American mind
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.
Things change but we do not know it (continued)
Marshall McLuhan (November 18, 1961, age 50). The medium is invisible.
As I was saying no one sees the medium at work. It is invisible. It does its work on us and we go on differently, but do not see that everything has changed.
Me (January 2010, age 57). Another example?
PowerPoint has not only changed the world of work it has also dramatically changed the world of education. Consider this. Most lectures at universities – even in graduate school – are given using PowerPoint. Lecturers (or should I say PowerPointers) like it because they feel more in control of the lecture process. It gives them more confidence to have the slides at their command when they stand up to speak, say, for 1 to 2 hours in a large lecture hall. Students (the PowerPointed), however, also like it because it gives them more control over what they have to learn. How? PowerPoint typically reduces what students have to know for “the exam.” More and more, by tacit agreement between professor and student, what students are required to know is what is on the slides. And the slides reduce what students need to know. Conservatively, the maximum information you can reasonably get on a slide is 125 words. (Half the number of words you can fit on a single type-written, double-spaced 8½-by-11 inch page. But this is far in excess of the ideal of educational PowerPoint. The ideal is 5 to 7 bullet points each with no more than 5 to 7 words (The 5X5 rule or the 7X7 rule). The ideal reduces 125 words to 25 to 49 words a saving to students of 60.8 to 80 percent.
The medium of PowerPoint may be one of the more powerful and unseen forces that has driven the much-discussed decline in university education over the last generation. In education, unlike architecture or design, less may not be more.
Do you agree? Is PowerPoint enabling students to get by knowing less?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, pp. 280-281.
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.
Merry Xmas, Professor McLuhan!
Marshall McLuhan (December, 1947, age 36). Thank God it’s Xmas
Our fourth child, Stephanie, was born in October, Eric is only now just recovering from a bout with the flu, and I can’t hire anyone to help Corinne with the work around the house for less than my salary, which is the princely sum of $4,200. Still Corinne is glowing and while I find marking end Xmas exams tiresome, you know me, tireless. At present, I have three books on the go: one on Eliot and two on popular culture, Guide to Chaos and Typhon in America.
Me (December 2009, age 57). I agree
It is time to leave Professor McLuhan to his household troubles and work on his books, and meditate on the 12 days of Christmas a period which as McLuhan knew marked the beginning of the year from the 7th century through to the 13th. I will take a short break myself and make my next post on January 7th.
Before I do a few thoughts on the two books on popular culture McLuhan mentions above which eventually became one: The Mechanical Bride, his first book. Bride has presented a bit of a problem for students of McLuhan. Coming before his discovery of media it is far more accessible than his later books, and deals with a subject that would continue to fascinate McLuhan as a student of media, comics and advertising, but in a very different way. Bride looks at comics and advertising for what they reveal about American culture and its values, and in particular for what they reveal about what McLuhan believes is wrong with American culture. For example, Dagwood in the Blondie comic strip is a wimp and represents everything that is wrong with American men: in short they are not real men. And many things readers of the later McLuhan will find familiar are there: for example, Poe’s sailor caught in the maelstrom who escapes through understanding his situation, the idea that the book is not about the subjects or objects, or exhibits it discusses – advertisements and comics – but rather what they reveal about something else, American values and ways of living, a mosaic presentation in which the chapters can be read in any order. Yet it is not the McLuhan that he will come to be. He has not yet discovered his grand theme – the effects media have had on mankind because of the way they work rather than what they contain. Instead what we find is many familiar things being used in an unfamiliar way. Here is McLuhan the literary critic critiquing comics and advertising through close reading of their contents in ways he had learned at Cambridge. For example, in the chapter titled “Horse Opera and Soap Opera” he observes that Westerns (the B movies also known as dusters and oaters) have much to teach us about the importance of the frontier, business, action, the office, and men in American culture while it is to soap opera that you must go to learn about the mainstream, society, feelings, the home, and women. All of which is interesting but not important in the way the later McLuhan’s observation about media are important. Because if you then say about any observation in Bride “Interesting, but so what?” The answer more often than not is, “not much.”
In lieu of a question a greeting: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 190-191.
Still more on the critics!
Marshall McLuhan (June 2, 1960, age 48). There’s no such thing as bad advertizing?
I still can’t get Robert Fulford off my mind after what he sad about me in Maclean’s. Me, infuriating and arrogant? Surely he ought to be jesting. But is he? I think not. He thinks so I imagine because he thinks I have something to gain about my argument that electronic media is remaking us in the image of tribal man. I do not. I have no particular point of view. I do not label the changes taking place in our world as good or bad. I am an observer. My task is not to like or dislike what is happening; it is to explain it.
Me (December 2009, age 57). Still more critiquing of the critics
Why does McLuhan infuriate his critics so? Lewis Lapham, in his introduction to the 1994, MIT Press edition of Understanding Media makes the point that McLuhan’s style of writing infuriated people because it is like the world as McLuhan saw it in the electric age – “nonlineal, repetitive, discontinuous, intuitive, proceeding by analogy instead of sequential order.”
Lapham proceeds this observation with the claim that, “Despite its title, the book was never easy to understand. By turns [it is] brilliant and opaque.” And so we meet once more the common complaint “brilliant” and bad. But what precisely does Lapham find “opaque” or bad about Understanding Media?
(To be continued)
Is there anything in Understanding Media that you find “opaque?” Tell me what it is and why it is opaque.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 300.
More on the Critics!
Marshall McLuhan (June 2, 1960, age 48). There’s no such thing as bad advertizing?
Yesterday I told you what Robert Fulford had to say about me in Maclean’s. I must say the man really does not get me. He is hung up as teenagers say on Euclidian space. It blinds him to the truth of the medium is the message. He says I’m repetitious. But I have to keep repeating myself because he does not get it. That is to say getting it is something he does not get. Get it?
Me (December 2009, age 57). More critiquing of the critics
Let us look now at the criticisms that can be found in the blurbs printed on the covers and dust jackets of the 4 copies of Understanding Media that I have on my McLuhan book shelf. There is more than a hint of criticism to be found there because McLuhan’s publishers knew controversy sells books.
Second printing, October, 1966, Signet Book, new American Library of Canada: “Understanding Media is the book that’s making history and hysteria- with its radical view of the effects of electronic communications upon man and the twentieth century. Marshall McLuhan is the new spokesman of the electronic age- the oracle whose revolutionary ideas have blasted an explosion of debate from academy to coffee house. [The publisher] “His critics are infuriated by his ideas ….” Richard Schickel, Harper’s.
Third printing, 1968, McGraw Hill, hard cover: “An infuriating book.” Commonweal.
First MIT Press edition, 1994, soft cover: “McLuhan’s theories continue to challenge our sensibilities and our assumptions about how and what we communicate. … There has been a notable resurgence of interest in McLuhan’s work in the last few years …. Lewis H. Lapham revaluates McLuhan’s work in the light of the technological as well as the political and social changes that have occurred in the last part of this century.”
Critical edition, Ginko Press, hard cover, 2003: “Infuriating, brilliant and incoherent. “ Commonweal Review. “The medium is not the message.” Umberto Eco.
There is a recurrent idea in the blurbs. People are “infuriated” by the book. Why? Among other things Robert Fulford, whose criticism of McLuhan in Maclean’s set off this series of blogs on the criticism of Marshall McLuhan, presumably would say his arrogance is infuriating. (To be continued)
Is there anything in Understanding Media that you find infuriating? Tell me what it is and why it is infuriating.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for the is post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 300.
Critics!
Marshall McLuhan (June 1, 1960, age 48). There’s no such thing as bad advertizing?
That’s what they say, but having read what Robert Fulford had to say about me in Maclean’s, I’m beginning to have doubts. At the very least Fulford’s the exception that proves the rule. It’s actually amazing, as I told him myself, that he gets anything at all out of Understanding Media because he obviously doesn’t Understand Me. I have a theme that governs everything I write, namely that for 5,000 years western man thought in the way print taught him to. Splitting things up. Fragmenting the world. Analyzing. Putting things in order. Being logical and rational. Now, with the advent of the electric age, all this has changed. Welcome to the re-tribalized, acoustic, global village.
Me (December 2009, age 57). Critiquing the critics
Robert Fulford wrote that Understanding Media was “arrogant, sloppy, repetitious and brilliant.” A view which is both right and wrong headed. This perception of Understanding Media as a large dollop of error and held together by a drop of brilliance was a common response to McLuhan in the 1960s. (Around the same time, Richard Schickel wrote in Harper’s “his critics are infuriated by his ideas … but some think he has one of this continent’s most brilliant minds and that his theories foretell our real future.”) But it is not Fulford or Schickel’s 45-year old responses I want to talk about.
Let us consider some of the current critics of McLuhan, beginning with the writer of a recent blog, who I will not name. This critic wrote – I paraphrase to protect their anonymity- that 99 percent of what McLuhan wrote is bullshit, and the remaining 1 percent is pure genius. And that is all. They do not give an example of anything in McLuhan’s cannon they think is bullshit and explain why it is bullshit. Nor do they give an example of an idea of McLuhan’s that they think is brilliant and explain why it is brilliant. Remarkably, or perhaps unremarkably, this type of criticism of McLuhan is not unusual. In fact this is a fairly typical response to McLuhan on the internet: gossipy, intellectually lazy, and insulting.
(To be continued)
Can you give me an example of something you think is bullshit in Understanding Media and explain why it is bullshit. Also, and more challengingly, can you give me an example of one thing in the book besides “the medium is the message” or the world is becoming a “global village” you think is brilliant and explain why it is brilliant.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 300.
More on education at high speed
Marshall McLuhan (February 1960, age 48). The adolescent has been replaced by the teenager
Teachers are failing to teach because they insist on treating teenagers as if they were adolescents. (See Edgar Friedenberg’s fine book The Vanishing Adolescent.) Adolescent means the stage between childhood and adulthood. That stage no longer exists. Electronic media have abolished the adolescent. What we are left with is the teenager. An adult aged 13 to 19. I should know, several of them are underfoot at home. To paraphrase the familiar anecdote, take my teenager, please.
Me (December 2009, age 57). McLuhan underestimated the size of the problem
In The Disappearance of Childhood, Neil Postman argued that the electronic age has not only abolished adolescence it has robbed children of a great deal of their childhood. In the middle ages children were treated as adults as soon as they could speak with fluency, say, age 6 to 8. The print revolution caused childhood to be extended and adolescence added on because of the extra demands learning to read placed on young people in addition to learning to speak. Today, Postman argues electric media have undone the work the print revolution did.
What does this mean for the understanding of schooling? Basically, the problems of the teenager – disaffection and disengagement with traditional class room teaching, dropping out, illiteracy - will be found increasingly among older children.
Why do people keep on insisting that children and teenagers be book-learned in the age of digital and social media? You can try to keep twitter out the classroom but can you keep the classroom out of twitter?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Neil Postman. The End of Education: Redefining the value of school. New York: Vintage Books, 1995; 1996.
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.