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.
Thinking
There are two types of people in the world.
Me (November, 2010, age 58). Literates and non-literates
According to Marshall McLuhan the fundamental difference between literates and non-literates is their approach to cause and effect. Literates, the children of print, (left brain in the language he adopted in the 70s) see the world as sequential. Non-literates, (right brain) view the world as bound together in more tangled and mysterious ways than rough and ready efficient first cause and then effect. Which are you? In what camp are the kids you meet? How about teachers and artists?
Marshall McLuhan (1964, age 52). Of course …
“Nonliterate people register very little interest in … ‘efficient’ cause and effect, but are fascinated by hidden forms that produce magical results. Inner, rather than outer, causes interest the non-literate and non-visual cultures.”
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, p. 287.
Is this a dream?
Me (September, 2010, age 58). I’m walking home, minding my own business …
I stop at the corner for the light. The guy beside me is on his cell phone and he’s edging me off the sidewalk. The light turns green. I step off and I realize everyone crossing the street is on a cell phone but me. And they don’t see me. I have to move to avoid being walked over. In other words, I’m the only one who is actually here. Everyone else is somewhere else. Something is wrong. Someone is out of step. Wait a moment, it’s me.
Marshall McLuhan (1964 age 52). Obviously.
“The telephone is an irresistible intruder in time or place.”
Me again (September, 2010, age 58). Especially now.
Here is Rudy Giuliani getting a lesson on the irresistible power of the telephone as he delivers a speech.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, p. 271.
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.
What good is talk?
Marshall McLuhan (November 1965, age 54). Talk is the way.
Of course, for me, the best way to explore a subject is by talking it through. I can’t understand what I think about something until I start talking about it. And sometimes it takes me four or five goes at it before I’m even close to capturing what an idea is really all about. Some people have to think before they speak. For me I don’t start thinking until I’m speaking. Writing doesn’t usually help me think the way talking does. When I’m talking I feel alive.
Me (August, 2010, age 58). How do you think?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger, 1989, p. 66.
To hell with the facts
Marshall McLuhan (1970s, age 60s). Violence and media go hand in hand.
The media’s power to incite violence is evident in the structure of our language. Did you know that the word violence is derived from the Latin word for crossroads?
Me (August, 2010, age 58). “Cross” roads, of course, are “angry” roads. And doesn’t anger frequently result in violence?
Unfortunately, if you look up the word violence in the dictionary, the Oxford, Mcluhan’s favourite dictionary, you will find that its origin is traced to the Latin word, violentia. Violentia does not mean crossroads. It means impetuous or furious, which is a shame because McLuhan’s derivation is far more interesting than the dictionary’s – at least to a student of media.
What was McLuhan thinking? McLuhan-biographer Philip Marchand says, McLuhan never allowed the facts to govern his ideas. And McLuhan is known to have defended his tendency to alter facts to suit his argument with the line – half a brick will break a window as easily as a whole one. Granted. But it is hard to escape the linear thought – however big the brick is it still has to hit the glass to cause damage.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The medium and the messenger, 1989, p. 62.
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.
The McLuhan method.
Marshall McLuhan (Spring 1971, age 59). At work in the Coach House
Come in, come in. Watch your step. No it’s no bother. Glad you came. Mrs. Stewart, let’s continue this dictation later. Now let me explain what I’m doing. It may not look like it, but I’m writing a book. You see these piles of books each with a file folder on top? That’s how you write a book. Get yourself some file folders, fill them with clippings and quotations, and then comment on them. Commenting, by the way, is easier if you have a secretary to comment to.
Me (June 2010, age 57). Order out of chaos
Dictation probably worked well for McLuhan because he liked to talk ideas out. I don’t. I prefer to write ideas out. The file folder method, however, is very similar the one I have chosen as the method for this blog. Each blog begins with a book by or about McLuhan in which I mark passages and a sheet of paper on which I place other references, clippings and quotations, which I then comment on. How’s it going? As the man who jumped off the Empire State building, said as he hurtled past the 40th floor, “so far so good.”
What’s your method of work? Did you choose it or did it choose you?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Who Was Marshall McLuhan, edited by Barrington Nevitt with Maurice McLuhan, 1995, pp. 141.