There is a basic principle that distinguishes a hot medium like radio from a cool one like the telephone, or a hot medium like the movie from a cool one like TV. A hot medium is one that extends one single sense in “high definition.” High definition is the state of being well filled with data. A photograph is, visually, “high definition.” A cartoon is “low definition,” simply because very little visual information is provided. Telephone is a cool medium, or one of low definition, because the ear is given a meager amount of information. And speech is a cool medium of low definition, because so little is given and so much has to be filled in by the listener. On the other hand, hot media do not leave so much to be filled in or completed by the audience. Hot media are, therefore, low in participation, and cool media are high in participation or completion by the audience. Naturally, therefore, a hot medium like radio has very different effects on the user from a cool medium like the telephone.
What is the Shannon Theorem? Bits of info per channel bandwidth = log(1+SNR)
McLuhan is saying the hot medium have high SNR, so have a high symbol rate. You can passively watch TV because the actual symbol rate is low. The information flow over the telephone is slow, but so is the bandwidth. Radio optimizes the information flow, it arranges its programs to maximize symbol flow. Television, visual images, are inefficient because we really don't use the visual image, we eye track across it and trace a pattern.
Hot medium require attention, they require good channel tuners to avoid distortion. The web is white hot, I would think, according to this classification.
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