Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)

I finally got around to reading McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage. It was enjoyable, and seems fairly forward-thinking for 1967. I can see why it is so heavily cited in new media composition studies, and I enjoyed its collage multimodal style. There were various points where I thought McLuhan was just plain wrong, but there were various moments of insight that I liked, particularly in regards to audience participants, electric cities, and challenges to the public/private dichotomy.

I finally got around to reading the classic last night, and what was I waiting for? It is witty, insightful, and very entertaining. Much credit must be given to graphic designer Quentin Fiore. His designs of the 1960s are mixed text and images, different sizes of type and other unconventional devices like mirror writing to create dynamic pages that reflect the tumultuous spirit of the time. In the words of critic Steven Heller, Fiore was "as anarchic as possible while still working within show more the constraints of bookmaking". McLuhan seems to be on a zealous mission to provoke the idea that conventional text ossifies the mind and these disruptive pages, many of which have little to no text, are as koans to break patterns of thought and challenge the reader. I especially like the quotes from John Cage and William Massey:

“Whence did the wond'rous mystic art arise, / Of painting SPEECH, and speaking to the eyes? / That we by tracing magic lines are taught, / How to embody, and to colour THOUGHT?”

Not just 18th Century poets, but even the seminal Socrates is on McLuhan's side seeing deadly rigidity in a line of text:

"The discovery of the alphabet will create forgetfulness in the learner’s souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. You give your disciples not truth but only the semblance of truth; they will be heroes of many things, and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing."
— Socrates, Phaedrus, cited by Marshall McLuhan here

McLuhan then sounded like someone railing against 24-hr cable news, unedited blogs, and face-down tweeting:

"The family circle has widened. The worldpool of information fathered by the electric media—movies, Telstar, flight—far surpasses any possible influence mom and dad can now bring to bear. Character no longer is shaped by only two earnest, fumbling experts. Now all the world's a sage."

And what he resisted in the 60s make me think his head would explode now, or maybe now we will listen?

"Electric circuitry has overthrown the regime of ‘time’ and ‘space’ and pours upon us instantly and continuously the concerns of all other men. It has reconstituted dialogue on a global scale. Its message is Total Change, ending psychic, social, economic, and political parochialism. The old civic, state, and national groupings have become unworkable. Nothing can be further from the spirit of the new technology than ‘a place for everything and everything in its place.’ You can’t go home again."

It seems, and appropriately enough, McLuhan's thesis was best summarized in a New Yorker cartoon presented here without comment near the very end with this quip:

"You see, Dad, Professor McLuhan says that the environment that man creates becomes his medium for defining his role in it. The invention of type created linear, or sequential thought, separating thought from action. Now, with TV and folk singing, thought and action are closer and social involvement is greater. We again live in a village. Get it?"
The New Yorker Magazine 1966 show less

It is difficult to remember that this book was first published in 1967, as the message of the "massage" is as relevant today as it was then. The use of images to make its point should not detract from the prose, even though it is minimal. McLuhan's "allatonceness" and "global village" take on new resonance in the Internet age. Where it diverges is in thinking we privilege acoustic space--I don't believe that is true. I think we are still largely beholden to the visual, and when in 1967 show more McLuhan writes: "At the high speeds of electric communication, purely visual means of apprehending the world are no longer possible; they are just too slow to be relevant or effective..." we know that he could not have foreseen social media. But as many have noted, much of what McLuhan says holds up in our age.

This edition is wonderful and beautifully produced, from the Shepard Fairey cover (probably the most apt choice), to the self-referential New Yorker cartoon on the last page. It is both a (brief) history of media, and a harbinger of the future. Quentin Fiore's contributions are stunning, particularly in retrospect, and seem far less counter-culture now than they did in the 1960s. The use of visual images, creative typesetting, and lack of regular pagination help drive home McLuhan's point in this "inventory of effects." We get pulled into the "electrically-configured whirl" no less now than we did then, even if the medium has changed. One wonders if we aren't still "march[ing] backwards into the future." Media continue to be "extensions of some human faculty"--and in that, we see both the frailty and fecundity of our ideas. show less

In the 1960s, McLuhan presaged the communications age through his studies of “electronic media.” His thoughts shone light on the way forward and are now standards of understanding today. For instance, he coined the term “global village” in showing the ways of globalization.

This work consists of much more than text. Published in black-and-white, it portrays a series of images that move the reader through the contention that media – particularly electronic media – “massages” show more messages to us. McLuhan squarely places the focus on the nature of the media.

He looks to history to see how Gutenberg transformed the world through the advent of print media. He contends that television, movies, and other pictorial media begun the transform the world in the 1950s and 1960s. It made the world a smaller place, a global village, where people in far-flung places of the world borrow and learn from each other.

To him, electronic media are non-linear, unlike books. Rather, they unite thought and action in a way that books do not. This allows fields like psychology to flourish as instant reactions become more important. In its production, each page is adorned with images that reinforce McLuhan’s message. While such things are commonplace over fifty years later, this type of presentation was pioneered in these works. We can now observe through studying contemporary discourse that this work was spot-on in its predictions.

For me, as a software developer and student of culture, this work simply reinforces what I see around me. I spend a lot of my time on the computer and Internet. I see first-hand that McLuhan’s theses worked out. Still, I found this image-oriented book very stimulating. All of the poignant pictures tired out my eyes. It reminded me of the electronic media that are now standard, like the electronic news or even Facebook and Instagram.

This work continues to inform the intellectual class and students of culture. Those interested in the history of ideas will be particularly attracted to this work. Those, like me, who are concerned with the role of computers in society will find this work compelling. As commonly said, we live in the Information Age, and this book sketched the outlines, fifty-plus years ago, of what that would look like. Many say that it is the most mature expression of McLuhan’s thought. For that reason, it’s worth attending to his perspective today. show less