"The Medium" Is the Message

It is our position (following Plaice and Kropf [4]) that mathematics and software engineering do not provide a very good basis for understanding communities. These formalisms are necessarily influenced by a mechanical, atomistic outlook which sees collections as arbitrary assemblages of self-sufficient individuals communicating point to point in a vacuum. I suggest instead that ideas of Marshall McLuhan provide a much better starting point because they give a central rôle to the medium by which the members of a community communicate. Furthermore, I argue that the phrase “the medium” should also be interpreted in the sense used in (say) biology, as a nurturing extended substance (a plenum) which fills the space between the individuals and to some degree permeates their interiors. Finally, I argue Swoboda’s context-server project can be understand as realizing Plaice– Kropf “intensional communities” by formalizing and implementing a nurturing medium, which permeates the (software used by) each community member. 1 What Is a Community? It goes without saying that DCW work requires an understanding of what exactly is a community. However, this question is not one that can be settled formally, because communities inherently involve people. A Web community is a kind of embedded system, but with people rather than processors on the inside. To understand communities on the Web means some understanding of pre-Web communities, which can be traced back to the very origins of mankind. If DCW ever decides to adopt a patron saint, I nominate Marshall McLuhan, the late Canadian media theorist [1]. It was McLuhan, of course, who coined the term (electronic) “global village”. It is easy to forget that when he introduced the concept, in the sixties, the Internet did not exist, the first few communication satellites had only just been launched, and most television was still black and white. It was only thirty years late, with the arrival of the Web, that we can understand just how well he grasped the true community-building nature of electronic media. But, more generally, he was among the first to understand the real importance of media in general, to state clearly that media are not just passive conveyers of messages. He argued convincingly that the media can play a vital rôle in determining the nature of society. McLuhan had communication media in mind, but the principle is equally valid for more solid forms of exchange, such as physical transportation. The development of the automobile industry throughout the twentieth century provides a striking confirmation of McLuhan’s theories. They were originally introduced as an alternative to the horse and buggy, and the first customers were typically well-off doctors. Then farmers used trucks to bring produce to market. A few decades later the auto industry was central to the economy and the network of paved roads permeated the whole continent. During WWII internalcombustion engines made possible the large-scale destruction of cities, and then caused them to be rebuilt along new designs (suburbia, freeways, shopping malls, etc.) The very nature of modern society is embodied just as much in the car/road system as in the presumably more important homes, schools, and factories which this system connects. ∗Published in Distributed Communities on the Web, J. Plaice, editor, LNCS 2468:10–14. 2002.