Medium is the message
McLuhan slandered?
Marshall McLuhan (January, 1996, age 84). Unbelievable!
For the most part death agrees with me. I’ve got a quiet room, and plenty of books. Every now and then I look up from my studies and look down on earth to find out what people are saying about me. It’s delightful to see that even now 16 years after my death – or as Corinne likes to call it my “unfortunate demise” – I’m still a celebrity. The latest news on the Marshall McLuhan front is that Wired magazine has put me on their masthead as their patron Saint. An excellent choice, if I do say so myself, and I do. But I don’t like what that bloke Gary Wolf wrote about me. Said someone else had written my books. The nerve of the man, ordinarily I’d sue, but unfortunately given my present circumstances, that’s impossible. No lawyers up here.
Me (February 2010, age 57). Wolfe may have been right on the mark.
What Wolfe wrote is that “scholars agree that Marshall McLuhan’s earliest books were written by him, but there is mystery and uncertainty about who really wrote his subsequent works.” What there is no “mystery and uncertainty” about is that all but one of McLuhan’s books published after Understanding Media were co-authored. The question is how much did McLuhan actually contribute to the writing of these books and how much did his co-authors. It is generally agreed, for example, that The Medium is the Massage was pieced together by his co-authors from McLuhan’s previous writing. My own belief is that the McLuhan who wrote the Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media is not the same McLuhan who co-authored the later books. I have written a long essay explaining more precisely what I mean by this, which I will publish serially in this blog, beginning next week.
Was the McLuhan who wrote The Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media a genius? How do you define genius?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. Produced by Jerome Agel, 1967.
Tags: Gutenberg Galaxy, Medium is the message, Understanding media
Haiti will soon be a distant memory
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
McLuhan in a box?
Marshall McLuhan (February, 1967, age 55). Undignified! Not professorial!
Quentin Fiore tells me that Aspen Magazine is wild about putting me in one of their boxes. I am the subject of their next issue, issue number 4, the McLuhan edition. Corinne will be amused. The graduate school – I am sure – will not. This will give the Profs at Toronto University a fit. I can hear them now. Pure Commercialism! Undignified! Not professorial! Well that’s their look out.
For each issue Aspen’s editors assemble a mix of recordings, posters, essays and whatnot playing on a particular theme. “Magazine” you know is a very interesting word. It means a storehouse, a cache, typically for explosives. This issue is undoubtedly going to result in fireworks. The last one was on Warhol. This one’s on me. Haven’t seen it yet, but I will. Perhaps next Sunday.
Me (February, 2010, age 57): A 1960s time capsule.
Aspen Magazine, the brain child of Phyllis Johnson, a former editor for Women’s Wear Daily and Advertising Age began publication in 1965 and ceased publication in 1971. U.S. Subscribers paid $12.95 a year for 4 quarterly issues and Canadians $14.95. For this somewhat princely sum (Look or Life, popular 26-issue-a-year magazines, at this time cost Americans $5.00 a year and Canadians $5.50) the subscribers received a multi-media, extravaganza of visual, oral, and tactile delights. For us, viewing it today it is both a 1960s time capsule and time machine.
The McLuhan edition which arrived at the subscriber’s door in the spring of 1967 in a hinged box (9-½ by 12-½ by ¾ inches) decorated with an electronic circuit board and containing:
- Poster displaying pages from The Medium is the Massage
- Poster of photo taken at “the tribal stomp at San Francisco’s Avalon Ballroom”
- Excerpts from interviews, essays, and a diary, written by Grace Glueck, Ed Ward, Dropper Ishmael, and John Cage
- Essay: “the Electronics of Music,” by Faubion Bowers and Daniel Kunin
- Phonograph Record: “A recorded Sampler of Electronic Music:” side A – Mario Davidovsky; side B – Gordon Mumma
- Recording: a description of a nature trail for the blind by Bob Lewis and Alfred Etter
- Excepts: “Psycles” – from The Bikeriders a book by Danny Lyon about the Chicago Outlaws motorcycle club. Includes a “meditation on motorcycling by Bob Chamberlain.”
- Advertisements: A magenta folder (8- ? by 11-¾ inches, with white wraparound text) containing pamphlets, posters, forms and sheets promoting among other things Remy Martin, Gordon’s, the Sierra Club, Something Else Press, United Airlines and MGB autos.
Is there a market for something like Aspen Magazine today? How much do you think such a magazine would cost today? (In today’s money – adjusting for inflation – an American annual subscription of $12.95 would be worth $68.83, and a Canadian subscription of $14.95 would be worth $79.46 – amazing value for money) Do you know of any library, centre, or museum that has a copy of the Aspen McLuhan edition?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Tags: Advertising, Art, Communications, Culture, Medium is the message, Understanding media
Is everything a 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
Coming to terms with McLuhan
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
Who’s interviewing who? [for one last time]
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
Who’s interviewing who? [continued]
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
Who’s interviewing who?
Marshall McLuhan (December 1970, age 59). Dick Cavett’s not listening
The other day I was speaking to Dick Cavett. Actually I was on the Dick Cavett Show speaking to novelist Truman Capote, Chicago Bears running back Gale Sayers, and trumpeter Al Hirt. I tried out a few of the probes I’ve been playing with to see what I can tease out of them in terms of new ideas. Such as: rock only works in English; Nixon works better on radio than TV; and the instant replay has slowed down the game of football. Unfortunately, Cavett kept interfering with the fun by asking me questions.
Me (January 2010, age 57). Marshall McLuhan’s not listening
McLuhan spent almost half of his time on the show asking questions, and posing new topics for discussion and talking with the other guests. So much so that at one point Cavett said ironically to McLuhan, and obviously enjoying the theatre, “You’re very easy to interview aren’t you?”
Marshall McLuhan’s one way conversation style was legendary. As Professor Abe Rotstein who was a member of McLuhan’s conversation circle at U. of T. in the 1960s told me, McLuhan was a polite conversationalist. He always waited for your lips to stop moving before he resumed speaking. If you want to get a sense of McLuhan’s verbal pyrotechnics listen to the tape of this show. But I said I would say more about hot and cool today. So here goes. In his conversation with Dick Cavett, McLuhan uses hot and cool to explain why a hot Nixon lost to a cool Kennedy in their 1964 debate on the cool medium of TV. Tellingly, McLuhan observed that people who listened to the debate on radio, a hot medium, thought Nixon won the debate. (To be continued)
Is Obama with his southern-preacher style of rhetoric – the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. tradition – too hot for TV?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Tags: Communications, Hot and cool media, Medium is the message, Technology, Understanding media
Hot or Cool?
Marshall McLuhan (May 1960, age 49). Perhaps I should have stuck with High Definition or Low Definition
TV like the telephone is low definition and therefore a cool medium. Very different from press, movie and radio, which are hot, high definition media providing a great deal of information. Most people don’t get this. They think TV is visual. It’s not, Radio is visual. TV’s acoustic, tactile and very involving because your senses must work hard to make sense of the meager data at hand. TV doesn’t work the same way as visual media. It’s an inward-looking medium. When you watch it you are driven inward because you are the screen.
Me (January 2010, age 57). Perhaps
It is remarkable how confusing most people find McLuhan’s idea that TV is cool. A director of programming for a TV network, whose major at university was communications, once said to me in conversation, “Are you sure McLuhan said TV is a cool medium?” And when I assured her he said it was, remained doubtful. It’s not surprising. Cool today means “interesting” hot means “sexy.” As in “she’s hot.” You’re going snowboarding? “Cool.” McLuhan took “hot and cool” from the world of jazz, where ”hot” jazz is a big rich sound with a lot of brass, and “cool” jazz is a smaller, ivory-tapping, more impromptu sound. Most people don’t associate hot and cool with the jazz world of the 1940s and 1950s. They use them the way California Valley-girls do. And so if you turn to a recent book on McLuhan co-authored by Terrence Gordon, Everyman’s McLuhan, you will find a list of hot and cool media, in which TV is listed as a hot medium and the movie as cool. This Gordon assures me is an error of the printer. He does not believe TV is a hot medium nor does he think that it has changed from cool to hot over time as TV technology has changed from the wood cabinet rabbit-eared box of the 1950s to the HD digital flat-screen of today. What is interesting about this error is that it is an error that is easily made. The terms hot and cool confused McLuhan’s readers in the 1960s. And they continue to confuse readers, and printers, today. (More on hot and cool tomorrow.)
What about other media? Is PowerPoint hot or cool? Is Facebook hot or cool? What about LinkedIn?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
W. Terrence Gordon, Eri Hamaji & Jacob Albert, Everyman’s McLuhan, New York: Mark Batty, 2007
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 270.
Tags: Acoustic, Communications, Hot and cool media, Medium is the message, Technology, Understanding media
Reputation Lost
Marshall McLuhan (September, 1976, age 65). Nobody takes me seriously
Sometimes I get the feeling that nobody is taking me seriously. My son Eric told me not to worry, that we’d show them with Laws of Media, but I’m not so sure. I sometimes think I should never have signed my name to all the things people have helped me write. “The Medium is the Massage” is a case in point, of one book and perhaps of one pun too many.
Me (December 2009, age 57). Of course there were people who took him seriously
McLuhan’s reputation fell sharply in the 1970s. In the summer I spoke with Professor Deirdre McCloskey, who is a professor of economics, history and communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago about Marshall McLuhan’s reputation today in the field of Communications.
“Nobody took him seriously” is the line spoken by the narrator of the film McLuhan’s Wake. I asked her, “Do people take McLuhan seriously in Communications today?”
“[Most people],” she said, “have forgotten about him, but communication scholars are all very familiar with McLuhan and honor him. He is no longer a cultural guru. He has been crowded out by others. You can have only so many gurus at a time; only so many friends.” Later she said that the problem with students of communications, thinking of the graduate course she teaches, is that students accept too much of what McLuhan says. They are not as critical as they should be.
What books would it have been better if McLuhan had not put his name on? What do we need to take most seriously about McLuhan today? What do we need to treat critically?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Gary Wolf. “Channelling McLuhan: The Wired Interview with the Magazine’s patron saint”, Wired, Issue 4.01, January 1996. www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.01/channeling.html