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.
Learning
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.
More gold for the student of media.
Marshall McLuhan (1964, age 52). Look for the small facts.
If you want to understand how media work the best place to look is under the light of small facts. Forget about the big theories. Work with small truths. For example, have you ever noticed that in reading a newspaper you are drawn to the story you already know? You go to a ball game, that’s the story you turn to. You’re caught in a storm, that’s what you want to read about.
Why? As human beings our minds delight in re-running experiences we’ve had in one medium through the frame of another.
Me (November, 2010, age 58). Is it true?
Observe what you do. What stories are you drawn to?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, pp. 211.
Gold for the student of media.
Marshall McLuhan (1964, age 52). “Now this is gold!”
“What is, Marshall?”
“Why simple facts like these. Did you know that there are no telephone books in Moscow and no central switchboard for any government department?”
“No Marshall. I didn’t. Is it important?”
“Vital, I’d say. You can keep your theories. I’d read a hundred books to turn up two facts like these.”
Me (November, 2010, age 58). These are the kind of facts that niggle away at you.
Are they true? What do they mean? Do they matter?
One thing though they seem to describe the type of world large corporations are moving toward today. A place without a telephone book. A place where you phone and effectively no one is there to pick up and direct your call. A place of one way communication. Have you tried calling someone in one of the big banks lately?
This is a long clip, but you’ll get the message fairly quickly.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, pp. 214.
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.
Perspective is learned.
Me (November, 2010, age 58). But what does it teach?
Marshall McLuhan said that a perspective is a dangerous thing. Dangerous to our understanding of the world because it closes off other possibilities. Here the artist David Hockney explores a different way of seeing:
Marshall McLuhan (1964, age 52). Print taught us perspective
“The old belief that everybody really saw in perspective, but only that Renaissance painters had learned how to paint it, is erroneous.”
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, p. 288.
The power of numbers
Me (October, 2010, age 58). If not true perhaps it should be.
In 1970 Marshall McLuhan was granted an honorary doctorate by the University of Alberta and in his speech to the graduating classes could not resist talking about one of his favorite ideas: that the world’s problems were all capable of speedy resolution. If only the experts would stand aside and let large numbers of ordinary people go to work on them. Hard to believe? Odder things have happened – such as for example Wikipedia or a Nelson Eddie-led rebellion.
Check out especially the four minutes from minute 2 to 6.
Marshall McLuhan (November 20, 1971, age 60). No problem …
“There is no kind of problem that baffles one or a dozen experts that cannot be solved at once by a million minds that are given a chance simultaneously to tackle a problem.”
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, “Convocation Address, University of Alberta, November 20, 1971.”
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.