McLuhan_Powerpoint

July, 1938
“Together with the tabs, the mags, and the movies, television will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote. More hours in every twenty-four will be spent digesting ideas, sounds, images—distant and concocted编造的. In sufficient accumulation, radio sounds and television sights may become more familiar to us than their originals.” E.B. White, “Removal”
The Ear was the Earliest
The dominant organ of sensory and social orientation in pre-alphabet societies was the ear— hearing was believing The phonetic alphabet forced the magic world of the ear to yield to the neutral world of the eye. Man was given an eye for an ear. ---Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage
McLuhan’s contribution to communication & philosophy
The Medium is the Massage The Medium is the Message
The Medium is the Massage?
According to McLuhan, societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which people communicate than by the content of the communication.
created the portable book, which people could read in privacy and in isolation from others. People could now inspire—and conspire… Literacy conferred授给 the power of detachment, non-involvement.
Electronic technology fosters and encourages unification and involvement.
Similarly electric modes of communication reshape civilization in the 20th century. "Electricity does not centralise, but decentralises." (from Understanding Media)
July, 1938
“Clearly the race today is between loud speaking and soft, between the things that are and the things that seem to be, between the chemist of RCA and the angel of God. Radio has already given sound a wide currency, and sound “effects” are taking the place once enjoyed by sound itself. Television will enormously enlarge the eye’s range, and like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere.” E.B. White, “Removal”
“We have had to shift our stress of attention from action to reaction. We must now know in advance the consequences of any policy or action, since the results are experienced without delay. Because of electric speed, we can no longer wait and see… The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village.” ---Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage
Their graphic presentation is like an x-ray. They put in everything they know, rather than only what they see.
Acoustic Time
Until writing was invented man lived in acoustic space:
Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage
Enter Television
E.B. White July, 1938
“…I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision we shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television—of that I am quite sure.” E.B. White, “Removal”
The alphabet and print technology fostered and encouraged a fragmenting process, a process of specialism and detachment分离 .
In The Gutenberg Galaxy McLuhan stated that 'print is the technology of individualism.'
Art, or the translation of a culture, is shaped by the way space is perceived.
Primitive and prealphabet people integrate time and space as one and live in an acoustic听觉的 , horizonless无范围的 , boundless, olfactory 嗅觉的 space, rather than in visual space.
McLuhan’s contribution to communication & philosophy
The Global Village
Global Village
“Ours is a brand-new world of Allatonceness. “Time” has ceased, “space” has vanished. We now live in a global village…a simultaneous happening. We are back in acoustic space. We have begun again to structure the primordial feeling, the tribal emotions from which a few centuries of literacy divorced us.” ---Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Mahnology, too! What happened when we humans began to write?
…when new technologies are introduced there are always those who are skeptical…
boundless directionless horizonless in the dark of the mind in the world of emotion by primordial原始的 intuition by terror
--Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage
July, 1938
“When I was a child people simply looked about them and were moderately happy; today they peer beyond the seven seas, bury themselves waist deep in tidings, and by and large what they see and hear makes them unutterably sad.” E.B. White, “Removal”