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.
Speed
The brevity of Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan (October 3, 1964, age 53). Watch out for the meat!
T. S. Eliot said the message of a poem is the meat thieves throw to the dog to distract its attention while they break into your house. Running this backwards, then, if you want to nail down the message of a poem or a book it’s not hard to do. All you need to look for is the meat that’s being thrown at you.
Me (June 2010, age 57). Is it that easy?
My apologies for putting this idea into Marshall’s mouth. You will not find it in anything Marshall McLuhan wrote or said. But aside from the fact the focus is on the message not the medium, it does sound like something McLuhan might have said in a lucid, unmystical moment. Marshall McLuhan’s uncanny ability to go to the heart of a book with very few words was something that was very real and frequently impressed his friends and colleagues. For example, Ted (Edmund) Carpenter with whom McLuhan first began to work on media studies in the 1950s, says in an interview which you can find appended to the documentary film McLuhan’s Wake: “He had a way of getting to the point.” And “[I was] stunned by the brevity he could summarize things.”
For example, in a letter to Pierre Trudeau, McLuhan summarizes the famous Shannon-Weaver model of communication this way: “Shannon and Weaver were mathematicians who considered the side–effects of noise. They assumed that these could be eliminated by simply stepping up the charge of energy in a circuit.” [for more] And here is McLuhan’s summary statement of Peter Drucker’s Managing for Results: “[I]n every situation 10% of the events cause 90% of the events. The 10 % is the sector of opportunity, the 90 % is the area of problems. [Typically] the opportunity or environmental and innovational area is ignored. All sensible people deal first with problems – that is, the dead issues.”
Can McLuhan’s power of “brevity” be learned? If it can, how?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post:
The Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 311 and 542.
Marshall McLuhan and the Future of the Book
Marshall McLuhan (August 1967, age 56). Read fast, read deep.
Eric told me the Evelyn Wood course in speed reading course would give me some ideas about the Future of the Book and he was right. Speed reading – by the way – is like X-raying a book to get a picture of what the author is thinking. In this sense it’s about reading in depth. Of course it’s very tactile and involving. And of course it does motivate you to read faster.
Me (June 2010, age 57). The future of the book is now
I’m not sure what ideas about the Future of the Book (a book project of McLuhan’s that was never finished), or anything else Marshall McLuhan actually got from taking a speed reading course. Philip Marchand says in his biography that McLuhan did find the course useful for reading advertising fliers.
His big idea about the Future of the Book seems to have come from his contemplation of Xeroxing or photocopying rather than speed reading. Xeroxing, of course, is a technology in which all who use it are publishers and loosely speaking writers too. Today the new social media allows more and more people to be writers and publishers. Given the millions of blogs that exist today, as McLuhan predicted, readers have truly become publishers and writers in the electronic age. And as usual not all are happy with the way this future has played out: especially the newspapers, magazines, book publishers and others whose markets have been shifted by the internet.
In this new world , publishing may be as solitary an activity as reading.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post:
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, p. 345.
Twitter’s changing the world
Marshall McLuhan (July 10, 1964, age 52). Complex.
People raised on books have some very simple-minded ideas about TV and other electric media. TV is not simply a new way to deliver news and entertainment. Just because people have these ideas does not mean electric media do not have complex effects on psyche and society. Change is all about us, but it is convenient for the vested interests to pretend that nothing has changed.
Me (March 2010, age 57). Complex.
People raised on TV seem to have a hard time understanding the new social media. Take Twitter for example. If there is anything obvious about what Twitter is doing to psyche and society it is that it is recreating the world as virtual high school. We all want to know what the cool kids are doing right now. Brad’s shooting hoops. Brittany’s nabbed a great pair of Manolo Blahnik pumps. Leo’s stuck at LAX. Life as we knew it is collapsing to 140 characters. But of course one could chose to believe that nothing has really changed. Twitter’s a faux-fad. There’s nothing to it. If we hold our breath it will all go away.
What’s your take? Simple or complex?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p.306-07
Want to stand out?
Marshall McLuhan (January, 1964, age 52). Here’s the rule.
Just finished chatting with Wilfred Watson, as usual it was a highly productive conversation. Wilfred is really quite a good listener. I realized that one can toggle back and forth between standing out and blending in. Anything that is part of the ground, the environment, is low definition, and goes unseen, unrecognized. Anything that stands out is figure, high definition, and commands attention. Stop reading and look at this page. What do you see? The words are figure, the space between them is ground. You can make a part of the figure ground and thus involving and invisible by a simple rule: repeat it. Thus:
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
To reverse the effect eliminate the repetitions. Thus:
a
Andy Warhol uses this technique to great effect in his Pop Art show. Repetition is the trick that allows him to turn Marilyn Monroe – who I hope you’ll agree is quite the figure – into ground. Ditto for Elvis.
Me (February 2010, age 57). Can life imitate art?
This is an idea that strikes me as extremely useful if only it could be applied. Say you’re at a party and you want to make an impression, to stand out. What can you do to be “figure” rather than “ground.” Or say you’re at the same party and you don’t want to be noticed. What can you do to be “ground” rather than “figure”?
McLuhan says the key is repetition. But how? One way to go from ground to figure is to speed up. To repeat is to slow down. In the extreme if you stop moving entirely you are constantly repeating the same image of yourself. This is what a wall flower does.
Some weeks ago Julien Smith asked the question; “Can you blend in and stand out at the same time?” McLuhan’s rule would seem to say no you can’t. You can either be figure, stand out, or be ground, and blend in. You can’t be both.
Or can you? [see earlier post]
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p.297.
Who’s afraid of the unknown?
Marshall McLuhan (January, 1964, age 52). You should be!
Corinne says I should be more careful what I say in front of the children. She said the twins were in tears after I told them nuclear war was not only possible but probable. Reality, I see is an acquired taste.
The real problem, however, as I told the girls and Corinne, is this electric age of ours – TV, Radio, Telephones – has for the first time extended our central nervous system. This is absolutely unprecedented. In the past, the mechanical age, we extended particular body parts. The car extended the foot, the telescope the eye, the gun the fist. All these things have predictable results. They increase our power to act, numb us to their action, and magnify the rational, uninvolved, logical man in us. But the electric forms of new media as they extend us are taking us in the opposite direction. We are becoming more tribal, involved, and emotional. Who knows how far this will take us? And what will happen to us as a result? No one. Welcome to the world of the unknown.
Me (February 2010, age 57). There’s even more to be afraid of today
In the 1960s the unknown became a regular visitor – brought each day to families through the western world by radio and TV – the drop out, the hippie, rock music, Vietnam, protests and riots, women’s rights, civil rights. Today with the spread of computers, social software, and the internet, the speed of change is even greater, and the unknown doesn’t just drop in to visit, she’s become a member of the family. What this is doing to us – how it is changing us – is just as unclear today as it was to McLuhan in the 1960s. Marshall McLuhan said he would be happiest in a world in which nothing changed. He recommended one extremely effective way to control the effects of new technology: find the off button and push it.
Could you live without the electric technologies you use today for a month, a week, a day? Would your life be diminished or improved by eliminating some or all of these technologies?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p.295.
Who should take the risks?
Marshall McLuhan (March, 1962, age 50). Risk is not for the young scientist!
Gordie Thompson, one of the boffins – one of the senior engineers, that is – in the research group at Bell, was telling me that as one of the old buggers he’s the one who has to be the guy who puts the breaks on, who slows things down, who is the sober voice of second thoughts. I told him, Gordie, you’ve got it all wrong. When it comes to scientific research, you’re the only one who understands the science who can afford to take risks, to make a big mistake. The boys in administration won’t take chances because they don’t understand the science. The young guys just out of graduate school are too busy worrying what will happen to them and their jobs if things don’t work out. Gordie, I said, you’re the one who has to do it. You understand what’s going on. You’ve already proved your worth. You can afford to get things wrong. So go out and take a chance. What if you turn out to be right?
Me (February, 2010, age 57). What if he’s right?
Marshall McLuhan’s genius was to be able to pick the counter-intuitive out of thin air, brush it off and get you to look at it and the world in a new way. The conventional wisdom says the old are the spokesmen for stasis. It’s the young you need to look to for change. McLuhan says no. Of those who can take risks in science the young aren’t strong enough in their position in their jobs, in their world to be truly creative.
What McLuhan says about science, I think applies equally to the Arts and every other area of life in which there is a discipline to be mastered. To hazard a prediction of my own, the people I would suggest you look to for the next truly innovative risky technical moves are the old: Margaret Atwood, Myrill Streep, Leonard Cohen, Stephen King, Stephen Hawking, David Susuki, Bill Gates …
Who are the risk takers in your business?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The medium and the messenger, 1989, p. 186.
How productive are you?
Marshall McLuhan (December 25, 1960 age 49). Its time!
I’ve been too busy writing to write you a letter. It seems that Sunday is the only day I can look up from what I’m doing. For years I’ve been reading other people’s stuff. Reading it and re-reading it. Now it’s time for me to see what I’ve got to say. Actually, I’ve found I have a lot to say. I’ve just finished the big book, The Gutenberg Galaxy, my book about yesterday, the world that has ended – 400 typescript pages in less than 30 days. Must go, I’ve got proof reading to do if I’m going to meet my deadline and get this off to the publisher the day after tomorrow. And then I begin the next one, my book about today, the world about us which no one can see, Understanding Media.
Me (January 2010, age 57). McLuhan uses deadlines to speed up.
From what’s said about Marshall McLuhan in magazines, on the web, deadlines are not something you would expect the philosopher of pop cult to be using to get work done. And of course he does use them. McLuhan was a very practical if eccentric genius. For example, he once took a speed reading course to get a fresh take on what it means to read in the electronic age. He said that the main benefit of the course was that he was able to read and dispose of junk mail faster. There are at least two ideas here worth following up. And I will do so in the questions.
If speed reading’s benefit is to allow you to wade through junk writing faster is there a way to tell what’s junk without having to read it? I profile. What strategies do you use? And, in what way do you use deadlines in your own work? School is all about deadlines. But those deadlines don’t work for everyone. Do they, or did they, work for you? Here’s what Julien Smith said about deadlines in a recent blog post.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, p. 276.
Education at high speed
Marshall McLuhan (May 1959, age 47). Consumers are now producers
As I was saying yesterday my efforts to enlighten the Winnipeg Ad and Sales Club about the new business rules in our electronic age were not entirely successful. If the only constant today is change, I told them, you will remember, it’s obvious that at the high speeds we are living at everyone is switching roles to keep up. This is not a prediction it is an observation. Just as producers are becoming consumers, the corollary is that consumers are becoming producers. They gave me a puzzled look. So I gave them something else to be puzzled about. What I asked do Alexander the Great and Winnie the Pooh have in common? Give up? They both have the same middle name.
Me (December 2009, age 57). What about in education?
“A lot of education,” says the writer of a letter to the editor of the Montreal Gazette, “takes place outside of school, and much it is self directed.” (Wednesday, December 16, 2009.) Marshall McLuhan would have agreed that most education takes place outside school, but I believe he would have disagreed with the idea that it is self-directed. In fact it is media-directed. The difference is profound and if true disturbing. (We continue the examination of education tomorrow. Hang on to your mortar boards.)
If most education today takes place outside the classroom, what is the content of the current curriculum? Who or what sets the curriculum? What do you think is the greatest difference between the education that goes on today inside and outside the class room?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, pp. 252-255.
Speed up!
Marshall McLuhan (May 1959, age 47). Producers are now consumers
I just got back from Winnipeg. Didn’t have time to visit my first alma mater, The University of Manitoba, as I was too busy informing the Winnipeg Ad and Sales Club about the new business rules in our electronic age. Here’s the short version, everything is moving so fast in our electric age that the only way to get ahead is to speed up. The alternative is obliteration. Winnipeg was shaking its head in collective dumbfoundment. Can’t really blame them. Looking around on the corner of Portage and Main, I’d be tempted to draw the conclusion that the world is slowing down not speeding up! Sometimes not seeing is believing.
Me (December 2009, age 57). Marshall McLuhan on how to speed up
The great speed the business world is moving at is an idea that everyone in business today agrees with and without hesitation. Even, I would hazard a guess in Winnipeg. Marshall McLuhan’s ideas about speed are still worth thinking about today not because McLuhan offers a brilliant solution as to how to live at hyper speed. His solution is to trade places with your complement. Whatever role you perform there is a complement. For example the complement of teacher is student. The complement of producer is consumer. The complement of writer is reader. By switching roles you are in effect moving at very high speed. For example, by becoming consumers, producers are able to anticipate shifts in demand.
How fast does your life move relative to your parents and grandparents? What do you do to deal with the speed of change at which you live? What is your complement? Can you put yourself in the position of your complement?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, pp. 252-255.
Speed Limits, Canadian Centre for Architecture, 20 May to 8 November 2009