Presentation

Recently I sent the word "Talkatecture" to the editors of Buzzwhack.com that I thought would make a nice addition to their dictionary. I'd had success with getting "ranchburger" listed at WordSpy.com so why not add some more archispeak to the vocabulary of consultants and professional opinionators. In any case, I defined Talkitecture as the annoying habit some architects and architecture students have of mistaking an idea for a design. The disheartening part of this phenomenon is that often the idea (illustrations, words, possibilities) is so seductive that it eclipses actually doing something with it. There are architects and architecture students who have made careers out of spinning an idea.

One might quip that the "medium IS the message" in such cases, I'd have to respond that such a statement is indicative of the misunderstanding and lack of rigor in the work. (McLuhan's title is actually, "the medium is the massage.") So, the defense of such an approach reveals the inherent problem with the author. However, all to often the medium really is the message... or at least we are assured that there is a message in there somewhere. The worst cases are the ones where the viewer is expected to do the artist's or architect's work for him or her and find their own message. I find this kind of laziness offensive frankly. It is one thing to acknowledge that each person will take away something different from a piece of work, and another thing entirely to deliberately do nothing and then try to talk it into existence with "dialogue".

So, why am I harping on this point? A reader reminded me today of the notoriously vapid 9/11 video which claims that the U.S. government staged the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The video claims that a missle was fired into an empty portion of the Pentagon deliberately by a USAF plane to make it look like it was attacked. I spent some time organizing the reasons that this didn't make any sense and posted it here a few months ago. What amazed me about the comment from the reader was that this idiocy was still circulating and that people were still buying into it. I began thinking about why that was...

When I was an architecture student I was unlucky enough to hear all manner of quasi-rhetorical and psuedo-intellectual drivel offered in place of having done any work on a project. In the academic circles this is called "pulling something out of your ass." The technique is well defined. There must be an effort made to be provocative. The material must be presented as if it were crystal clear what is intended and yet offer nothing to support that intent. Then the presenter must speak in a convoluted way that is either so confusing that the listener gives up and assumes the speaker is infinitely more intelligent than they are, or the listener feels so embarrassed that none of this presentation makes any sense to them that they simply pretend that they understand it. This latter phenomenon is hilarious to observe because once one person starts on this tact, all others in attendance follow suit. I like to call it the Emperor's New Clothes scenario. In much the same way the fairy tale ends, a successfully placed, "bullshit!" will crush the spell and everyone is suddenly relieved that they are not stupid afterall.

But why does this technique work in so many situations? Why is it so often met with no resistance? I think it is related to the white-coat syndrome. Not the one where your blood pressure jumps because someone in a white coat is taking it. I'm talking about the assumed authority people give anyone wearing a white lab coat. For some reason, people simply abandon their own reasoning skills when confronted with a person they assume has some superior knowledge of a topic. Distressingly, all it takes to unlock this trust in listeners is to don a white loab coat and look serious. Basically that amounts to presentation. In the case of the quack-pentagon video a polished, professional video appears factual even though it screams fallacy. The problem is that people just turn off their critical thinking when faced with professional presentation. The liberal battle cry to question authority, doesn't mean just some authorities... you have to question them all. Including the ones you want to agree with.

McLuhan's actual title, The Medium Is The Massage, is actually more meaningful here. The slick presentation massages your brain, relaxes it's defenses, makes it sleepy and accepting. In this state it will simply accept the conclusions of the presenter without focussing on the details of the presentation. The assumption is that a well presented theory, must have all its facts straight already. We assume that the level of professionalism in the presntation is indicative of the level of professionalism in what it is relaying and that is just so rarely the case. Your own professional presentation is right in front of you now. Any 8 year old can put together a slick looking presentation on their home computer. Design is so ubiquitous that you can't fall down without getting all over you.

Personally, I like the addage, "You can't judge a book by its cover." You have to read it to know if it's any good. All the cool bindings and typefaces in the world aren't going to improve the actual writing. The same goes for any theory or news story. You have to carefully follow what's being presented. Do not be fooled by complex sentences and giant leaps in logic. The harder something is to follow, the more likely it is that you are being misled. Do not be lulled into thinking you are not as smart as the speaker. This is how demogogues control the masses. I think any worthy idea must be transmitable in clear and simple english or it's just mental masturbation. That is, it is simply amusing to the speaker alone and will not produce anything with a life of its own. When self proclaimed intellectuals gather and "discuss" topics in incomprehensible sentences trying to appear smarter than the person next to them, it amounts to little more than a "circle jerk" and not the orgy of ideas it pretends to be.

But we are so often taken in by a cool image, a well dressed, attractive salesperson, a white lab coat, a preist's collar, an infectious piece of music. We stop focussing on the thing being presented and become immersed in the presentation itself. The quack-pentagon video relies on this to quickly guide us through some shakey reasoning and then emphasize the conclusion so that in our weakened state, we assume that the reasoning that led up to this conclusion was solid. Our mind was taking in the flashing images, the quickly moving text, the changes in music, we didn't have time to process the actual data. This is actually a well known problem with the human mind and modern media. It has been shown that when presented with an overload of information the mind stops processing the data and simply absorbs it. Some fascinating studies on this were done in the early days of virtual reality that illustrate the various dangers of sensory overload with regard to the brain's critical thinking. (Try "Final Amputation - Pathogenic Ontology in Cyberspace" by Mark D. Pesce, presented at the University of Texas' International Conference on Cyber Space 1993; it a good 40 pages but worth reading if you can find it.)

Generally, our culture has become one of appearances. Any discussion of advertising will turn up a host of instances. In human culture, all commerce (whether in goods or ideas) is driven by presentation. We are oblivious to it. I remember reading in the early 90s that the Nintendo generation was going to be so marketting savvy that they'd outsmart all the ad campaigns and see right through them. To some degree this may be true with regard to the often clumsy world of product marketting, but the big league worlds of political marketting, ideological marketting, social marketting, and the marketting of authority, they've faired no better than previous generations... perhaps worse.