaping things becomes a set of tools for doing different things in different ways. Hence it is our practices, far more than the physical construction of the hammer, that define the hammer, what we use the hammer for, and even the physical shape of the hammer.
The hammer wasn't invented with a round flat head on one side and a claw on the other. It started, most likely, as a stick or a rock and evolved to its current shape though an iterative process of use. The invention of this common hammer design was doubtless preceded by a common practice of carrying a crowbar wherever a hammer was carried for the purpose of pulling out bent nails. By incorporating the crowbar into the hammer, in the form of a claw, the inventor of the claw hammer incorporated common practice directly into the design of the physical hammer. In the process, a practice was turned into a physical mediator.
The same processes can be observed in media. In the chapter on effects, we discussed substantial changes in the marketing and content of radio, magazines, newspapers, and movies, all of them related to the effects of a single new medium. These changes were related to competition among media. The arrival of television reshaped the media environment in which media operated. Any changes they encountered might easily be regarded as being more a reaction to television than anything else. Interestingly, the changes that reshaped the nature of these media did not involve substantial changes in the mediators or characteristics of these individual media. What they did involve was changes in the effects and practices of these media.
Competition among media is but one of a number of forces that act to shape media. Another force can be found in technological innovations. New mediators, when applied to existing media, have the capacity to reshape the essential capabilities of a medium. The book was, before the invention of the printing press, very little more than a medium for preserving ideas through time. Replication of books was difficult and expensive. Hence the books that were reproduced were selected, maintained, handled, and preserved with extreme care. Few people had the opportunity to read such books. In consequence few people ever learned to read. Fewer ever learned to write.
The printing press changed the essential capabilities of books by expanding the audience that books could reach and expanding the number of books that could be reproduced in volume. The structure of the book changed little in this transformation, but the characteristics and effects of books changed substantially. The books that existed reached more people. More people learned to read. More people learned to write. More books were written and published. Still more people learned to read and write, and new applications of books were discovered. After centuries of books written mostly in Latin or Greek, new books were written using representations of regional languages, often with the "vernacular" presented in highly stylized and poetic prose. Still more people learned to read and write. The presentation of regional languages stabilized. Content became less poetic and more prosaic.
The technology of publishing was hardly static during this process. Movable type, better paper, faster-drying inks, improved algorithms for page layout, and faster printing technology all contributed to a changing definition of the characteristics of books. The generation of standards for grammar, spelling, and syntax also contributed to this definition, as did the formalization of such publishing structures as publishers, editors, proofreaders, layout artists, censors, ghost writers, payment schedules, and editorial policy. Throughout the process new applications were found for books. Throughout this process new standards were applied to such questions as what constituted competent writing, what kinds of material were publishable (e.g. salable), and what constituted a book.
The process of this change in the nature of books started with a technological innovation, with a new mediator of the book publishing process that made it possible to print more books for more people. The application of this innovation was not restricted to books. It is ultimately the precursor of new media, including pamphlets, newspapers, and magazines. It is probably the precursor of other innovations, including both movable type printing and mass production using interchangeable parts. It is arguable a precursor of a wide array of social innovations, including the Protestant reformation, the university, the rise of the nation state, modern democracy and communism, the first amendment, and the Dewey decimal system.
There are many changes to media in the process summarized here, most of them related only to media and their definition. Many, including improvements in presses, papers, and inks, involved changes in mediators and consequent changes in characteristics and effects. Many others, including editorial policies, payment schedules, publication schedules, and standards for grammar, spelling, and syntax, involve media practice. Some of these practices, moreover, were eventually converted to mediators in the form of editors, proofreaders and other publishing professionals.
The differentiation of publications to include such discrete media as newspapers and magazines is arguably entirely practice related. The mediators entailed in newspaper publication are not terribly different from those associated with book publication. It is such practices as daily publication, headlines, news stories, editorials, advertising, and columns, far more than mediators, that differentiate the book from the newspaper.
The process of forming generic processes is a continuously iterative process in which emulation leads to adaptation leads to additional emulation. The process of forming rules is a continuously iterative process in which the negotiation and enforcement of one rule exposes new frustrations, new bids for new and modified rules, new negotiations and sometimes new rules. Each change in generic process, each change in the rules, subtly changes the definition of a medium that itself evolves iteratively. This is particularly true when the rules result in new mediators that change the characteristics and effects of the medium.
Hence these distinctions can be regarded as describing both the processes by which practices arise in media, and the processes by which people change media to meet their communication needs. No medium is immune from this process. We can alter our shared perception of what face to face communication is and is used for through the iterative discovery of conversational strategy and negotiation of conversational rules. We can alter our definition of correspondence, television, movies, telegrams or any other medium in much the same way.
New media (or at least media that are new to a population of users) may, because of their relative lack of history, be more open to the establishment of new practices. Only experience will tell the users of a new medium what the medium can be used for, what actions best accomplish those applications, what the medium can cause, and what actions can be taken to control those effects. The success of new media ultimately requires the evolution of practices. New media may, therefore, prove a better ground for observing the processes by which applications drive generic patterns of interaction; by which outcomes drive rules.
The well-established rules of older media may discourage the evolution of new generic processes and rules. Rules may only be observable in their violation and enforcement. Generic processes may only be observable in their repetition. New bids for rules may happen rarely or not at all. Negotiations may rarely change the substance of what is already enforced. The application of any innovation to a medium, young or old, entails, however, the possibility of such change. A single innovation can set off a long-running sequence of iterative change in any medium. The printing press and its subsequent refinement have repeatedly revolutionized the nature of books. A series of refinements continue to redefine radio, television, and other media.
We have, in the case of computer conferencing, the opportunity to study a new medium of communication as it iterates itself. We have, in the case of IBM's IBMPC computer conferencing facility, an instance of this medium that started as an unformed idea and evolved into a powerful vehicle for change within a major corporation. The chapters that follow document the process of the medium on IBMPC. The reader will see mediators and changes in mediators, expected and unexpected effects, a set of applications to which the medium is persistently applied, and a continuously changing set of rules that have been determined by the medium's participants.
The theory of media presented thus far has been fairly abstract, even when we asked users to describe media in several dimensions. The presentation now turns to concrete experience. The reader is invited to discover the grammar and process of media in this experience, just as the author did.