THE DEVELOPING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE CONSUMER, THE MACHINE AND THE PROCESS
The Theories Surrounding the Debate
Technological Determinism
Technological determinism (or “medium theory”) is the theory that social and cultural progress is determined by technology, and that the evolution of a technology can be traced in a linear, predictable way. This theory proposes that technological innovations guide and inform our social and cultural existence. “The steam engine, the automobile, television, the atomic bomb, have made modern man and the modern condition.” (Wardrip-Fruin, Montfort in “The New Media Reader”). This enables an elaborate series of events leading to social and cultural change to be seen as predetermined by the technology that enabled them. The innovations themselves symbolise progress.
McLuhan (1964) states: “We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.” This assumption would suggest that technological progress is inexorable, that there is a “technological imperative” (1964). He also suggested (in one of his more commonly quoted soundbites) that “it is the medium that is the message, because the medium creates an environment that is indelible and lethal” (1964).
Social Constructivism
This theory argues that all technological progress is inherently derived from social interactions. It shuns the technological determinist standpoint, and the notion of linearity of events in determining technological progress. In the social constructivist framework, groups of interested parties (consumers, distributors, etc.) give meaning to, and therefore define, any given technological innovation. This would suggest that Jean Piaget’s constructivist theories of learning, in which learners “accommodate and assimilate” new knowledge (quoted in Bijker 1995), can also be applied to the consumers of technological products. There is an implied notion that the inventor rarely understands the needs of the user or consumer, and it is the role of the user to give the invention a purpose or meaning. Only the consumer knows the problem that they need the invention to solve.
In “Of Bicycles, Bakelite and Bulbs: Towards a Theory of Sociotechnical Change” (1995), Bijker states: “Actors simplify and reorder their world by forgetting about obsolete distinctions or by drawing new boundaries.” He uses the example of the bicycle to demonstrate that design is driven by a “seamless web” of consumer demand, and often consumer innovation. This has been echoed in recent years; mountain bikes, which now account for 65% of US cycle sales, were originally designed and produced by enthusiasts in Northern California, as their needs were not being met by major manufacturers. (Leadbetter 2007)
Diffusion of Innovations Theory
The study of epidemiology (the spread of disease) introduced the concept of the “tipping point” (Gladwell, 2000), referring to the moment at which a virus reaches critical mass and it becomes an epidemic. It has also been used to provide a social framework for technological innovation. Rogers (2003) explains that diffusion of innovations is the process whereby stakeholders communicate ideas and share information with each other about a new idea or artefact, to give it a new social, economic or political meaning. These stakeholders each go through a five stage process of “innovation-decision” (p20):
1: Knowledge – an individual becomes aware of an innovation’s existence and understands its function.
2: Persuasion – the individual develops an opinion of the innovation, whether positive or negative.
3: Decision – leading the individual to choose or reject the innovation.
4: Implementation/Re-invention – the individual puts the innovation into use, and may choose to find a use not intended by the inventor (SMS messaging being a prime example of this phenomenon).
5: Confirmation – the individual evaluates their own use, and re-invention of the innovation.
The rate of adoption by individuals in society follows a bell-shaped curve (see diagram).
This curve shows the relationship between five “adopter categories”.
1: Innovators – These adopters tend to communicate amongst a clique of other like-minded individuals, have a substantial disposable income and are daring and willing to take risks. They are seen as society’s “gatekeepers” in the flow of innovations.
2: Early Adopters – Early adopters are “opinion leaders”, helping to trigger critical mass (or the tipping point) through their adoption of an innovation.
3: Early Majority – An important link in the diffusion process, these individuals lend legitimacy to an artefact. Their “decision stage” is longer than innovators and early adopters. “They follow with deliberate willingness in adopting innovations but seldom lead”.
4: Late Majority – Uptake of innovations may be out of economic necessity or peer pressure. These adopters wait for general acceptance of an innovation before utilising it.
5: Laggards – Can be categorised as isolated from mainstream society, often with very little disposable income, and suspicious of any form of change. Laggards must be certain of the benefits of an innovation in order to embrace it. Rogers uses the example of the Old Order Amish communities in the USA, who reject all innovation as being “too worldly”.
It is the concept of consumer “re-invention” that is most interesting about Diffusion of Innovation theory, as this is the stage where the consumer who has a vested interest in a product, and the technological capability to customise it, becomes as significant as the inventor of the product. In order to take part in this re-invention, innovators and early adopters must have the tools and knowledge necessary to subvert a technological artefact. This implies that there exists around them an effective and deregulated communication system. This situation becomes increasingly likely, given the rapid advances in digital and internet technology.
(All quotes from Rogers 2003 p18-26)
Bijker (1995) uses the term “closure” to describe “the process by which interpretive flexibility decreases, leaving the meanings attributed to the artefact less and less ambiguous”. This is the stage at which the re-invention becomes the norm for the artefact.
Case Study 1
Radio – “The wireless transmission through space of electromagnetic waves in the approximate frequency range from 10 kilohertz to 300,000 megahertz”
“Now then, now then.” Jimmy Saville
When seen as a technology, radio means very little to anyone outside the scientific community, unless viewed contextually as a means of communication. It took Nikola Tesla, who was later responsible for AC electricity, huge advances in quantum physics and the concept of manipulating electromagnetic waves, leading in part to microwave technology, to suggest its use as a communication tool. He was later derided as a “mad scientist” after developing communications systems to “talk with other planets” (Cheney et al. 1999). This technology was accepted and used posthumously by NASA. Tesla’s ideas for wireless communication inadvertently led to many other innovations whose significance lay solely in their uses. Aircraft and weapon navigation tools have held huge political significance in successive wars. The same technology, however, can also be argued to have led to affordable commercial flights for the masses, giving working-class families worldwide an opportunity to experience other cultures.
Radio broadcasting began in the early 1920s, and was the dominant form of home entertainment until it was superceded by television in the late 1950s. Many consumers built their own crystal-set receivers, and experimented with broadcast technology from their own homes. This became known as Ham-Radio, and was the first example of consumers using wireless communication tools, which is more significant given that they made them themselves. This was one of the most distinct examples of Tarde’s “distinct flashes of genius” being manipulated by the “commonplace lights” (1903) to create a new tool for information, entertainment and communication.
Under Lord Reith, BBC radio’s output was strictly controlled and censored. The institution’s dominance was threatened by “pirate” stations broadcasting without a UK licence from ships moored outside UK territory. Radio Luxembourg had inferior coverage, leading to the fading of a weak radio signal becoming known as “The Luxembourg Effect”, but their playlists were free from the constraints of UK legislation and their populist entertainment approach contrasted greatly with the authoritarian and heavily regulated BBC output. They did, though, have their playlists determined by the four major UK record labels, Pye, Decca, EMI and Phillips. Ronan O’Rahilly founded Radio Caroline (named after US President Kennedy’s daughter) in response to what he
saw as the draconian legislation surrounding radio broadcasting in the UK. The Phonographic Performances Limited (PPL) sought a High Court injunction, leading to the Marine Broadcasting Act, shutting the station down on August 14th 1967.
Little in the history of radio can be explained from a technological determinist standpoint. The technology would have been used by the military, whether consumers had chosen to embrace it or not. The state and corporate institutions embraced radio without understanding its true significance as a mass communication tool. It took the innovators and early adopters, the “pro-ams”, to fully utilise the technology and give it it’s true significance.
Case Study 2
The Phonograph – “an early form of record player capable of recording and reproducing sound on wax cylinders”
“My baby, she got a phonograph, but it won’t say a lonesome word.”
Robert Johnson-Phonograph Blues
Thomas Edison had big plans for his wax-cylinder based phonograph when he introduced it to the world in 1877. He gave the following uses for the device in the “North American Review” (quoted in Welch & Burt 1994):
1. Letter writing and all kinds of dictation without the aid of a stenographer.
2. Phonographic books, which will speak to blind people without effort on their part.
3. The teaching of elocution.
4. Reproduction of music.
5. The “Family Record”–a registry of sayings, reminiscences, etc., by members of a family in their own voices, and of the last words of dying persons.
6. Music-boxes and toys.
7. Clocks that should announce in articulate speech the time for going home, going to meals, etc.
8. The preservation of languages by exact reproduction of the manner of pronouncing.
9. Educational purposes; such as preserving the explanations made by a teacher, so that the pupil can refer to them at any moment, and spelling or other lessons placed upon the phonograph for convenience in committing to memory.
10. Connection with the telephone, so as to make that instrument an auxiliary in the transmission of permanent and invaluable records, instead of being the recipient of momentary and fleeting communication.
Edison’s vision for his invention was primarily as a tool for industry, probably because he believed that this would produce the most revenue. It can be seen that music was low on his list of priorities for the machine. Welch and Burt (1994) reveal: “Edison’s representative(s) knew of Edison’s profound belief in the ultimate usefulness of the phonograph as an efficient aid to business…and warned the local companies’ representatives that they should not neglect…the promotion of the phonograph as an adjunct to business.”
However demand was sufficient for Edison’s company to produce and market a coin-operated phonograph. It was used mainly in “juke-joints”, gambling and drinking establishments in the Southern States of America. This is where the term jukebox arose. The word “juke” itself was brought to America by African slaves, and meant to “dance” or “act wildly”. The jukeboxes were
very popular with juke-joint owners and the businesses that hired them the machines, as profits were split between the two parties. The significance of the invention was determined by the user, the curator and the exhibitor, but not the inventor.
Edison was not the only person to have doubts about the use of the phonograph as a recording medium for music. In 1905, John Philip Sousa, the American composer most widely known for writing “The Stars and Stripes Forever”, warned; “The time is coming when no one will be ready to submit himself to the ennobling discipline of learning music. Everyone will have ready-made or ready-pirated music in their cupboards.” (Ross 2005)
What Edison failed to realise, or chose to ignore, was the inherent difference between the production of music, with each performance being fleeting, ephemeral, impermanent, and the reproduction of music, which created a new framework for music as an art-form, as it was suddenly
a “tangible commodity…which thrust the music experience into a new economic arena, with new sets of social relationships based on production, exchange and consumption.” (Latonero 2003)
Throughout the early 20th Century, the phonograph acted as more than simply a recording and playback device. Because of the flaws in it’s technology -the limited frequency response, the crackle and hiss that are, in an ironic twist, often added at very low levels to modern digital recordings to give them the vintage flavour that consumers imagine adds “authenticity”- musicians were forced to adapt their playing style to accommodate the limitations inherent in the reproduction.
In the classical field, vibrato, which was traditionally used only sparingly, became increasingly prevalent, as the cluster of close frequencies produced by it’s use made clearer indentations on the cylinder at the “cutting” stage. In the jazz fraternity, Cab Calloway’s big band produced a huge sound that shone through the medium of the phonograph, enabling him to sell over one million copies of “Minnie the Moocher” in 1931, a figure unprecedented at the time, and unheard of now (Welch and Burt 1994). Louis Armstrong’s trumpet tone was also perfectly suited to the technology because of it’s piercing mid-range frequencies. Musicians like them were the harbingers of modern popular music genres.
Throughout the 20th Century, phonograph technology evolved and the record player became commonplace. Musicians saw the opportunity to use the device as a musical instrument in its own right. One of the first people to use a turntable as a musical instrument was John Cage. In 1937 he wrote:
“With a phonograph it is now possible to control any one these sounds and give to it rhythms within or beyond the reach of imagination. Given four phonographs we can compose and perform a quartet for explosive motor, wind, heartbeat and landslide”
(Cited in “Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music” By Christoph Cox, Daniel Warner 2004)
On “Imaginary Landscape No. 1” (1939), Cage juxtaposed test-tone recordings against piano and cymbals. On “Imaginary Landscape No. 2” (1941) a metal coil was amplified by a phonograph cartridge. “Imaginary Landscape No. 5” (1952) used sounds collected from 42 different records, re-edited on tape. “Cartridge Music” (1960) featured contact microphones and phonograph cartridges connected to ladders and wastebaskets. Cartridge needles were substituted with matches, pipe cleaners, springs, and feathers. Other composers to use record players as musical instruments included Kurt Weill and Stefan Wolpe.
In 1967, Jamaican-born Kool Herc emigrated to The Bronx, New York. He used his understanding of reggae’s “dub-plate” ethic (exclusive instrumental re-recordings of songs, used for artists to sing or “toast” over), and applied the idea to American funk records, mixing instrumental breakdown sections on two turntables. This technique, not technologically far removed from the work of John Cage, led to the birth of Hip Hop, which went on to become the most influential genre in American popular music, changing the cultural landscape for black Americans as it did so. It also led the music industry to develop digital “sampling” devices, which have had a profound effect on the music industry worldwide.
Little would Edison have foreseen that his invention could have irrevocably blurred the boundaries between production and reproduction, or between producer, consumer, artist and curator. Edison’s naivety was initially capitalised on by the companies that distributed his new product, but it took consumers, albeit across several decades, to subvert, reinvent and fully exploit what it became. We have yet to see Bijker’s concept of “closure” on this product, but it’s use conjures up new genres of music with predictable regularity.
Case Study 3
MPEG-1 Layer 3 Encoding Software- “An MPEG standard used especially for transmitting music digitally over the Internet.”
Developed in a collaboration between The Fraunhofer Institute and Thomson Multimedia, MP3 Technology was patented and licensed in 1991. It is a file-compression algorithm, commonly used to make audio files small enough to be distributed online. The algorithm itself uses “perceptual coding”, to eliminate “superfluous” frequencies that the human ear is supposedly incapable of hearing. In 2005, the licence for the MP3 standard earned The Institute €100,000,000.
The challenge of integrating MP3 technology into its business model has caused the traditionally conservative music industry huge problems.
It can be seen historically that the industry has been resistant to new formats and slow to respond. When LP records were introduced, it was assumed that the public would prefer the higher quality of 78s, which proved to be wrong. The industry was also resistant to audio-cassette and compact- disc technology, again for reasons of quality. However, consumers chose simplicity and convenience over quality in every case. At 78 RPM, a vinyl disc can hold three to five minutes per side, whereas at 33RPM nearly half an hour of storage is available. The Sony Walkman made music consumption portable, and CD players gave the ability to skip between tracks instantaneously.
The industry managed to use this to it’s advantage with earlier innovations, by repackaging in the new format and creating new sales. The rise of online file sharing communities meant that MP3 technology gave consumers free access to music, and record companies were again slow to respond. In fact, the original codec for compressing and decompressing MP3 files was never intended for public release by the Fraunhofer Institute. Instead, it was hacked and modified by consumers, who made it available for no charge over the internet.
Several companies tried to incorporate Digital Rights Management to copy protect audio files, but it was never fully integrated, and when in 2002 the Bertellsman Group (owners of Sony BMG) installed DRM software onto users’ computers without their permission, making them less secure against viruses, they were faced with many lawsuits. DRM has yet to be effectively utilised, although there has been research into “watermarked” MP3 files, that can be shared for a limited time.
It could be argued that the rise in MP3 usage, along with the advent of cheap digital recording equipment, has been a contributing factor in the declining number of high quality professional recording studios. People can now afford to record their own music at home, convert it to MP3, and post it on social-network sites such as Myspace. It could be also be argued that this has led to a democratisation of the industry, by giving more people access to the required equipment and distribution tools to allow them to bypass the industry’s major players. No longer are major labels, recording studios and pressing and distribution plants indispensible. The public has cut out the middle man.
Therefore MP3 has become the music industry’s “category killer”, with big business finding itself in an “..entrenched Player’s Dilemma…the choice faced by existing businesses in a changing marketplace. In order to embrace new ideas fully, they must abandon their current revenue streams”. (Latonero 2003). The music industry has been shown to be slow to embrace emerging technologies throughout it’s history. It survived because it still held power over the distribution networks for recorded media. Stripped of that power, the industry would be forced to adopt a new business model.
“It’s hard enough for labels to handle traditional distribution without support. Add more than 10 times the content online, hundreds of digital music services, a dozen different business models, complex accounting systems, new ways of marketing and promotion and you realize quickly that you need more sophisticated and skilled partners on your team.” – Scott Cohen, Founder, The Orchard.
Conclusion
Each of the case studies demonstrates that many of the biggest innovations in music technology have reached their “tipping point” through a complex, seamless web of diverse and disparate consumers and innovators. Design is driven by economic, social and cultural factors. This would suggest that it would be wise not to apply a technological determinist framework to this particular area of debate. It is difficult to predict how emerging technologies will affect the industry, the market and the audience, as the significance of these innovations remains uncertain and in flux, seemingly without an end. This would appear to contradict Bijker’s idea of “closure”, although, other than that, much of Diffusion of Innovations theory, and indeed social constructivism seems to be corroborated by the evidence we have looked at. In each of the three case studies, human actions are shown to have shaped the use of technology, making it very difficult to successfully view these products from a technological determinist standpoint.
In his 2007 speech at TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference, Charles Leadbetter, of UK thinktank Demos, uses the term “pro-am” to describe the type of consumer who initiates radical innovation. This is not a new concept. Alvin Toffler coined the term “prosumer” in 1970, in his book “Future Shock”. Leadbetter indicates that these are the consumers who collaborate creatively, and consume as an “expression of their productive potential”. These are not the “special people in special places” (a reference to the Silicon Valley technology industries possibly?). Big business is poorly equipped to deal with radical innovation, as it inevitably does not lead to immediate financial gain. In fact it would appear that they actively prevent it, through an impenetrable wall of patents. Technology companies have been among the first to recognise the potential of the consumer as a tool for innovation. Apple have even posted a “Developer kit” to download, in order that consumers can code their own software plug-ins, but there is a long way to go. Success leads to conservatism in industry, and the technology industry needs to develop a new business model to incorporate the Pro-Am ethos.
