Technology
Marshall McLuhan (February 27, 1962, age 50). I thought it up.
Ed Hall says he got the idea that media are extensions of us, our bodies our minds, our spirits, from Bucky Fuller. I didn’t get it from anybody. It just hit me. But now that I’ve got it I see the idea everywhere. Blake put it this way – “If perceptive organs vary, Objects of Perception seem to vary: / If the perceptive organs close, their objects seem to close also.” In other words by extending the senses media vary our perceptions and as our perceptive organs vary and the objects of the world vary. O brave new world!
Me (February, 2010, age 57). What if he’s right?
Marshall McLuhan enjoyed the game of exploring the myriad ways media extend us and in so doing alter the way we see the world. Every part of us he thought was a perceptive organ.
What is Twitter an extension of? Our voice. A yell.
What is the calculator an extension of? Our fingers and toes.
What is PowerPoint an extension of? Our palms and sleeves where we used to make notes to remind us of things we didn’t want to forget.
What is the digital book an extension of?
What is the digital newspaper an extension of?
What is the digit an extension of?
Is this more than a parlor game? Does it really matter?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, pp. 286-287.
Tags: Communications, Technology, Understanding media
Marshall McLuhan (April, 1965, age 53). War on TV.
I was telling Tom Easterbrook just the other day The Vietnam War cannot be won on TV. It could be won on radio, but not on TV. TV is too involving. One other thing, which I think is “verra” interesting. Have you noticed that the media can only follow one war at a time?
Me (February, 2010, age 57). What if he’s right?
Marshall McLuhan’s observation that the media can only follow one war at a time, suggests a prediction about the three week-old now disaster in Haiti. Sooner or later, the will media move on to some other bad news story to sell their good news (the advertisements). Somalia, New Orleans, Bangladesh where are they on the 6 o’clock news? Can Haiti, no matter how deserving of our attention remain long in the electronic eye once another story pops up. At least Tiger is getting a break. However, the hurricane season is fast approaching. Haiti’s only chance is to suffer new disaster.
Is there a difference between radio coverage of the story and TV coverage? If so, what is it? Does TV coverage, while it lasts, increase the likelihood that something will be done to rescue Haiti?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore. War and Peace in the Global Village, 1968.
Tags: American mind, Communications, Hot and cool media, Medium is the message, Technology, Understanding media
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.
Tags: American mind, Business, Creating, Genius, Science, Speed, Technology, Thinking
Marshall McLuhan (August, 1973, age 62). My contribution is an h!
Just got off the phone with Cousin Ron – Dr. Ron Hall, now – who you will remember is a biochemist at McMaster. Idea Consultants is back in action. These long hot sweaty dog days of summer have been a positive inspiration to us both. Ron has done the leg work. They say genius is 99 per cent perspiration. So perspiration is a good thing. The problem is it stinks. Ron came up with the science part of the solution. Don’t mask the smell with perfume or deodorant. Keep the good part of the sweat -those amazingly communicative pheromones. Get rid of the stinky part. Ron wanted to call his bio-chemical product “protex.” As in “pro-tection” and “tex-tile” – protect the fabric. But I added, if I must say – and I will – what Corinne told me was “the distilled essence of genius.” I convinced him to add one little letter to the name which will spell all the difference in the world: the letter “h.” We will call it “Prohtex.” Get it? “Proh-ibit” and “tex-tile” – as in prohibit [the bad sweat on] the fabric. Well perhaps not everyone will get it. But when they do we’ll be rolling in it. Or rather they will. Must run I feel another idea coming on. This could be the big one.
Me (January 2010, age 57): Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea
I don’t know exactly what happened when Marshall McLuhan and his nephew pitched one of the big companies like Johnson & Johnson. But I’m sure the brand guys dined out regularly on the story. It is a wonder that the writers on “Madmen” don’t go more to the life of McLuhan for inspiration. As you might expect nobody in the business world wanted to buy this idea. Perhaps business people today might be more interested, providing that is that the product does not prove to have unwanted and fundamentally deal-breaking side-effects, for example the attractions of the sexual attention of people you don’t want to be sexually attentive. (Tomorrow I’ll take a look at more of McLuhan’s amazing business ideas that business kept on turning down.)
Was the name the problem? Or was it the product? Say that it worked, would you use a product that kept the good sweat –sent the chemical messages of attraction – and got rid of the bad – the stinky part?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
W. Terrence Gordon. Marshall McLuhan: Escape into Understanding, 1997, pp. 268-269.
Tags: Business, Communications, Science, Technology
Marshall McLuhan (November 18, 1961, age 50). Thank goodness for Walter Ong.
It was a delight to have Walter Ong, Father Ong, S.J., that is, come to visit at 29 Wells Avenue here in Toronto. Corinne fixed quite a spread for us. He was my first and best graduate student – a damn good study he wrote on Gerald Manley Hopkins for his M.A. under me at St. Louis and an absolutely brilliant one on Ramus, a long neglected figure in Renaissance theology for his PH. D. under God knows who at Harvard. It was Walter through his study of Ramus who helped me see that the world turned up-side down after the advent of printing. The auditory world of rhetoric gave way to the visual world of the logic. And from this everything western grew– rationality, the nation state, modern economic growth.
Of course no one sees the media at work. They are invisible. The good old medium does its work on us and we go on differently, but do not see that everything has changed.
Me (January 2010, age 57). For example?
PowerPoint has made dramatic changes to the way people work and study. Today I want to talk about the world of work. Next week I’ll talk about the world of education.
If you want to see very clearly how a new medium can reshape the environment, literally, and work us over at the same time, the next time you’re watching a presentation stop listening and watching the presentation and look around you. What do you see?
Here’s what I saw at one presentation. I’m sitting in a darkened, windowless room. The room is dominated by a screen filling the center of the wall ahead. The speaker is standing with her back to the audience enthralled with the slide show appearing on the screen. She is the audio-visual aide to – or the electric bride of – the PowerPoint slide show. A long time passes. The audience appears to be very involved with the screen. Very little appears to have been accomplished.
Stop and look around at the next presentation you see. What do you see? How does what you see affect how you think?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, pp. 280-281.
Tags: Communications, Rhetoric, Technology, Understanding media, Visual medium
Marshall McLuhan (January 4, 1971 age 59). Yes!
He who is tired of London, said Dr. Johnson, is tired of life. I’m not tired of London or life but I’m getting bloody tired of people asking me what I mean when I say “the medium is the message.” Mr. Edwin Newman opened up our talk today, thankfully, with at least a variation on this bloody question: why he asked me is the medium the message? Why isn’t the message the message? Poor old Ed. He does get himself wound up in visual knots. Ed, I said, what .. is … the … message … of… the … electric … light? He didn’t know. Asked me if there was one. Bloody cheek. The answer is obvious. The medium and the message are one. The message is the medium.
Me (January 2010, age 57). No!
From his discovery of communications as the proper subject for his study in the early 1950s Marshall McLuhan moved on in the 1960s and 1970s to view everything made by man as a medium of communications and thus an appropriate subject for his study. This shift opened up endless subjects for his study but sharply reduced his ability to say anything useful about them.
Consider the “media” he devoted chapters to in Understanding Media. One of the many reasons people found the book hard to understand was the all encompassing meaning of media. Things ordinary people would think of as communications media are discussed: newspapers, radio, television. But then so are things people don’t naturally think of as media, such as numbers, clocks, money, comics, and weapons. The result is Babel. Naturally, Marshall McLuhan has fascinating things to say about the wheel, the bicycle and the aeroplane as media, but what he has to say about them makes far less sense and is far less interesting than what he has to say about the traditional communications.
To a young boy with a hammer, the old saying goes, everything is a nail. Marshall McLuhan’s new hammer was his theory that communications media themselves rather than their contents exert a powerful and neglected influence on the way we think and behave. Over time Marshall McLuhan broadened his definition of what a medium is. So much so that by the 1970s “the medium is the message” had become in effect “everything is the message?” As interesting as this thought is I can’t help thinking, and I think rightly, that the message of the rocking chair, soap-on-a-rope, or the pocket fisherman is less interesting than the message of twitter, the internet, or PowerPoint.
Take a look at Understanding Media. Which of all the media that McLuhan talks about do you think are the ones that are least like traditional communications media? My personal favourite is ‘games.’
Take a look at your world. Do the people you know in sales look on everything as if it was a sale? Do researchers think everything needs more research? Do teachers think everything needs teaching?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Viewing for this post
Marshall McLuhan and Edwin Newman: “Speaking Freely” hosted by Edwin Newman, 4 January 1971.
Tags: Communications, Medium is the message, Understanding media
Marshall McLuhan (1969 age 58). The solution to life’s problems
My son Eric and Eugene Schwartz tell me that The Marshall McLuhan DEW-LINE Newsletter is selling like hot cakes. I send them stuff when I can and they send it on to my subscribers. Great idea that the Distant Early Warning (Card) Deck. Worked that one out several years ago. Eric put it together from my notes and Eugene came up with the cracking idea to charge the subscribers an extra $5 if they want to get the deck. The card deck is a technology for delivering creative solutions to life’s problems. I call it The Management Game. Actually Games. Here is how to play the simplest one: Take any card. On the card is an aphorism. Relate the aphorism to your current hang up. I drew the 5 of clubs. The aphorism reads: “since life is short our faces must be long.” My current hang up is my health. Nothing seems the same since that brain surgery in November of 67. Well, as Corinne says I must take each day as it comes. Is that my solution, or is that my problem?
Me (January 2010, age 57). Playing a different game
The distant early warning or DEW line was a 1950s cold-war radar alert system Canada and the United States built in Northern Canada in the 1950s. The system was designed to give Americans and Canadians a heads up if Russia attacked by sending planes or missiles over the Arctic circle. McLuhan liked to announce himself in speeches as a voice from the DEW-line. That is he had to come to warn of dangers ahead. But in naming his card deck – which if you live in Montreal you can see on display at the Canadian Center for Architecture until February 25th, 2010 – after this famous piece of cold-war technology, McLuhan misleads. The name doesn’t quite fit. The deck says you can find answers for your hang-ups or problems by contemplating the aphorisms on the cards. Yet the DEW line was not a system for finding solutions to a problem (say nuclear attack), but a system for knowing whether you have a problem (look there’s a bomber!).
Let’s play McLuhan’s Management Game differently. Instead of calling “to mind a private or corporate problem as you shuffle the cards,” as the game suggests, and then picking “a card and … [applying] its message,’ let’s shuffle, select a card, look at the aphorism, and only then decide whether in fact we have a problem.
The card I’ve drawn for us all is the 4 of spades: “When all is said and done more will have been said than done.” Sounds like a call for action. I know what I’m going to do. (Tell you about it on Tuesday.) What will you do?
(Look next week for the announcement of a winner to our classify Marshall McLuhan contest.)
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Readings for this post
Marshall and me, Reading Marshall McLuhan’s Cards, December 3, 2009
Marshall and me, What’s Marshall McLuhan’s Stuff Worth, December 4, 2009
Tags: Advertising, Business, Communications, Creating, Thinking
Marshall McLuhan (September 24, 1976, age 65). The Carter-Ford debate was stupid
Today I was taking with Tom Brokow and Ed Newman on the Today Show. They were asking me about yesterday’s abominable debate between Ford and Carter. I watched the debate on black & white and two kinds of colour, CBS colour and NBC colour. What was abominable about the debate is that it was stupid. It was all wrong for TV. TV is a cool medium and the debate form is hot. On TV audience’s attention spans are limited to 4 to 5 minutes, the debate went on for 90 minutes. The TV couldn’t take it. The medium rebelled against the bloody message. Technically, I think it was an amplifier that blew up putting an end to the fiasco.
Me (January 2010, age 57). Who’s got the “corporate” image?
You can tell that Brokow and Newman aren’t quite sure whether to take McLuhan seriously or not. For example, when McLuhan says he watched the debate on TV in two kinds of colour, CBS and NBC, you can feel their eyebrows go up. Also, like hot and cool the terms McLuhan uses causes him problems. Carter, McLuhan says, has a “corporate” image. Brokow objects, surely not. McLuhan then tries to explain that by corporate he means not “business” or “industry” but “public” as opposed to “private.”
In McLuhan’s thinking corporate works better on TV. Private works better on radio or print media. Tribal man he teaches is “corporate” not private. He isn’t I think entirely successful in his chat with Brokow and Newman in part because his terms raise barriers to their understanding of him.
One observation McLuhan makes that they both dismiss is worth thinking about. Why is it, says McLuhan, that the candidates – Carter and Ford – come off as much less authoritative and personable than the journalists who are questioning them? Brokow and Newman say it’s because questioners typically have the advantage. But is it merely this? Look at the interview. Isn’t it clear Brokow and Newman come off looking much stronger and more authoritative than McLuhan? Why? Perhaps because Brokow and Newman are more corporate than McLuhan.
Do you agree that Carter, Brokow and Newman look more corporate than Ford and McLuhan? What could McLuhan do to come across better on TV?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Tags: Communications, Conversation, Hot and cool media, Medium is the message, Rhetoric, Technology, Understanding media
Marshall McLuhan (December 1970, age 59). Dick Cavett’s not listening
The other day, as I recounted yesterday, and as I again recount today, I was speaking to Dick-Cavett-Show host Dick Cavett, novelist Truman Capote, Chicago Bears running back Gale Sayers, and trumpeter Al Hirt. Loved probing them. But that Cavett kept spoiling the fun with his questions and his demands for logic.
Me (January 2010, age 57). Marshall McLuhan’s not listening
Again, as I said yesterday, McLuhan spends much time on the Dick Cavett Show probing and playing Cavett’s role. But when it comes to probes McLuhan likes to do the probing.
At the beginning of the show Dick Cavett says that McLuhan is maddening. And yet he is also delighting. He forces you to think about old things in new ways. The subject of Dick Cavett’s beard comes up (he is growing one and it itches) and McLuhan remarks that the beard is something Cavett is putting on to play with his audience. It is a mask of sorts and as such corporate. Now you can hear the disquiet in Cavett’s voice. What do you mean it’s corporate? With much toing and frowing McLuhan explains corporate is the opposite of private. Which does not do much to clear things up for Cavett. Beards then you can hear him think are cool. Cool works on TV. Politicians want to use TV to win elections. How come – Cavett poses a probe of his own – I can’t think of one politician who has a beard? Not one. McLuhan, however, refuses to play the game. He moves on to another idea. But let’s stop and consider Cavett’s probe.
Two points. Yes, I can think of a politician with a beard: Fidel Castro, and now that I’ve got that hurdle passed Jerry McGuire. And no I can’t think of any modern American politician (Lincoln and Grant aren’t moderns) with a beard. But then I’m Canadian.
Is there an American politician today who wears a beard? Are beards cool or are only some beards cool. Does this help make a case for or against the usefulness of the terms hot and cool?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Tags: Communications, Hot and cool media, Medium is the message, Technology, Understanding media
Marshall McLuhan (December 1970, age 59). Dick Cavett’s not listening
The other day, as I recounted yesterday, I was speaking on the Dick-Cavett-Show. Unfortunately the host Dick Cavett kept interfering with the fun by asking me questions.
Me (January 2010, age 57) Marshall McLuhan’s not listening
As I said yesterday, McLuhan spent almost half of his time on the show asking questions, posing new topics for discussion and talking with the other guests – in short, playing Cavett’s role.
We ended yesterday with Marshall McLuhan’s observation that Nixon lost the 1960 Presidential debate to Kennedy because his hot image did not work with the cool medium of TV. Cavett responds, if that’s true how come Nixon used TV to his advantage in 1968? McLuhan’s response is something like “Did he?” And then basically to ignore the point, and move on to talk about Trudeau’s perfect coolness as a TV politician. It is a good example of how infuriating McLuhan could be in relentlessly pushing his ideas and ignoring the ideas of others, particularly if they are ideas that make demands for rationality and consistency of thought.
At another point in their conversation McLuhan insists that he is throwing out observations, making probes to illicit understanding, and that understanding is not a point of view. What he is emphatically does not have is a point of view. To which Cavett says, in essence, not having a point of view is in fact a point of view. Naturally, McLuhan ignores the point. (To be continued)
What then are we to make of McLuhan’s terms hot and cool? Did Nixon make himself over into a cool personality for the 1968 election? Was McGovern actually hot? Was the 1968 election won or lost by other means?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Joe McGuinnis, The Selling of the President, Penguin Books, 1988; originally published as The Selling of the President, 1968. Simon & Shuster, 1969.
Tags: Communications, Hot and cool media, Medium is the message, Rhetoric, Technology, Understanding media