Medium is the message
How Smart Are You?
Me (September, 2010, age 58). Who can make sense of this?
Goths, Tattoos, and Celine Dion
Sex Tapes, Oprah, and Chef Gordon Ramsay
Dubai, Silicon Valley, and Off-shoring Jobs
Touch Bars, Internet Porn, and Pamela Anderson
Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia
Gated Communities, The Homeless, and Meth
Twilight, Book Clubs, and Islamic Militarisml
Teen-age Bullying and Date Rape
The Recession and Global Warming
The 21st Century
Marshall McLuhan (September, 2010, age 99). I can.
How? I’ll give you a hint. Click on this link.
Don’t like that idea? I’ve got others. Tune in next week.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964.
Tags: Communications, Contraststudios247, Culture, Electronic media, Matthew Swann, Medium is the message, Social media, Technology, Television, Understanding media
Permalink Communication, Culture, Technology No Comments
TV is addictive.
Marshall McLuhan (February 6, 1974, age 62). Read all about it
Did you happen to see TV Guide for September 15, 1973? There is a report of the effects of quitting TV watching cold turkey in England and Germany. They paid people to turn off their sets off for as long as they could stand it. Some lasted three months but most could only do it for a week. And all showed the same kind of symptoms of withdrawal as alcoholics or drug addicts do when denied their fix. Quite obviously this had nothing to do with their missing the content of Bonanza or the Monty Python’s Flying Circus. They could not do without the medium.
Me (May 2010, age 57). TV Guide ain’t a scientific journal
But what does that matter, McLuhan wasn’t a scientist. He insisted that everything he said could be tested by anyone who was willing to look honestly at the world. Our experiment with living without TV continues in the Hinton household. Three months and counting. I must say I have had some withdrawal symptoms. My experience is that Internet video and rented DVDs are not the same as TV. And I must agree with McLuhan that it is not the program content I miss. But then, this is not a scientific test.
However, a recent study appears to both support and contradict McLuhan. On the one hand it shows the increasing power of electronic media to create dependency. On the other it would appear that modern users of electronic media are dependent on both the content and the medium.
According to the study in which 200 college students were asked to give up “any media interaction” (texting, facebook, phone, TV) for 24 hours and then report the experience, many found the assignment impossible to complete and others reported uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms. Participants reported missing their virtual relationships.
What about you? Have you ever tried to give up TV? Any other media interaction? What happened?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, pp. 490-91.
Tags: Communications, Electronic media, Medium is the message, Television
What is truth?
Marshall McLuhan (March 25, 1974, age 61). Hercule Poirot knows!
The truth is not beauty nor shall it set you free. It is explosive and discomforting. In my study of media I have noticed it time and again, the minute you talk to people about media effects they start to lose their cool. Nobody wants to hear that the medium is the message. It only upsets them. It is when people get upset I know I’m on to something.
“What is truth?” asks Agatha Christie’s consulting detective Hercule Poirot. “Eet ees whatever upsets zee applecart.”
Me (May 2010, age 57). Look out!
One apple cart I keep upsetting has to do with PowerPoint. In my work as a presentations coach I encourage corporate presenters to think about the effects PowerPoint will have on their audiences. This is something it appears it takes courage to do. PowerPoint is now so deeply ingrained in business as both a project management tool as well as a presentation device that as one corporate manager said, “I couldn’t think without PowerPoint.”
What apple carts are you upsetting?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, pp. 491.
Who’s on trial?
Marshall McLuhan (April 2, 1971, age 59). We are.
When I heard the news on TV about Lt. Wiliam Calley’s life sentence for the My Lai massacre it suddenly hit me. TV steps up our sense of involvement so much that for example in the public broadcast of a trial the audience becomes the criminal. Or more prosaically, the medium contains not the message but the user.
Me (May 2010, age 57). What do you remember most vividly?
Perhaps not surprisingly, many of the memories that remain most vivid to me are associated with TV broadcasts:
- O.J. in the white Ford Bronco;
- the crashing of the jet liner into the Twin Towers;
- the funerals of JFK
- and Winston Churchill;
- the first moon landing.
Why? McLuhan would say that in these TV spectacles the audience becomes the criminal, the terrorists, the corpse, the astronaut.
What events do you remember most vividly?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, pp. 430-31.
Tags: Communications, Electronic media, Medium is the message, Technology, Television, Visual medium
The meaning of it all
Marshall McLuhan (April 29, 2010, age 98). “Corinne, come and look at this!”
“What is it, now, Marshall?”
“The PowerPoint slide from a military presentation in Afghanistan everyone’s talking about.”
“What in Heaven’s a PowerPoint slide?”
“One in a sequence of overheated overhead slides. This one’s a doozy.”
“Looks to me like a plate of spaghetti.”
“Forget the spaghetti. Consider the medium. PowerPoint is an electronic overhead or magic lantern slide show, one damn slide after another. The business of the medium is push things through, relentlessly, to resolve difficulties to get it all over. Its great advertising, but it’s not a conversation.”
“Why, Marshall, would they want a conversation in Afghanistan?”
“To come up with fresh ideas.”
Me (April 2010, age 57). Another problem with PowerPoint
Every medium creates its own environment that for the most part is invisible. But every now and again something happens to make the environment visible. Seen outside it’s natural context, the military briefing, the slide reveals the hubris and waste of military resources that’s taking place in Afghanistan. At home and in the field PowerPoint Rangers are fighting it out in an escalating war. A war to present the illusion of the capture of the most detail in a single slide.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Tags: American mind, Communications, Conversation, Culture, Electronic media, Medium is the message, Technology, Visual medium
The best book I didn’t write?
Marshall McLuhan (December 1, 1966, age 55). The Medium is the Massage!
Frank Taylor, the editor in chief of the book division of McGraw-Hill, the publishers of Understanding Media, phoned today. Poor chap was quite incensed to discover that Random House is publishing the Medium is the Massage. Editors are as bad as wives. Look at another woman and they think you’re having an affair. I assured him he had nothing to fear from my dalliance with Random House. McGraw-Hill is my true love. Two reasons: (1) I wrote nothing new for this book – it’s all pictures and excerpts from my previous writing put together by others; and (2) It will push up the sales of my other books. He seemed somewhat relieved.
Me (March 2010, age 57). If best means understandable!
Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage is a McLuhan book almost anyone can read with understanding – in part because of the pictures, and in part because someone else put it together. (Graphic designer Quentin Fiore and writer Jerome Agel. These two also put together War and Peace in the Global Village, another book McLuhan didn’t write.)
It has been said that the title was originally owing to a typographical error. Possibly, but unlikely. The message of the pun pervades the book: The electronic media are working you over and here are a few of the things they are doing to you.
Have you looked at it? If so, what did you think? If not, you should.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 339.
Tags: Books, Communications, Creating, Electronic media, Medium is the massage, Medium is the message, Relationship, Understanding media, Visual medium
Can you ever really say good-bye?
Marshall McLuhan (March 1, 1966, age 54). All can be well.
I do not know how people can say I am a cheerleader for the new electric media. Here’s a line from Harold Rosenberg’s 1965 New Yorker article on me: “Understanding Media is McLuhan’s good-bye to Gutenberg and to Renaissance, ‘typographic’ man; that is to the self-centered individual.”
Well, it may be, but my hope is that it is not. I am, myself, after all, a typographic man. What I have often said I will say again. Our culture and values, which were nurtured and developed by print, need not disappear as a result of the rise of the new electric media. By studying these new media we can ensure that we survive them. But study them we must for if we play the role of helpless bystander we will surely go the way of the Dodo.
Me (March 2010, age 57). An experiment
A month ago, the Hinton household said good bye to TV. In other words we are now studying the effects of TV on us. How is it going? The first effect is that we have returned to the dinner table to eat dinner. The second is that TV has reappeared in our lives as the contents of other, newer media such as the internet (PBS.com, CBS.com, CTV.com, Global.com, etc.) and DVD. And as McLuhan said the new media (DVD and internet download) does make the old media (TV) look like classic fare. At any rate, “Nurse Jackie” on DVD does not feel like TV. It feels more like film. Or rather filmish.
Do you know anyone who has said good bye to TV or other media? What has been the effect?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 334
Tags: Communications, Culture, Hot and cool media, Medium is the message, Technology, Television, Understanding media
Permalink 1950s and 60s, Communication, Culture, Technology No Comments
People don’t get ‘the medium is the message’
Marshall McLuhan (October 3, 1964, age 52). It’s the environment!
Why didn’t I think of it before? Of course the medium is the message, but when I say it – and I do love saying it – I just get a bunch of blank stares. ‘What do you mean by that Professor McLuhan?’ The full answer would take some time. But I’ve discovered a way to say it that people can get. The new version is that every new technology creates its own environment which contains as its content the old environment. For example the automobile has built up a vast sprawling network of roads, highways, gas stations, roadside restaurants, and populations of commuters living in their suburbs. This new environment contains the old environment created by the railroad. We all see the old environment big cities strung out on the railway lines in sharp relief. What is invisible to us is the new environment. Why else would you think it normal to spend 2 to 3 hours a day commuting?
Me (March 2010, age 57). How to see the new environment
The next time you’re in a restaurant look around. Chances are you’ll see people at neighboring tables talking animatedly to people who are somewhere else. The cell phone and blackberry have created their own new environment which contains the old environment of the land-line phone and face-to-face conversation. Before the spread of these inventions people would stay at home or at the office to be connected now people can go out and stay connected. Today people are no longer tied to their homes or offices, but there is a price for this.
Can you ever not be connected? Under what circumstances would you not take a call or respond to a text message. When would you? While shopping or driving? At dinner with friends? In bed with your wife, husband, or partner?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p.311
Tags: Communications, Medium is the message, Relationship, Technology
Permalink 1950s and 60s, Communication, Technology No Comments
Sensible people don’t get it.
Marshall McLuhan (July 10, 1964, age 52). Copernicus had no common sense.
This morning as I was shaving it struck me that sensible people look at media with pre-Copernican / pre-Galileo / pre-Newtonian spectacles. After all is it sensible to believe that the earth we are standing on is round? That it is spinning at a rate of 1000 miles per hour? And that the force that brings an apple to the ground explains the tides and the passage of the moon in the night sky? Why then should anyone believe TV is changing us?
Me (March 2010, age 57). The medium is the message. Again…
We are back to “the medium is the message.” It is sensible to think that electronic media are like windows we look through. They can distort our vision but they cannot change what we see. But media are not passive planes of glass. They reach out to us and into us rearranging the world to suit their needs – cities, roads, buildings, rooms – and rewiring our consciousnesses.
It is not sensible to think about media this way. Our senses tell us the opposite, that we control our media. That they’re simple tools we pick up and put down as we will. McLuhan believed that media change us. This is an idea most people will reject.
What do you think? Do media change you?
Speaking of ideas some may find hard to accept, a new biography of McLuhan by Douglas Coupland is now in the bookstores.
I will be reading Coupland’s biography of McLuhan with two questions in mind (Thanks to Douglas John Hall, Professor Emeritus of Theology at McGill for this approach): (1) What is it that Coupland wants to present, praise, or build up about McLuhan and his work? And what is it that he wants to deflate, criticize, or pull down? More on it later this week once I’ve had a chance to read it.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p.306
Tags: Books, Communications, Entertainment, Medium is the message, Reading, Technology, Television
Permalink 1950s and 60s, Communication, Technology No Comments
McLuhan slandered?
Marshall McLuhan (January, 1996, age 84). Unbelievable!
For the most part death agrees with me. I’ve got a quiet room, and plenty of books. Every now and then I look up from my studies and look down on earth to find out what people are saying about me. It’s delightful to see that even now 16 years after my death – or as Corinne likes to call it my “unfortunate demise” – I’m still a celebrity. The latest news on the Marshall McLuhan front is that Wired magazine has put me on their masthead as their patron Saint. An excellent choice, if I do say so myself, and I do. But I don’t like what that bloke Gary Wolf wrote about me. Said someone else had written my books. The nerve of the man, ordinarily I’d sue, but unfortunately given my present circumstances, that’s impossible. No lawyers up here.
Me (February 2010, age 57). Wolfe may have been right on the mark.
What Wolfe wrote is that “scholars agree that Marshall McLuhan’s earliest books were written by him, but there is mystery and uncertainty about who really wrote his subsequent works.” What there is no “mystery and uncertainty” about is that all but one of McLuhan’s books published after Understanding Media were co-authored. The question is how much did McLuhan actually contribute to the writing of these books and how much did his co-authors. It is generally agreed, for example, that The Medium is the Massage was pieced together by his co-authors from McLuhan’s previous writing. My own belief is that the McLuhan who wrote the Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media is not the same McLuhan who co-authored the later books. I have written a long essay explaining more precisely what I mean by this, which I will publish serially in this blog, beginning next week.
Was the McLuhan who wrote The Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media a genius? How do you define genius?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. Produced by Jerome Agel, 1967.
Tags: Celebrity, Gutenberg Galaxy, Medium is the message, Understanding media