The
distance learning innovator and vangard media
psychologist explores how we are influenced by
interactivity itself.
Dr.
Bernard Luskin was CEO of Jones Interactive when I first
interviewed him in the early Nineties during that
catalytic wave of broadband interactive TV developemnt.
He already was an internationally respected leader in
"distance learning" over interactive networks.
He'd just finished the new
Jones' Multimedia Encyclopedia on an interactive compact
digital disk, directing his team to fulfill a vision of
his boss, Glenn Jones, who'd built a solid cable empire
from his mortgaged VW bug with business savvy and an
abiding appreciation for the dragon within. When Jones
met Luskin, two dynamic minds combined for awhile to
uplift the consciousness of humanity, in my opinion, and
as I'd discover, Luskin was certainly prepared for that
responsibility, or any other leadership job.
Luskin earned a 1961 bachelor of
arts in business from California State University at Los
Angeles, a 1964 master of arts in business administration
from California State University at Long Beach, a 1970
doctorate in education and technology (Ed.D.) from the
University of California at Los Angeles, a Kellogg and
University fellow. He's added post graduate study in
psychology and media at University of Southern
California, California State University, Whittier
College, and Oxford University. He's been licensed in
California as a marriage, family and child
psychotherapist since 1972, and he's a diplomate in
psychotherapy in American Psychotherapy Association.
When the interview excerpted
below was recorded in 1996, Luskin was just beginning a
major study of psychology and new technologies for the
Media Psychology Division of the American Psychological
Association. Founded in the early Nineties by television
talk show psychologists like Joyce Brothers, Ruth
Westheimer, Stuart Fischoff and Lilli Friedland, the APA
board had charged the media division with defining the
new field of media psychology. Using the "Delphi" method
of research, with rounds of questions and responses
considered among experts and researchers, Luskin's team
completed the study in 1998, identifying 15 career tracks
in the fields of learning, commerce, government,
medicine, and other fields. Said Luskin, "The study
established new occupational paths to link psychology and
media technology, from clinical applications to how TV
shows are created, and will improve the quality of media
content. The impact of this study will be felt for
generations to come."
Yet Luskin began humbly, landing
his first education post in 1963 at Orange
Coast College, in Orange
County, C.a. He rose over four years from the associate
dean of admissions and counseling to director of
vocational education to the dean of governmental
relations for the renamed Coast
Community College District
, Over the next decade,
as vice chancellor of education and development for the
Coast District, he developed the format and production
techniques for the television course for distant
learners, called the "telecourse." In this work, he
became a founding executive of KOCE-TV,
the Coast District's PBS station in Orange County,
serving as the educational development VP for the station
from 1972 to 1982.
From 1976 to 1982, again showing
the way, Luskin became the founding president and CEO of
Coastline
Community College,
modeled after the British
Open University, both
praised as global exemplars of how distance learning
develops educational
media markets, by
creating more educated minds in the world. Luskin then
returned to Orange Coast College in 1982 as president and
CEO, and over two years established Orange Coast beside
Dallas
Community College as one
of two U.S. prototypes for all distance learning (see my
history
of distance learning).
His next served for two years starting in 1984 as the
executive VP and treasurer, then COO of the
American
Association of Community
Colleges (AACC),
bringing him for the second time to live in in
Washington, DC. In 1972 he'd worked on the staff of
California Senator Alan Cranston as special consultant on
the educational amendments, then remained in the city as
a federal relations specialist in the AACC Federal
Internship program. After another two years leading AACC,
while he returned to LA, he still kept flying back to DC
for another nine years while on the board of AACC,
including time as the chair. During this period, Luskin
also chaired the National Council for Resource
Development, the arm of AACC dealing with large
foundation and federal grants for education.
Luskin's milestones include
putting the first computer in a community college;
writing the first data processing textbook for high
schools; and directing the study that produced the
working model for the television "telecourse,"
still used in distance learning, thereby earning for
himself two Emmys and other honors. He's still active in
the on the Education Policy and Services committee within
the National
Academy of Television Arts and
Sciences.
The year 1986 introduced a
dramatic shift in direction for Dr. Bernie Luskin.
Through his work in interactive education, Luskin joined
the Polygram
Records division of
Philps,
the Netherlands-based global media giant, as founding
president and CEO of a new division, American Interactive
Media. He was a principal in the landmark deal between
Philips and Paramount
Studios to digitize
motion pictures on compact disc in MPEG
format, planning and launching the first MPEG-compressed
cable network in America. Luskin next became president
and CEO of Philips Interactive Media plus Philips Media
Education and Reference Publishing. Still working on
development of MPEG-based interactive digital video
disks, he served on the Philips research team developing
the technology that beams DVD, (now called a digital
"versatile" disk), creating the prototype interactive TV
set-top box based on a CD, the Philips CD-I. His personal
interest being the human factors of the machine
interface, Luskin has broken ground as a media content
creator. Among his innovative CD-ROM projects are the
first Sesame Street CD, also Treasures of the
Smithsonian, Compton's Encyclopedia,
Grolier's Encyclopedia, Charlton Heston
Presents the Bible, and the first interactive CD
movie, Voyeur, starring Robert Culp. Along the
way, he's constructing agreements establishing major
precedents in intellectual property rights.
Luskin joined Jones
International in 1994,
another turning point. Luskin was CEO of Jones
Interactive, Vice Chairman of Jones International, and
Group President for companies that included Jones Digital
Century, Jones Computer Network, The Internet Channel,
Jones Management Information Systems, and Jones Education
Networks, with its flagship Mind Extension University,
which evolved into Knowledge TV. As president and CEO of
Jones Interactive, which put out the CD-ROM encyclopedia
about media technology, he focused on developing
interactive TV services for Jones cable systems while
developing Jones' presence in distance learning. As if
all thus was not enough to keep his mind occupied, Luskin
was founding chancellor of Jones
International
University, the first
academically accredited totally web-based "virtual"
degree-granting university in the world. These ventures
established, Luskin left Jones in 1998.
After a breather back in
California, Luskin stepped up in 1999 as founding
president and co-CEO of Global
Learning Systems, based
in Bethesda, Md., with offices in Provo, Utah, and
London. The mail product of GLS is educational industry
development, helping educators and trainers develop
skills and strategies for the evolving working and
learning environments of multinational enterprises. GLS
works with clients ranging from content networks like
Pearson and Disney to technology companies like Panasonic
to service organizations like American Postal Workers
Union and Good Will Industries. The objective is
developing interactive in-house training systems for
global ventures, driving the "blended
solutions approach" to
developing the global learning and communication skills
we need in our interactive world. With GLS poised for its
IPO when the "dot bomb" shook the equities market in
2001, exacerbated by the terrorists attacks in September
2001, as the company restructured with fresh
capitalization, Luskin considered his bi-coastal
commuting between his job in DC and his family home in
southern LA, and the choice was not difficult. He travels
east in his capacity a board member.
Today Bernie Luskin lives again
in Encino, Ca., with his wife and their two sons,
devoting his energies to his consultancy,
Luskin
International, founded
in 1986, while also working on media and education
development projects. He's long had an appointment as am
adjunct professor of media psychology at the
Fielding
Graduate Institute in
Santa Barbara, but now he's developing for Fielding a
graduate program in media psychology and communication
based on the "distributed education" model for classroom
and distance learning combined. His wife Toni Luskin also
at is Fielding, finishing her Ph.D. in media psychology
with an emphasis on media literacy, also the focus of her
MA. Bernie Luskin further is a visiting professor at
Claremont Graduate University, in Claremont, Ca.
Previously, he's taught at UCLA, USC, Pepperdine
University and varied branches of California State
University, including the USC School of Cinema and
Television.
Luskin has authored seven books
on economics, technology and education, bestsellers in
their fields. His latest book, Casting the Net Over
Global Learning, being released in March 2002, serves
those involved in e-learning and workforce training with
insights on trends in the new online learning
psychologies, the new forms of the emerging corporate
university, and the new leadership in global learning.
His ninth book, already begun, will explore the concepts
and theories that Interlink media, motivation, learning,
and entertainment.
Before and since we first met,
I've considered Dr. Bernard Luskin as a visionary who's
in the deep
literacy business.
Talking with him always is adventure, for he puts great
ideas into easy terms, and he's constantly ready to
investigate fresh avenues of thought.
As a media psychologist. Luskin
is more aware than most of how the media and the mind
interact to create society. To paraphrase
McLuhan.
Luskin understands how mass media messages can and do
massage our minds. He stays abreast of the research on
synesthetics
and sensory
psychology, still
asserting that the iTV development and consumer marketing
community keeps failing to look at the staggering
knowledge already available. He's said, "A positive
outlook with a committed and deeply thoughtful
application of the new research could make this decade
the breakthrough decade for both the PC and the
television." Luskin advocates "a mind solution, not a
technology solution" to interactive media
development.
During an interview for the 1996
national cable show in Atlanta, we talked about the
effects of interactive programming on our minds and
emotions. He was especially worried that the interactive
TV (iTV) trials were focusing on testing and proving
digital technology without ever considering how the
inconsiderate design of the program interface was skewing
all their findings (a criticism he maintains today). I
was thrilled to find an executive actually voicing
concern about the impact in new media on our world, and
felt renewed hope for my ideals.
In the course of our flow, I
made offhand remark about the gee-whiz technology I'd
long imagined since childhood, and Luskin opened my
imagination within minutes to the field of media
psychology. Excerpted below is the beginning of a longer
dialogue on the topic of media psychology, and has never
been published anywhere before. An exclusive!
.
.
Freed: Interactive devices are becoming more commonplace, but I'm still waiting
for my Dick Tracy two-way wrist TV.
Luskin: They have them
now, but prices are just going to come down. That's just
the consumer process. All of the products, the software
industry, has been driven by money, by technology
advances and creativity. It has not been driven by an
understanding of what people want, and what shape they
want it in. Actually, much of the software that has come
out of the software industry has been done by engineers
and programmers that are not truly behaviorally oriented
- they're engineering oriented. Searching for an
easy-to-use interface, I mean, Microsoft has worked long
and hard to get where it is on Windows, but you'll find
flaws in the navigation, difficulty in the interface
design, loading difficulties, icons that you can't figure
out what they are when you look at them. I'm just amazed
that industry leaders don't light up to all the
characteristics of product development and design, that
instead are very underdeveloped in their
products.
Well, that's the psychology of
the new media that's based on understanding of immediacy.
It's taken hundreds of years for human communication
architecture to mature to the point is has now, the look
and feel that it has. It's taken a hundred years for the
film business alone just to perfect the linear program to
a point where storytelling and technique can blend. So if
you look at interactive technology, there's a whole
future of 21st century development ahead that is now
going to become significant, which we're only now just
starting to glimpse. It's all based on the understanding
of how to make programs, not just learning the methods of
media production, but seeing why the program
creators do things the way they are done. This interests
me a lot, but I don't know how much depth you want to go
into this now.
Freed: Please go into it,
because I think the psycho-dynamics are really
fascinating.
Luskin: It's going to be
dramatic. I've just agreed to co-chair a subcommittee of
the American Psychological Association [APA] to
create a whole new set of definitions for psycho-media or
"media psychology." It has to do with the design and
development of media programs and programming, not only
in the social sense, where you get product branding and
intercultural dissonance, the heat of the
media....
Freed: Are you talking
"heat" in a McLuhan sense, in terms of hot and cool
media?
Luskin: In fact, the heat
situation is related to emotion and the study of
synesthesia. Synesthetics is the experience
resulting from the unity of the senses. In simple theory,
when you take one sense and combine another with it,
research shows that the experience is heightened. If you
theoretically combine five senses well, you experience a
"sixth sense."
If you look at the McLuhanism
notion of heat, however, and the cultural change that's
ahead, it's going to make and break companies. The Gulf
War made CNN because the heat of the news coming across
live created a whole new set of emotions. In the 60s
Vietnam was more cool simply because they had to shoot
something on tape, fly it in and look at it before you
could see it. In the 80s you began to get the emotion of
reality, and in the 90s you have tremendous heat, because
everything is live, like you saw OJ driving down the
street at the moment of passion [or the planes flying
into the World Trade Center], so it's a whole new
emotional and synesthetic experience.
The understanding of behavior
has advanced tremendously lately. Howard Gardner and
Project Zero at Harvard has now pretty much established
the fact that IQ is not a single figure. To compute an IQ
is like telling someone to put one foot on a block of ice
and another foot in an oven, then telling them their
temperature is average. It sort of measures intelligence,
but it doesn't really. Project Zero has identified seven
specific intelligence's, showing that people learn in
different ways. We each have different specific
intelligences, and so we have to understand those to
understand communication and learning.
The work that's evolving goes
back to Maslow and looks toward a "psychology of being,"
from one of his early books. He figured out that there
are three reasons people do anything in terms of
behavior. Maslow's basic theory [hierarchy of
needs] was that people do things from am ultimate
drive for self-actualization, which is either fun or
feeling good, the desire to correct a deficiency of the
self, or the desire for personal growth.
Well, I've adapted Maslow and
Rogers and others to software. So, this would be
"Luskin's Theory" about the application of software to
behavior. Maslow was at UCLA when I was there, by the
way. So was Carl Rogers. I grew up with these people. So
from my education then, and all my experiences since, I'm
saying that you just take the theory of psychology
already out here, and simply apply it to technology. You
adapt it, and you get some new thinking in terms of
technology development.
If you take these psychological
insights, when you put entertainment and education
together, you have a whole new learning theory. And if
you take the theory of specific intelligences and all
these other studies, like synesthetics, or if you take
semiotics, which is highly developed as an architecture
for sophistication in graphics, you can learn a lot about
how to communicate effectively. But such thinking is
totally undeveloped in software and the programming for
interactive television.
Freed: Seems to me the
human dynamics of "mediated interaction" is already
pretty well developed in speech communications theory and
practice, which I've studied.
Luskin: Yes, but it
simply hasn't yet found its way into technology, like
that Dick Tracy two-way wrist TV, because the people
developing hardware and software don't have any
historical memory, because the technology is so new, nor
have there been school programs developed, to develop
these developers, so they think about their work with
more sense.
While all these communication
disciplines do exist, not the least of which is
semantics, for instance, the use of language itself,
these "soft sciences" are not studied or well understood
by the technological development people. The people
breaking through in the CD arena, the interactive digital
disc, have been doing so with tremendous creativity, but
still without any real understanding of the underlying
psychology behind their products.
Freed: You're tapping
into exactly what has been my chief concern in the last
couple of years. I write all these articles about the
technology of this, the technology of that, and the
brilliance that goes into creating the design, but very
few people are thinking and talking about the social
effects of the technology tools they are
inventing.
Luskin: That's exactly
right! I think it's the next big wave to come, and once
it hits, it will change the industry and our society
forever. Everybody has been gadget happy, technology
passionate until now, but they have not been able to
understand what turns people on about the service that
the gadgets provide or the content the gadget is supposed
to deliver.
Freed: Yes, they develop
all these these wonderful things with lots of bells and
whistles, but then are baffled by how to sell them to to
pay for their development cost. Sound like the
proverbial, "Ready, Fire, Aim."
Luskin: And that's why
they've had so much trouble with the interactive TV cable
trials in Orlando and elsewhere, the digital broadcasting
trials, too, and the telephony trials. The trials have
been technically advanced, but the people doing them just
don't really understand the nature of consumer
preferences, needs and behaviors. They don't know how to
target the technology in order to enable the behaviors
that they want to create. That's why media psychology is
going to become a major discipline in the 21st century.
Let me give you an analogy. Did
you ever go to tennis college or baseball camp? When you
go to tennis college, you learn one thing at a time. You
learn an overhead shot. You learn a backhand. You learn a
forehand. You learn a lob. You learn to memorize the
court, how the ball moves, the fundamentals. The same
thing happens in baseball camp. Hold the bat, stand,
spread your feet, swing. These are fundamentals. It's
just like you do in phonics when learning to read and
write, when you master the fundamentals of
language.
What happens in these camps when
you play? They tell you, forget the fundamentals, and you
play from instinct, but it's a highly developed instinct
developed through practice of the fundamentals. Your
judgments are predicated on sound responses. You won't
get an Olympic athlete, or a professional baseball player
or tennis player, who doesn't have a solid foundation in
the basics of their sport. In the journalism that you do,
for example, reading, writing, and even arithmetic are
the fundamentals, the basic tools for building everything
you write about technology.
So, I'm saying that without the
fundamentals of understanding human behavior, you just
cannot develop media programs that will enable human
behavior instinctively. When these media psychology
studies begin to be taught in the engineering and design
programs, then the judgments of these graduates and
professionals in the industry, when creating their new
interactive programs, will be based on informed
behaviors. Both the media programming and the developers
themselves will get better at a result.
One of my pet examples, because
I am frustrated by it having started my life as a
computer programmer, is that every time you see a program
that says "Quit" to end the program, you know that the
developers of that program did not understand basic
psychology. The word "quit" is a term that came to the
software industry because programmers put it at the end
of their code routines as a term of frustration. You do
it, and it's cute, and nobody cares.
On a piece of software you're
making programs for an adult or a child, when they see
the word "quit," emotionally, for them as users, the word
"quit" is a negative term of failure. The term engenders
feelings of failure, rejection, repugnance. Now, if you
want to cause people to feel good about your program, why
would you want to put a term of rejection on the screen
and create an unconscious negative mindset with someone
who's using your product? Wouldn't you rather find a way
to end the program that feels more friendly?
So all of these factors are part of
this whole thing called media psychology. It's a big field,
it's going to be developed, I think significantly. I wrote a
journal article about it a long time ago, and when it
finally came out recently, I must have gotten 400 telephone
calls, letters, and e-mails. I've been a member of the APA
for a long time, but until lately I've functioned in the
edges of the group because I'm not a practicing clinical
psychologist. I've been kind of a practicing media
psychologist, a schoolteacher, really, who makes learning
software that genuinely support learning. That's been my
interest. Fundamentally, I was educated that way, and the
response has been awesome as people awaken to these ideas. I
met these clinical psychologists at the APA now, and their
response inspires me. I went to the last convention, and we
set up this study I told you about to define the field.
There's now a media psychology division now in the APA, and
it has hundreds of members. There's growing recognition of
this emerging field. At last, media psychology is
important.
.
