Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan: "If we understand the revolutionary transformations caused by new media, we can anticipate and control them; but if we continue in our self-induced subliminal trance, we will be their slaves."....
"This is the zombie stance of the technological idiot. It’s to escape this Narcissus trance that I’ve tried to trace and reveal the impact of media on man, from the beginning of recorded time to the present."

This photo represents a modern version of what McLuhan was speaking about. The "texter" is caught up in what Marshall called a "self-induced subliminal trance" and is in a "zombie stance"; in his own world so to speak, because of the "Narcissus trance" that his phone and the technology and media it provides has caused him to enter and be preoccupied by. McLuhan wanted society of his time to realize how the media and how technology affected them, their environments, and their society; not just be preoccupied with the next new thing and the cool new things it can do for them, all the use they can get out of it, or how they can use these things and what for.

McLuhan and Technology (The extension of ourselves)

I found the above image both humorous and very true, in the sense that it does represent the type of people that we become when we are sitting in a car. In the 2000's, cars are so technologically driven (no pun intended), that it is impossible to simply imagine someone cranking a gear to get a window up. These days, cars are able to do so much, that it almost as if they are the ones doing everything for us. As a result, McLuhan's idea that technology is like an extension of ourselves is very true.

Driving a car is no longer just operating a vehicle but is now like entering a machine that becomes a part of us. It can automatically brake, give you alerts, adjust temperature, recline seats, drive itself (Google Cars). In a sense, all humans have to do is make sure that they are not driving off of a bridge and everything else is handled for us. It's unfortunate. However, the meme (also a technology driven idea) above represents what we essentially are when we get into a car, a part of it.

The mention of zombies in the meme was also very interesting to me because it is what we become when we interact with technology most of the time. It's strange, but very true. So, what do you think? Do you agree? Disagree? Why?

Kaled A.

McLuhan, Education and Advertisements

There is an evident reliability on the Internet and other technologies in today's society which underscores McLuhan’s referral to the “TV child,” or a child who spends so much time in front of the television before first grade that this child is not adapted to old school styles: “The TV child finds it difficult if not impossible to adjust to the fragmented, visual goals of our education after having had all his senses involved by the electric media…” (The Playboy Interview). This theory raises the question as to whether or not the educational systems should adapt to the “TV child” rather than the child adapting to old school ways. According to McLuhan, “this is an age of information overload. …[and] the only way to make the schools other than prisons without bars is to start fresh with new techniques and values” (The Playboy Interview). As a result, McLuhan proposed an assertion that educational systems needs to take learning out of classrooms, making assignments experimental and designated to involve students in society and not just "chained" to a desk. To McLuhan, "The metropolis today is a classroom, the ads are its teachers. The traditional classroom is an obsolete detention home, a feudal dungeon" (The Book of Probes); this theory also applies to the imminent influence advertisements have on our society and how unaware we are of these cultural impacts. 

Has anyone been influenced to purchase an item or behave a certain way based off of an advertisement? 

McLuhan and Firefox

I was thinking about how Mcluhan suggests that our removal from the "tribal" ways of earlier human civilization was harming culture as a whole, and for some reason the Firefox logo (which was loading painfully slowly on my office PC) made me think of the ways in which we choose natural imagery or language to describe technology (like the "Blackberry").

So I remembered the Firefox/Windows meme, and decided to see if there were other versions of it out there. The idea that this OS would outsmart a clever animal seems particularly appropriate...

There's this one:















and this one:

and this one which riffs on the original:  

Of course, memes are a very specific type of image, plus text, and usually denote some special cultural reference. But that's the first thing I thought of when choosing an image. I wonder what McLuhan would have made of internet memes...

How to Make Sense of McLuhan...

Just prior to the publication of the Playboy interview, this article appeared in the New York Times. It offers some interesting critical remarks and thoughts on how to appreciate and comprehend McLuhan's ideas, which are often complex and intricate.

And if you want some more recent perspective on this guy's uncanny ability to predict the future, here is some interesting TV commentary from 2012!

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