Learning
For your information, here is a question.
Marshall McLuhan (1960, age 48/49). The question is:
Why should the sending or receiving of a telegram seem more dramatic than the ringing of a telephone?
Me (August, 2010, age 58). The sending or receiving of what?
Anyone who has sent or received a telegram can attest to the truth of McLuhan’s observation.
Unfortunately, many of the readers of this blog may find the truth of McLuhan’s observation difficult to grasp because they have never sent or received a telegram. It is also possible that they have never heard a telephone ring dramatically. Which raises the question: What is today’s dramatic equivalent of the telegram? I suspect that the answer is: there isn’t one. Which raises another question for your information: Is the history of media impossible?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger, 1989, p. 150.
The importance of the unimportant.
Marshall McLuhan (December, 1970, age 59). Cavett’s right!
Today, Dick Cavett made a remarkable observation. He and I were talking on his TV show and he asked me why it was that when people come out of a movie it takes them a while before they start talking to one another. It’s as if they’re overwhelmed by what they’ve seen. Film is a private rather than a corporate affair. One does not have this kind of experience watching TV. TV is corporate rather than private. It encourages talk.
Me (July, 2010, age 58). But, does it matter?
The experience Cavett talks about of leaving a movie theatre at a loss for words is I think a common one. We’ve all had it. And it was the exactly this type of real world observation that fascinated McLuhan and which he loved to talk to people about. (Others being that radio is a visual medium, the telephone a non-visual medium, and children like to watch TV close up. Still others that radio as background “noise” at work is not visual. People tend to shout on cell phones. And listening to music with ear buds while running or biking can blind you to the visual.)
These seemingly unimportant experiences may be the keys to understanding the effects of media. At least McLuhan was drawn to them.
What do you think? Was McLuhan on to something.
Are there other seemingly unimportant media effects have you observed?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Listening for this post
The Dick Cavett Show, December 1970.
Where do you get your information?
Marshall McLuhan (Fall 1953, age 42). Books!
“Marshall, must you spread your books throughout the house?”
“No, Corinne, but it serves me to do so. It reminds me of what I have read. Also I like to pick a book up and dip into it every now and again to add to and refresh my memory. Having them about me this way is a great help.”
Me (July, 2010, age 57). Books!
While McLuhan enjoyed talking to people, Philip Marchand says he got most of his information from books. On average, says Marchand, McLuhan read 35 books a week, which seems like a lot, even for a university professor. I get most of my ideas for this blog from books, but not exclusively from books. On average, though, I cannot say I read more than two books a week. (May be – like McLuhan – I should skim more.)
Where do you get your information? How many books do you read in a week?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Philip Marchand. Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger, 1989 p. 179.
What’s wrong with Google?
Marshall McLuhan (March 3, 1959, age 47). Another breakthrough!
You have no doubt noticed that the first thing we do with a new invention is to use it in old ways. It is not a coincidence that the automobile was originally called “the horseless carriage,” the railroad “the iron horse,” and, at least in Britain, the radio was known as “the wireless.”
Me (July, 2010, age 57). Google may be leading us down memory lane.
Whether or not Google is being used in old or new ways, it is as McLuhan taught extending or enhancing some part of us, but what? Some months ago, Julien Smith blogged about how Google was making it unnecessary to remember things. And as a result, he suggested, we may be losing our power to remember. Who starred in that movie? Who wrote that book? How did that old song go? Don’t worry about it. Google it!
In artificially extending our memories the technology may be weakening our natural powers to remember. This is a concern. But it may also be that Google is doing more than our memory work for us; it may be leading us down memory lane. With it we can remember more than we ever could, and, as a result, find ourselves more interested in recovering old ideas than discovering new ones. This may be a greater concern.
What do you use Google for? The old or the new?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Me: Lectures and Interviews. Edited by Stephanie McLuhan and David Staines, 2003, p. 2.
Perseverance
Marshall McLuhan (1974, age 63). I have doubts …
I don’t know perhaps it was late. I was tired. The Monday night seminar had just ended. Eric was driving me home and I said to him: “Is it worth it? All this effort to alert people, when they just attack the bearer of news and do nothing. Do I have the right to, am I supposed to, should I continue to keep investigating and making discoveries? Why bother, if the West is being discarded and no one will do anything about it or even listen.”
Me (July, 2010, age 57). But he never gave up
McLuhan had doubts about his ability to get through to people, to get people to think about, to comprehend, the power of media. He would have been a fool not to. His style insured him critics. But he never gave up. Today it is clear, as Douglas Coupland says, what with Google, Facebook, You tube, and everything else like this blog your reading on the internet, McLuhan “was right on the money four decades ahead of the biggest shift in human communication since the printing press.”
Am I getting through to McLuhan? What can we learn from him after all these years?
Like McLuhan I too have doubts. As we approach our 200th post questions come to me. What was I thinking when I committed to 300 posts? Should I keep going? It’s been great, but why bother? What good does it do to sieve through old ground? Is the medium a barrier to the message? But then occasionally there are discoveries …
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
W. Terrence Gordon. Marshall McLuhan: Escape into Understanding, 1997, p. 275.
Marshall McLuhan: Filmmaker.
Marshall McLuhan (1970, age 68/69). Let’s make a movie!
I have just spent a very productive day with Jane Jacobs. We have written a script for a movie, “A Burning Would.” (You will of course recognize the reference to Finnegans Wake, “A burning would has come to dance inane.”) If all works out this film will either be the final word on the nature of film or stop the Spadina Expressway dead in its tracks.
Me (June 2010, age 57) Lessons?
Jane Jacobs describes the chaotic and exhilarating day she spent with McLuhan writing a film script in Who was Marshall McLuhan. The word “script” is an exaggeration. Here’s how the day went: he persuaded her to give it a try, they talked about ideas, McLuhan’s secretary, Margaret Stewart took notes, and typed them up, and McLuhan made arrangements to meet with the filmmaker David Mackay to discuss the “script.” Jacobs describes the resulting “script” as “garbled and unreadable” but also as “dazzling sparks and fragments.”
Remarkably the film (12 minutes long) was made [and even more remarkably doesn’t seem to be posted on YouTube]. Jacobs says that the film was “good” but “the final product bore no relationship at all to our original script.”
Perhaps, the major lessons to be learned from this film are:
Don’t be afraid to try new things (neither Jacobs nor McLuhan had ever tried to write a script before.)
Get yourself good partners.
Don’t be afraid to fail.
What new things are you doing?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Who Was Marshall McLuhan. Edited by Barrington Nevitt with Maurice McLuhan, 1995, pp. 101-102.
For other inspiration see Julien Smith’s In over your head.
And thanks to Michael Edmunds for this interview of McLuhan on his plans for filmmaking originally published in Take One in the 1970s – Marshall McLuhan makes a movie.
The 100 percent sensible Marshall McLuhan.
Marshall McLuhan (Spring 1971, age 59). McLuhan to Peter Newman
Did you hear about the man who went on a date with Siamese twins? The following day a friend asked him if he had a good time. The man’s reply: yes and no.
Me (June 2010, age 57). Two cheers for Marshall
Yesterday a small test was made of Patrick Watson’s observation made on “This Hour has Seven Days” that no one can understand more than 10 percent of what Marshall McLuhan has to say. The test of course was unscientific and leading rather than persuasive. Today I want to present a more sweeping assessment of McLuhan’s sensibility. Namely, that on unimportant subjects – that is subjects only tangentially related to media and media theory Marshall McLuhan is always easy to understand. For example here is McLuhan talking about his personal dislike of technical innovation and change on the CBC television program “This Hour Has Seven Days.” (May 6, 1966):
“I’m resolutely opposed to all innovation, all change. But I’m determined to understand what’s happening because I don’t choose to sit and let the juggernaut roll over me. Many people seem to think that because you talk about something recent you’re in favour of it. The exact opposite is true in my case. Anything I talk about is almost certainly something I’m resolutely against and it seems to me that the best way of opposing it is to understand it. Then you know where to turn off the button.”
What has this got to do with the man who dated Siamese twins? The punch line also works for the question: Do you understand what Marshall McLuhan is saying? Yes and no.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Who Was Marshall McLuhan, edited by Barrington Nevitt with Maurice McLuhan, 1995, pp. 109, 135, and 136.