A tribute to and a lament for Marshall McLuhan. Five days a week, Tuesday through Saturday, I present one of McLuhan’s observations and talk about its relevance today. 300 ideas. 300 days. 300 posts.
Conversation
Is this a dream?
Me (September, 2010, age 58). I’m walking home, minding my own business …
I stop at the corner for the light. The guy beside me is on his cell phone and he’s edging me off the sidewalk. The light turns green. I step off and I realize everyone crossing the street is on a cell phone but me. And they don’t see me. I have to move to avoid being walked over. In other words, I’m the only one who is actually here. Everyone else is somewhere else. Something is wrong. Someone is out of step. Wait a moment, it’s me.
Marshall McLuhan (1964 age 52). Obviously.
“The telephone is an irresistible intruder in time or place.”
Me again (September, 2010, age 58). Especially now.
Here is Rudy Giuliani getting a lesson on the irresistible power of the telephone as he delivers a speech.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, p. 271.
Y-y-y-y-you are not who you think you are
Me (September, 2010, age 58). Really!
Everyone knows Marshall McLuhan said “the medium is the message.” But hardly anyone understands what he meant by it.
Are you ready for it? New media change the way we perceive the world. How? Because they change the way we sense the world. With our perceptions changed the world becomes a different place.
So what? Your children, being shaped by different media than the media that shaped you, are entirely different creatures and live in an entirely different world. But you knew that already didn’t you?
Marshall McLuhan (1977 age 65/66). We’re re-tribalising!
Boom! Boom! Boom go the drums! [Be patient this 8 minute video is well worth it]
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage, 1967.
What if he’s right?
Marshall McLuhan (1964, age 52). Here are two short lists.
Three things that haven’t worked in America since the coming of TV:
Movies
National magazines
Comic books
And two things that thanks to TV Americans have discovered a new passion for:
Skin diving
Small cars.
Me (August, 2010, age 58). Now what?
I wonder if it’s too late to make a call to my broker?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, pp. 417 and 421.
What would Marshall say? (continued)
Me (August, 2010, age 58). McLuhan in conversation (continued)
Yesterday we left Marshall in conversation with journalist Herb Caen at a topless restaurant in San Francisco in August 1965. Readers will recall that McLuhan had called attention to the visual bias of Caen’s language. Let’s take one more look – sorry, I apologize for my visual orientation – at that exchange. Here, to refresh your memory is their conversation from yesterday:
[Caen] Being President of the Leg Men of America, I never felt a primal urge to lunch among the topless ladies, but in such distinguished company who could resist? ‘Strip steak sandwich,’ I said to waitress Marilyn, who was wearing blue sequin pasties and not much else. As she walked away, I commented ‘A good-looking girl.
[McLuhan] Interesting choice of words. Good-LOOKING girl. The remark of a man who is visually oriented, not tactually. And I further noticed that you could not bring yourself to look at her breasts as she took your order. You examined her only after she walked away – another example of the visual: the further she walked away, the more attractive she became.
Question: What do you think Caen said next:
(a) “If you say so Marshall.”
(b) “Fascinating, I never noticed – look I’ve done it again – my visual orientation.”
(c) “What?”
(d) “Actually, I’m rather inhibited.”
Marshall McLuhan (August 1965, age 54) The answer is …
Of course (d) – which, if memory serves me, I followed up with:
Another interesting word. Inhibited is the opposite of exhibited, and what is exhibited causes you to be inhibited.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Herb Caen, “Rainy Day Session,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 12, 1965, p. 25.
What would Marshall say?
Me (August, 2010, age 58). McLuhan in conversation.
Forty-five years ago, in August 1965, McLuhan was in San Francisco to take part in the Marshall McLuhan Festival organized by the PR team of Howard Gossage and Gerald Feigen, who had organized the event to build McLuhan as a public figure. One day they took McLuhan for lunch at a topless restaurant along with journalists Tom Wolfe and Herb Caen. In the article Caen wrote about the outing he reports this exchange between himself and McLuhan:
Being President of the Leg Men of America, I never felt a primal urge to lunch among the topless ladies, but in such distinguished company who could resist? ‘Strip steak sandwich,’ I said to waitress Marilyn, who was wearing blue sequin pasties and not much else. As she walked away, I commented ‘A good-looking girl.’
Question: What do you think McLuhan said next?
(a) “She certainly is.”
(b) “I hear you Herb.”
(c) “Excuse me, Marilyn, I’ll have the strip steak too.”
(d) “Interesting choice of words. Good-LOOKING girl. The remark of a man who is visually oriented, not tactually.”
Marshall McLuhan (August 1965, age 54). The answer is …
Of course (d) – I have little in the way of small talk. And, if memory serves me, after I said that I said this:
And I further noticed that you could not bring yourself to look at her breasts as she took your order. You examined her only after she walked away – another example of the visual: the further she walked away, the more attractive she became.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Herb Caen, “Rainy Day Session,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 12, 1965, p. 25.
Wiseguy or wise guy?
Marshall McLuhan (1965, age 66). Of course it’s obvious …
“What do you think, Marshall? At the same time as we are chatting here, just the six of us,* America’s biggest communication conference, led by S. I. Hayakawa, the semanticist, is meeting across town at the San Francisco Hilton with over 1,000 people in attendance.”
“Obviously, it’s unimportant. In the time it takes to get a 1,000 people to agree on anything conditions will have changed. With the conditions changed the conversation will be pointless. They’ll be meeting for the wrong reasons on the wrong questions. Under electronic conditions of high speed change this is inevitable.”
(*Tom Wolfe, Howard Gossage, Gerald Feigen, Mike Robbins, Herbert Gold, and Edward Keating.)
Me (July, 2010, age 57). What should be done?
As usual McLuhan’s wiseguy banter raises serious questions. Under electronic conditions of high speed change are large conferences likely to be a waste of time. A disquieting thought given the number and size of such conferences that continue to be held today.
Is McLuhan right on this one? What is your view? Are large meetings inevitably focused on the wrong things? If so, what forms and methods for holding conferences are likely to be most effective? Is the “unconference” the meeting of the future?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Tom Wolfe. “What if he is right,” in McLuhan: Hot and Cool, 1967, pp. 44-45.
What was Marshall McLuhan up to?
Marshall McLuhan (December 13, 1977, age 66). I’m stunned!
Peter Gzowski actually suggested on television today that I had failed grade six! The fact is – as told him – “I never failed any grade ever.”
Me (June 2010, age 57). What was McLuhan up to?
What Gzowski asked was whether ordinary people who hadn’t attained McLuhan’s academic stature (Full Professor Toronto, Cambridge Ph.D.) should be able to feel better knowing that McLuhan had failed grade six. An easy question. At least one would think so. At any rate, McLuhan’s response clearly surprised Gzowski.
Why did McLuhan deny he’d failed? It is a fact that he did fail. And you can read about it in the biographies of McLuhan by Philip Marchand and Terry Gordon. It is also a fact that his Mother persuaded the school to let him go on to grade 7 and prove he could do the work, which he did. So why didn’t McLuhan say this? What was McLuhan up to?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
PS: For something completely different see yesterday’s post
Reading for this post
W. Terrence Gordon. Marshall McLuhan: Escape into Understanding, 1997, p. 10.
Philip Marchand, Marshall Mcluhan: the Medium and the Messenger, 1989, p. 17-18.