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.
Gutenberg Galaxy
The legacy of Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan (1955, age 44). Photography killed conspicuous consumption
I spoke today to Professor Louis Forsdale’s class at Teachers College, Columbia University. The $100 dollar honorarium will come in useful. Corinne wants a new bed, says we’ve worn it out. I told her six children is more than most people get out of a bed. During my talk one young chap, Neil Postman, I think Forsdale said his name was, sat with his mouth open for the whole 55 minutes.
Thought the class was going to burst a collective blood vessel when I told them my three latest ideas: that the invention of eyeglasses in the 13th century caused scientists to discover genetic manipulation, that the telegraph caused the decentralization of information, and finally, my favourite, that photography killed conspicuous consumption. I told them that if they didn’t like those ideas I had others. Also I told them my current favourite punning anecdote – “Though he may be more humble, there is no police like Holmes.” The groans were deafening.
Michael Hinton (2009, age 57). With friends like Neil Postman who needs enemies
Somewhere in the Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes pays Watson, his friend and companion in detection, one of the greatest backhanded compliments in fiction. He tells Watson that while he is not himself a source of light he is a stimulus to, or reflector of, light in others. Forty-odd years after Neil Postman heard McLuhan speak at Columbia, Postman paid a similar backhanded compliment to McLuhan. In the forward to Philip Marchand’s biography of McLuhan, Postman writes, “I was … charmed, refreshed, inspired by McLuhan’s story. I’m older now, but I think I never really believed in his story.” (The story, of course, is McLuhan’s big idea that the advent of writing and the printing press created the Western World as we know it – visual, logical, rational – and the coming of the new electric media of the 20th century returned us to a pre-Gutenberg, pre-writing primitive, tribal world – oral, intuitive, irrational.)
The mark of every great philosopher it has been said is that they got it wrong. But it is quite a different thing to say they got it all wrong, which is what Postman says about McLuhan.
Is McLuhan more a Watson than he is a Holmes? Is Postman right? Is the real legacy of Marshall McLuhan that he was a great stimulus to the thought of others but not himself a source of worthwhile thinking on media? In other words, what he has to say, for example, about photography is wrong, but it gets other people like Postman thinking about other things rightly?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Postman, Neil. “Forward,” to Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The medium and the messenger. 1989, pp. vii-xiii.
Tags: American mind, Communications, Conversation, Culture, Education, Gutenberg Galaxy, Hot and cool media, Learning, Medium is the message, Rhetoric, Technology
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Papyrus and the Roman Empire: The story continues
Marshall McLuhan (May, 1964, age 52). Don’t underestimate the power of papyrus
Finkelstein (see yesterday’s post) has no interest in the truth. He’s another one of those small minds entranced with facts. One should never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Empire rises and falls because of papyrus is definitely a good story. To be sure the causal relationship I have in mind is more what Aristotle would have called material and formal cause than efficient. But no mater, if Finkelstein would only open his mind and start thinking he’d see that not all is as he thinks it is.
Michael Hinton (October, 2009, age 57). Don’t overestimate the power of papyrus
I asked two economic historians about the papyrus story: Abraham Rotstein, Professor Emeritus in Economics at the University of Toronto and Deirdre McCloskey, Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English and Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Professor Rotstein who was a member of McLuhan’s speaking circle in the 1960s (more on this later) told me that he doubted whether papyrus provided much of an explanation for the rise or fall of the Roman Empire. At any rate he said he didn’t think it was in Gibbon. Professor McCloskey pointed out that even if the Romans were cut off from supplies of Egyptian papyrus they could have obtained it by trade with India.
What you might ask has this to do with my life? What is McLuhan trying to say? Surely not that he is making a contribution to our understanding of ancient history. But rather I think to our understanding of our own age. What biases in time or space do our dominant means of communication have? Innis [see yesterday] believed papyrus favoured the growth of Empires in space and the parchment codex growth over time. Is the Internet more like papyrus or the parchment codex? What about Facebook? What about Twitter? And other forms of social media?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Finkelstein, Sidney. Sense and Nonsense of McLuhan. New York: International Pub., 1968, pp. 13-17.
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media, 1964, pp. 100 and 134.
Innis, H.A. The Bias of Communication, (1951) Second ed. Toronto: U. of T. Press, 2008, pp. 47-49.
Tags: Communications, Culture, Education, Global village, Gutenberg Galaxy, Medium is the message, Social media, Technology, Writing
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The Roman Empire rose and fell because of papyrus?
Marshall McLuhan (May, 1964, age 52). Don’t underestimate the power of papyrus
I owe my understanding of the power of papyrus to H.A. Innis. It was Innis who told me about it at one of our 4 p.m. gab sessions in the basement cafeteria of the Royal Ontario Museum. Empires that cover great distances are only feasible if they can take advantage of a medium of communication that allows easy and cheap communication over long distances. Hence the obvious point that without papyrus the Romans could never have built their far flung empire and the end of their empire was assured with the scarcity of papyrus.
Michael Hinton (October, 2009, age 57). Don’t overestimate the power of papyrus
Papyrus is a fibrous plant from which the Egyptians and Indians made a kind of paper. H.A. Innis made the basic point in Empire and Communication and in The Bias of Communications that the basic mediums of communication available to a society, culture or Empire influence or bias what is possible for those societies, cultures and empires to be or become. The argument is that without a light and easily transmitted medium like papyrus the Roman Empire would have been impossible. To earlier Empires other things were possible. Stone and clay allowed the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians, for example, to last for a very long time, but they restricted their geographic spread.
In 1968, Sydney Finkelstein wrote that McLuhan should be required to post the following disclaimer in his books: No statements … are necessarily to be taken as true or not. Any agreement between what this book says about history, and what happened in history, is purely coincidental. On the subject of papyrus and the coming and going of the Roman Empire, Finklestein is particularly scathing. “Does McLuhan mean that the Roman generals were able to dash off quick papyrus messages to their soldiers like, ‘Don’t hurl your javelins until you see the whites of their eyes?’?” And on the fall of the Empire, he says even if papyrus was a factor, surely factors that were more important that McLuhan ought to acknowledge are: “the internal collapse of Rome’s slave-holding economy and the invasions of the Germanic tribes, who refused to be enslaved or exploited.” And he says it is remarkable that McLuhan asserts the fall came in the 5th century at the hands of “the Mohammedans” who cut off the Romans access to supplies of papyrus from Egypt. Remarkable because Mohammed was not born until the 6th century and the Mohammedans were not powerful enough to cut off access to Egypt until the 7th century.
What are we to make of McLuhan’s idea here about the power of papyrus? Is Finklestein right that on papyrus and the Roman Empire McLuhan has given us a pack of lies and mistruths? (To be continued tomorrow)
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Finkelstein, Sidney. Sense and Nonsense of McLuhan. New York: International Pub., 1968, pp. 13-17.
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media, 1964, pp. 100 and 134.
Innis, H.A. The Bias of Communication, (1951) Second ed. Toronto: U. of T. Press, 2008, pp. 47-49.
Tags: Communications, Education, Global village, Gutenberg Galaxy, Medium is the message, Technology
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Be a Newton, a Darwin, an Einstein, or even a McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan (July, 1952, age 40). Print makes us all equals
I am writing a book on “the end of the Gutenberg Era” in the west, which was quite a long era as eras go, lasting from the Greeks through to the Victorians. That is it is about the end of the world made visual by writing and print. An end brought about by the electric media of the late 19th and the whole of the 20th century – telegraph, film, radio, and TV. It is a subject rich in fascinating ideas. Here is one: Printing by movable type made it possible for ordinary people to be on equal terms with all the great geniuses of the western tradition.
Michael Hinton (October, 2009, age 57). How? Print elevates you and reduces them
Marshall McLuhan is saying that a book freezes the thought of men and women of genius at a single point in time. At the same time the book is there for you to go through many times, put down and go back to. Take Eliot’s poem the Wasteland for example. When you read the poem and grow to understand what Eliot is saying, the result is not that you acquire the illusion of equality with Eliot. You actually become the equal of the Eliot who has been translated from human form to the printed page.
Does this matter? Is it important? I think the answer is yes. The whole of the western tradition of liberal education through deep reading of the great books is built on the idea. You cannot be equal to the living Plato, but you can be the equal of Plato of the printed page. Note, McLuhan does not say that film or TV makes you the equal of what is being played on film or TV.
What about film? Theatre? TV? Do they have different effects from print? If print creates equality, does TV create inequality? What does theatre create?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
The Letters of Marshall McLuhan. Selected and edited by Matie Molinaro, Corinne McLuhan, and William Toye. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 231-232.
Eliot, T.S. “The Wasteland,” 1922, in Modern Poetry, second edition. Edited by Maynard Mack, et. al. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-hall, 1961, pp. 142-161.
Tags: Communications, Education, Gutenberg Galaxy, Medium is the message, Reading, Visual medium
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