A tribute to and a lament for Marshall McLuhan continues. If he had lived Marshall would have been 100 on July 21, 2011. Join me in the countdown to his centennial, and an exploration of more of his observations on the way media work in the electric age in which we live.
How important are social media?
Marshall McLuhan (June, 1967, age 55) Ask, “Who is affected?”
“I find media analysis very much more exciting now [than literary work] because it affects so many more people. One measure of the importance of anything is: Who is affected by it? In our time, we have devised ways of making the most trivial event affect everybody.”
Me (June, 2011, age 58) Can there be any doubt now about the power of social media?
The proof can be summarized in a single word: Vancouver.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading:
McLuhan: Hot & Cool, edited by Gerald Emanuel Stearn, New York, 1967, p. 261