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.
Education
Where’s the play?
Marshall McLuhan (1970, age 59). Did you know …
That the word school is from the latin scholia meaning leisure or play? Is it any wonder kids are dropping out of school? School has become a detention center.
Me (December, 2010, age 58). What is to be done?
According to my Shorter OED, school derives from the latin schola (not scholia) and means the employment of leisure in disputation. As usual McLuhan gets the small bit wrong but the big bit right. Unless school is as engaging as play little real learning will take place there. How much real disputation goes on in our schools? How can we introduce more intellectual play?
Is this the solution?
Or is this?
Or are we still missing the point?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading:
The future of old age.
Marshall McLuhan (December, 1966, age 55). Dear Diary:
Richard Kostelanetz, who is doing a piece on me for the New York Times, looked in today on my graduate seminar on communications, which I run at Toronto University. He seemed to particularly enjoy my insights on what the elderly have to look forward to in the electric age.
I find a blunt approach to be effective in slashing through the students’ mental torpor. “What,” I asked, “is the future of old age?” The answer is obvious, although you’d never have known it by their faces. Their silence was deafening. “Why,” I said, “it’s exploration and discovery.”
Me (December, 2010, age 58). As we are discovering, more and more, today …
But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading:
Richard Kostelanetz, “Understanding McLuhan (In Part),” The New York Times, January 29, 1967. (“on the web”)
Three words a day.
Marshall McLuhan (September, 1930, age 19). Dear Diary:
Today my habit of memorizing the meaning of three new words a day has paid off handsomely. Professor Allison, who was lecturing today on Milton, started his lecture with a question. “What is the meaning of “imprimatur”? No one else but me could answer.
Me (December, 2010, age 58). Words, words, words!
The habit of looking up words in the dictionary (the O.E.D. naturally) was one of the few McLuhan picked up from his father. It was a habit he maintained for most of his life. McLuhan’s biographer, Philip Marchand writes, that much later in his life McLuhan once remarked “that a single English word was more interesting than the entire NASA space program.”
Two of the words the young McLuhan committed to memory were “scaturient” and “sesquipedalian.” Whether he ever found a time to use them seems unlikely. “I say, Marshall, do you see those two streams, the one gushing forth one-and-a-half times more than the other?” “Yes, their scaturient and sesquipedalian character certainly caught my eye.” But that was not the point. Words themselves fascinated him. More than the launching of a rocket. To understand this is to understand McLuhan.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger, 1989, pp. 14and 19.
Doubts?
Marshall McLuhan (1964, age 52). “What did you say, Corinne?”
“Doubts, Marshall. Do you have any?”
“Certainly. I doubt that there are more than 5 of my colleagues at Toronto University that understand anything I’ve been saying about media. I doubt I will ever be comfortable with these invasive new technologies. I doubt that anyone but myself truly understands the importance of my work.”
“No, Marshall. I mean with all the trouble in the world do you ever doubt there is a God?”
“Never. Others can bother their heads about it. I don’t. It frees me to do so much. It allows me to see the world for what it is.”
Me (November, 2010, age 58). Doubtless …
Marshall knew as a Catholic that no matter how things looked the world was the creation – the extension – of God and as such coherent and understandable. No matter what he had to worry about He didn’t have to worry about that.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger, 1989, p. 58-59.
What’s wrong with our schools?
Marshall McLuhan (1964, age 52). Of course …
“In education the conventional division of the curriculum into subjects is already as outdated as the medieval trivium and quadrivium after the Renaissance. Any subject taken in depth at once relates to other subjects.”
Me (November, 2010, age 58). No wonder kids drop out …
Nothing makes sense. It’s too superficial. Math in math class. English in English class. Science in science class. We need to mix things up. And give it a purpose.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, p. 347.
There are two types of people in the world.
Me (November, 2010, age 58). Literates and non-literates
According to Marshall McLuhan the fundamental difference between literates and non-literates is their approach to cause and effect. Literates, the children of print, (left brain in the language he adopted in the 70s) see the world as sequential. Non-literates, (right brain) view the world as bound together in more tangled and mysterious ways than rough and ready efficient first cause and then effect. Which are you? In what camp are the kids you meet? How about teachers and artists?
Marshall McLuhan (1964, age 52). Of course …
“Nonliterate people register very little interest in … ‘efficient’ cause and effect, but are fascinated by hidden forms that produce magical results. Inner, rather than outer, causes interest the non-literate and non-visual cultures.”
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, p. 287.
Just talk?
Marshall McLuhan (March 14, 1951, age 39). The world is becoming one.
As I was writing to Harold Innis it struck me that the close of the age of print is initiating an end to fragmentation, divisions, and specialization. Every discipline has much to teach the others. Economics, for example, has much to teach poetry and poetry economics.
Me (September, 2010, age 58). For example?
One cannot help wishing McLuhan would provide a specific example. But the marvelous thing about McLuhan is that he sees no need to. Looking around today, there does seem to be a scholar who raids literature to advance economics – Professor Deirdre McCloskey – who readers of this blog have met before.
Perhaps this is what McLuhan had in his mind’s eye. Or perhaps not.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, pp. 223.
The power of speech
Marshall McLuhan (June 12, 1951, age 39). To connect only listen!
Ezra Pound’s remarkable readings of his poems, particularly Canto 56, opened my ears to his rhythms. As I put the matter to him in a plea that he issue these readings as a commercial discs for the general public, “the poet’s own voice provides an entry to his world which is otherwise hard to discover.”
Me (September, 2010, age 58). Why not try it?
Reading McLuhan can be a confusing and frustrating experience. One of the best ways to gain entry to McLuhan’s world is to listen to McLuhan talk about his ideas.
Here he is talking on Youtube. Click on the image to play.
Don’t think about this as “McLuhan Lite” think about it as “The Real McLuhan.”
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, pp. 224.
The present as future.
Marshall McLuhan (December 14, 1960, age 49). No more teachers no more books .
The other day, as I was telling Claude Bissell, I received a questionnaire. One of the questions was: “In your opinion will the television school broadcasts ever replace the teacher in the classroom?” Of course they will. Why do people insist on assuming that the present is forever?
Me (September, 2010, age 58). And the beat goes on.
It’s hard to imagine a question like this being posed today. The future is now the present. This fall, many first year college students will see their professors for the first time on (closed circuit) television or on the internet and ask their first question by e-mail.
In the sixties Marshall’s prophesies were viewed by most people as crazy talk. Many kids today, I imagine, will read them and wonder what the fuss was all about.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 275.
Do you go out to do your homework?
Marshall McLuhan (December 14, 1960, age 49). Everything is now done in teams
A team or corporate approach characterizes schooling today. For example, you can see this “most emphatically in the study habits of high school students, who now say in the evening, “I’m going out to do my homework.”
Me (September, 2010, age 58). The beat goes on
Today the internet kids still go out to do their homework, but now thanks to cell phones, Facebook and computers they don’t have to go out to go out.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 275.