ephone, and speech; hot media include a photograph, radio, and television. A cool medium requires high participation, while a hot medium demands only low participation. There is a disruptive effect when a hot medium succeeds a cool one:
A tribal and feudal hierarchy of traditional kind collapses quickly when it meets any hot medium of the mechanical, uniform, and repetitive kind. The medium of money or wheel or writing, or any other form of specialist speed-up of exchange and information, will serve to fragment a tribal structure (24).
This sort of shift has far-reaching implications for the way we communicate and the way we shape our messages. It matters whether a hot medium is used in a cool or hot culture:
The hot radio medium used in cool or nonliterate cultures has a violent effect, quite unlike its effect, say in England or America, where radio is felt as entertainment. A cool or low literacy cannot accept hot media like movies or radio as entertainment. They are, at least, as radically upsetting for them as the cool TV medium has proved to be for our high literacy world (31).
The distinction is made in terms of degree of participation needed.
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