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.
Electronic media
Bless the Beatles!
Marshall McLuhan (1969, age 58). Why?
“For reaffirming that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.”
Me (March, 2011, age 58). Get it?
A pun certainly (“rocks”) but more than that, a joke with a point. Who was it that raised TV kids in the sixties? Not their parents, Marshall is saying.
Who is rocking the cradle today?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading:
Marshall McLuhan, Counter-Blast, 1969, p. 29.
TV has made cities obsolete.
Marshall McLuhan (1969, age 58). Shezamm!
“The INSTANTANEOUS global coverage of radio-TV make the city form meaningless, functionless.”
Me (March, 2011, age 58). Everything is now here, wherever you are.
Or as McLuhan also put the idea: “Any highway eatery with its TV set, newspaper and magazine is as cosmopolitan as NEW York or Paris.” And, as you will note in the clip below, some highway eateries are more cosmopolitan than others.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading:
Marshall McLuhan, Counter-Blast, 1969, p. 12 and 13.
Lions and tigers and bears?
Marshall McLuhan (1970, age 59). Man the hunter!
“The electronic information environment returns all men to the condition of the hunter.”
Me (March, 2011, age 58). But what are you hunting?
Odds are your big game is not as exciting as the lions, tigers, and bears of our tribal ancestors:
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading:
Marshall McLuhan, Culture Is Our Business, 1970, p. 42.
The deadliness of TV
Marshall McLuhan (1970, age 59). What happened to Miss America?
“Miss America was killed by TV along with the Hollywood star system, and the political parties.”
Me (March, 2011, age 58). Is there anything TV didn’t do?
In the thinking of Marshall McLuhan TV is the joker. Why is Vietnam happening or not happening? Why are students rioting or not rioting? Why is anything happening or not happening? The eager follower of Marshall McLuhan knows that TV is probably to blame. And in our time the modern Marshall McLuhans have a new joker card to play – the internet. I wonder what the internet is up to today.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading:
Marshall McLuhan, Culture Is Our Business, 1970, p. 174.
Why is the news so hard to understand?
Marshall McLuhan (March 3, 1959, age 47). The news is coming at high speed.
“When the news moves slowly, the [news]paper has time to provide perspectives, background, and interrelations for the news, and the reader is given a consumer package. When the news comes at high speed, there is no possibility of such literary processing and the reader is given a do-it-yourself kit.”
Me (February, 2011, age 58). Are you surprised?
Perhaps, as Marshall suggests, you don’t understand because you need to find new ways to understand.
Pattern recognition for example. At any rate, is it a surprise you don’t when you keep expecting the consumer package and what your given is a do-it-yourself kit?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading:
Marshall McLuhan, “Electronic Revolution: Revolutionary Effects of New Media,” address to American Association for Higher Education Conference, March 3, 1959, in Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Me: Lectures and Interviews, 2003, p. 8.
McLuhan escapes from the 19th century.
Marshall McLuhan (September 20, 1976, age 65). To set the scene.
I admit it, I’m a creature of habit. Up at 4 am to read the New Testament in Greek, Latin, French, German, or English in my green bathrobe. On the white kitchen wall phone a bit after 5 to discuss new breakthroughs in media studies with a colleague, today it’s Barry Nevitt. Shocking to realize it, but do you know no one in media studies realizes it’s not possible to prove anything? You can only disprove things. “It’s really quite enraging that nobody has ever thought of this before.” Back upstairs for a quick catnap. Then dressed (Hawaiian shirt and slacks) and down to the kitchen for breakfast at 8. My custom at table was to read the New York Times while Corinne rustles me up either a beefsteak, rare, or an egg on whole wheat toast with honey – depends on the day, I like to alternate – when one day I realized I was spending too much time reading the bloody newspaper. You see “the complicated lay of the Times is 19th-century. To get through the whole damn thing would take at least a week. In the electronic age people want information quickly.” That’s when I made my move.
Me (February, 2011, age 58). What did McLuhan do?
He switched to the Toronto Globe and Mail. There are, you see, many ways to time travel.
Some of them quite exhausting.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading:
Barbara Rowes, “If the Media Didn’t Get Marshall McLuhan’s Message in the ‘60s, Another Is on the Way,” People Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 12, September 20, 1976.
Products are becoming services.
Marshall McLuhan (May 8, 1967, age 55). For example …
“Instead of going out and buying a packaged book of which there have been five thousand copies printed, you will go to the telephone, describe your interests, your needs, your problems … and they at once Xerox with the help of computers from libraries all over the world, all the latest material for you personally, not as something to be put out on a bookshelf. They send you the package as a direct personal service. This is where we’re heading under electronic conditions. Products increasingly are becoming services.”
Me (February, 2011, age 58). Sound familiar?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading:
Marshall McLuhan, “Predicting Communication via the Internet (1966),” interview with Robert Fulford, May 8, 1966, on CBC’s This Hour Has Seven Days in Understanding Me: Lectures and Interviews, 2003, p. 101.
What’s new pussy cat?
Me (February, 2011, age 58). Apparently quite a lot …
On June 25, 1967, forty-five TV control rooms around the world joined together to create by satellite the world’s first global TV program. In Toronto Marshall McLuhan was asked by the CBC’s Stanley Burke “Can you say what message the medium has around the world this afternoon?” Here is his answer.
Marshall McLuhan (June 25, 1967, age 55). And yet …
“Everyone will look at this program as if it were something they had already seen before with just a little addition of this or that. Because that is the inevitable way we look at everything. It’s the same old thing with a little item or two added.”
Cordially, Marshall and Me
P.S. Many people we imagine have never seen anything new ever.
Reading:
Or rather viewing: http://bit.ly/aDWkXA
What are you watching?
Marshall McLuhan (1966, age 55). The old medium.
A new medium creates an environment that most of us cannot see. For example TV is for the most part invisible. As a result you don’t watch TV you watch the old media it contains. In an essay I wrote in 1966 I put it this way: “What we see on the late show is not TV, but old movies.”
Me (January, 2011, age 58). To watch TV then you need to watch YouTube:
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading:
Marshall McLuhan, “The Relation of environment to Anti-Environment,” (1966), reprinted in Marshall McLuhan Unbound, Ginko Press, 2005, p.18.
Is he right or is he wrong?
Marshall McLuhan (1970, age 59). The microphone.
“The radio and public address microphones killed off political oratory. You can’t orate into a microphone. You have to chat. And the chat invites the interlocutor and the panel group.”
Me (January, 2011, age 58). Or can you?
Or is this the exception that proves the rule?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading:
Marshall McLuhan, Counterblast, 1970, p. 72.