Thanks for a worthwhile and timely piece -- but also worth noting: Before McLuhan there was Norbert Wiener, who coined the term "cybernetics" "The Human Use of Human Beings" -- published in 1950! -- introduced many of the insights later popularized by McLuhan.
Today Google introduced another commercial to tell me how smart I am for using their AI. Yesterday, OpenAI introduced their commercial to preempt Google. OMG, his prescience on this score is beautiful. I don’t agree with his philosophy of arresting change at all. He converted to Catholicism which I rejected after 6 decades. It used the information media of its era to do what he disliked; the rejection of Christ’s own ‘old’ religion for a “modern” one. His insight embraced the fact that information is physical, but he was blind to the evidence of radio and TV being embodied on the physicality of electromagnetics. Like McLuhan, I embrace the idea of understanding and explaining memetic transmission of knowledge at the speed of light. We don’t have a good explanation of how memes are embodied in our beings, but neither did Darwin know about DNA. He observed and described genetic replication and selection of the most fit variants molded to the context of an organism’s environment . We have yet to unlock the “DNA” of memes, but we will. I may be wrong.
My schooling was long enough ago that Marshall McLuhan was still alive and in vogue. It amazes (and saddens) me that he is no longer being included in most students' educations.
“McLuhan anticipated that the electronic age would be one of constant change, such that nobody could adapt quickly enough. As a result, people would be plunged into nostalgia, and yearn for their old, solid identities”
.…and now we discover that the ‘nostalgia’ people yearn for is rabid antisemitism and hypocritical government inaction. Marshall - why would people be plunged back to a solid hatred that predates their lived experiences?
(Personal nostalgic note: thanks for the pix of my old friend Russel Horton - actor on the left of Woody Allen - who brought my scripts to life as the voice of The Trix Silly Rabbit. Now that is a comforting harp-back for my soul.)
Would love to see Wendell Berry included in this series. He's still living but his 50 year old writings about American agriculture and food systems are definitely prophetic.
I attended Marshall McLuhan's lectures at Fordham in 1967-8. Thanks to The Free Press for joining those who have reinforced and repopularized him and his ideas over the decades. A favorite way of distilling his perspective on media was "we shape our tools, and our tools shape us."
McLuhan encouraged us to consider how each emerging medium might change us. Many of the circumstances we humans sometimes blame on one another are most attributable to our technologies such as satellites, smartphones, AI, etc. It's challenging for us to perceive and identify all the effects because as they say, "we don't know who discovered water, but we know it wasn't a fish."
The book ‘1984’ was written in 1949. There were prescient folks then, as there have always been and will continue to be. But McLuhan was crazy on target with all of his ideas presented in this piece.
McLuhan inspired others and their work has held up well, much like his. Neil Postman is one (Entertaining ourselves to death). Mr. Meyrowitz is another. I find his book to be particularly inspired. I will let the summary speak for itself:
“While other media experts have limited the debate to message content, Meyrowitz focuses on the ways in which changes in media rearrange "who knows what about whom" and "who knows what compared to whom," making it impossible for us to behave with each other in traditional ways. No Sense of Place explains how the electronic landscape has encouraged the development of:
-More adultlike children and more childlike adults;
-More career-oriented women and more family-oriented men; and
-Leaders who try to act more like the "person next door" and real neighbors who want to have a greater say in local, national, and international affairs.”
a few suggestions for possible additions to this wonderful idea. I read quite a few 'older' books and often find both the writing and thinking (very much related matters!) clearer. (At least) Three strike me a prescient and worth resurrecting for our times: Language in Thought and Action by H. I. Hayakawa; Thomas Sowell's Knowledge and Decisions, and Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors We Live By. I most recently finished this last one, along with their follow-on book called Philosophy in the Flesh. I am thoroughly convinced that metaphor are indeed how we come to reach an understanding with each other regarding abstract ideas we toss around. If we bother, of course, to try to reach an understanding. I also absolutely agree that words are rarely literal and mean only what we consider them to represent. Yes, a chair is a chair but, even there, there's a lot of variation and two people conversing pretty much have to talk about what the chair is being used for to make sure they are actually understanding each other! Kudo's to the Free Press for stumbling on this idea of resurrecting people who 'got' it at some point in the past. In some weird way that only a few physicists understand, the past is the present is the future. We can all stand to learn that people in the past were neither stupid or deplorable and might have something we could benefit from reading or hearing today.
I was quite a fan of McLuhan's during my undergraduate years at Brandeis, and I read nearly everything he wrote. I went on to study with him in a graduate program at the Univ. of Toronto in the early 70s. His "Center for the Study of Culture and Technology" was an elegantly restored carriage house where he delivered lectures and led seminars. His lectures were essentially train-of-thought, free associations, and when he found himself saying something that he found interesting, he would ask a designated student to make a note of it. Out of our class of 12 or 13 students, he knew only one student by name, and this was the student who took the notes and was apparently repeating the course on "Cliche and Archetype" for a second time.
I remember when a fellow student, (Scott Ziegler was his name, I believe), was delivering his term paper on "Spatio-Temporal Concepts in Joyce and Mallarmé " when McLuhan interrupted to share his recollection of a dream he'd had where his dentures had frozen in a glass on his night table. After sharing this tidbit, he invited Mr. Ziegler to continue, and he went back to jotting notes. A few minutes later, he interrupted again to say, "Now I get it. It was so cold on that trip to the Bahamas: that's why the dentures were frozen!"
I was scheduled to present my own paper the following week and I decided not to. It was the only course I ever took where I chose to receive an "incomplete" rather than submit to being treated with such utter indifference.
So, in summary, I would have to say that as a classroom teacher, McLuhan was probably the worst I ever had. On the other hand, as a thinker, he was quite remarkable. His insight that we were moving into a post-literate era seemed almost preposterous at the time, and today is becoming a terrifying reality. He was certainly among the first to point out that the media reproduction of events was now far more important than the events themselves, e.g., Al-Dura. One of his insights which will never grow old is that every new technology subsumes what it replaces and adopts it as its content: the Homeric epics recount the myths, the Greek theater draws on the Homeric epics for its material, radio makes music performance and theater its content, movies are based on novels, television features movies and theater, and the internet makes all of reality its content. Heady stuff. It's nice to see that McLuhan's work is receiving the well-deserved attention of a new generation.
AI will grow then leave and take with it all technology the Mankind as a whole never needed in the beginning. We will be left with what we have always had to survive with. if we merge, that will be a problem. Children ar not to copulate with the parent.
"The best thing is to understand it -- and then you know where to turn off the buttons." Great advice, but he didn't anticipate the addictive quality of the smart-phone / youtube / facebook (etc.) experience.
The very few who are immune to that pull have to fight to get there, and then fight to stay there.
My thoughts went to an ancient prophet (the official kind), who was shown something similar about "the end of time". By necessity it was put into much simpler understated terms: "Many will roam about, and knowledge will increase.”
Then he was told about the polarized moral climate of that era:
“Go your way, Daniel, for these words will be kept secret and sealed up until the end time. Many will be purged, cleansed, and refined, but the wicked will act wickedly; and none of the wicked will understand, but those who have insight will understand."
If we are starting to understand what was "sealed up", it's because we are nearing the end of human history.
Thanks for a worthwhile and timely piece -- but also worth noting: Before McLuhan there was Norbert Wiener, who coined the term "cybernetics" "The Human Use of Human Beings" -- published in 1950! -- introduced many of the insights later popularized by McLuhan.
I think you should include Francis Shaeffer in a future essay about prophets.
Today Google introduced another commercial to tell me how smart I am for using their AI. Yesterday, OpenAI introduced their commercial to preempt Google. OMG, his prescience on this score is beautiful. I don’t agree with his philosophy of arresting change at all. He converted to Catholicism which I rejected after 6 decades. It used the information media of its era to do what he disliked; the rejection of Christ’s own ‘old’ religion for a “modern” one. His insight embraced the fact that information is physical, but he was blind to the evidence of radio and TV being embodied on the physicality of electromagnetics. Like McLuhan, I embrace the idea of understanding and explaining memetic transmission of knowledge at the speed of light. We don’t have a good explanation of how memes are embodied in our beings, but neither did Darwin know about DNA. He observed and described genetic replication and selection of the most fit variants molded to the context of an organism’s environment . We have yet to unlock the “DNA” of memes, but we will. I may be wrong.
My schooling was long enough ago that Marshall McLuhan was still alive and in vogue. It amazes (and saddens) me that he is no longer being included in most students' educations.
“McLuhan anticipated that the electronic age would be one of constant change, such that nobody could adapt quickly enough. As a result, people would be plunged into nostalgia, and yearn for their old, solid identities”
.…and now we discover that the ‘nostalgia’ people yearn for is rabid antisemitism and hypocritical government inaction. Marshall - why would people be plunged back to a solid hatred that predates their lived experiences?
(Personal nostalgic note: thanks for the pix of my old friend Russel Horton - actor on the left of Woody Allen - who brought my scripts to life as the voice of The Trix Silly Rabbit. Now that is a comforting harp-back for my soul.)
Would love to see Wendell Berry included in this series. He's still living but his 50 year old writings about American agriculture and food systems are definitely prophetic.
I attended Marshall McLuhan's lectures at Fordham in 1967-8. Thanks to The Free Press for joining those who have reinforced and repopularized him and his ideas over the decades. A favorite way of distilling his perspective on media was "we shape our tools, and our tools shape us."
McLuhan encouraged us to consider how each emerging medium might change us. Many of the circumstances we humans sometimes blame on one another are most attributable to our technologies such as satellites, smartphones, AI, etc. It's challenging for us to perceive and identify all the effects because as they say, "we don't know who discovered water, but we know it wasn't a fish."
I have to assume McLuhan read The Machine Stops, an equally prescient story of technology and humanity
Fascinating
The book ‘1984’ was written in 1949. There were prescient folks then, as there have always been and will continue to be. But McLuhan was crazy on target with all of his ideas presented in this piece.
McLuhan inspired others and their work has held up well, much like his. Neil Postman is one (Entertaining ourselves to death). Mr. Meyrowitz is another. I find his book to be particularly inspired. I will let the summary speak for itself:
“While other media experts have limited the debate to message content, Meyrowitz focuses on the ways in which changes in media rearrange "who knows what about whom" and "who knows what compared to whom," making it impossible for us to behave with each other in traditional ways. No Sense of Place explains how the electronic landscape has encouraged the development of:
-More adultlike children and more childlike adults;
-More career-oriented women and more family-oriented men; and
-Leaders who try to act more like the "person next door" and real neighbors who want to have a greater say in local, national, and international affairs.”
https://www.amazon.com/No-Sense-Place-Electronic-Behavior/dp/019504231X
Worth buying and spending time reading more than once.
a few suggestions for possible additions to this wonderful idea. I read quite a few 'older' books and often find both the writing and thinking (very much related matters!) clearer. (At least) Three strike me a prescient and worth resurrecting for our times: Language in Thought and Action by H. I. Hayakawa; Thomas Sowell's Knowledge and Decisions, and Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors We Live By. I most recently finished this last one, along with their follow-on book called Philosophy in the Flesh. I am thoroughly convinced that metaphor are indeed how we come to reach an understanding with each other regarding abstract ideas we toss around. If we bother, of course, to try to reach an understanding. I also absolutely agree that words are rarely literal and mean only what we consider them to represent. Yes, a chair is a chair but, even there, there's a lot of variation and two people conversing pretty much have to talk about what the chair is being used for to make sure they are actually understanding each other! Kudo's to the Free Press for stumbling on this idea of resurrecting people who 'got' it at some point in the past. In some weird way that only a few physicists understand, the past is the present is the future. We can all stand to learn that people in the past were neither stupid or deplorable and might have something we could benefit from reading or hearing today.
I was quite a fan of McLuhan's during my undergraduate years at Brandeis, and I read nearly everything he wrote. I went on to study with him in a graduate program at the Univ. of Toronto in the early 70s. His "Center for the Study of Culture and Technology" was an elegantly restored carriage house where he delivered lectures and led seminars. His lectures were essentially train-of-thought, free associations, and when he found himself saying something that he found interesting, he would ask a designated student to make a note of it. Out of our class of 12 or 13 students, he knew only one student by name, and this was the student who took the notes and was apparently repeating the course on "Cliche and Archetype" for a second time.
I remember when a fellow student, (Scott Ziegler was his name, I believe), was delivering his term paper on "Spatio-Temporal Concepts in Joyce and Mallarmé " when McLuhan interrupted to share his recollection of a dream he'd had where his dentures had frozen in a glass on his night table. After sharing this tidbit, he invited Mr. Ziegler to continue, and he went back to jotting notes. A few minutes later, he interrupted again to say, "Now I get it. It was so cold on that trip to the Bahamas: that's why the dentures were frozen!"
I was scheduled to present my own paper the following week and I decided not to. It was the only course I ever took where I chose to receive an "incomplete" rather than submit to being treated with such utter indifference.
So, in summary, I would have to say that as a classroom teacher, McLuhan was probably the worst I ever had. On the other hand, as a thinker, he was quite remarkable. His insight that we were moving into a post-literate era seemed almost preposterous at the time, and today is becoming a terrifying reality. He was certainly among the first to point out that the media reproduction of events was now far more important than the events themselves, e.g., Al-Dura. One of his insights which will never grow old is that every new technology subsumes what it replaces and adopts it as its content: the Homeric epics recount the myths, the Greek theater draws on the Homeric epics for its material, radio makes music performance and theater its content, movies are based on novels, television features movies and theater, and the internet makes all of reality its content. Heady stuff. It's nice to see that McLuhan's work is receiving the well-deserved attention of a new generation.
AI will grow then leave and take with it all technology the Mankind as a whole never needed in the beginning. We will be left with what we have always had to survive with. if we merge, that will be a problem. Children ar not to copulate with the parent.
"The best thing is to understand it -- and then you know where to turn off the buttons." Great advice, but he didn't anticipate the addictive quality of the smart-phone / youtube / facebook (etc.) experience.
The very few who are immune to that pull have to fight to get there, and then fight to stay there.
My thoughts went to an ancient prophet (the official kind), who was shown something similar about "the end of time". By necessity it was put into much simpler understated terms: "Many will roam about, and knowledge will increase.”
Then he was told about the polarized moral climate of that era:
“Go your way, Daniel, for these words will be kept secret and sealed up until the end time. Many will be purged, cleansed, and refined, but the wicked will act wickedly; and none of the wicked will understand, but those who have insight will understand."
If we are starting to understand what was "sealed up", it's because we are nearing the end of human history.