Although I am not a big fan of Wikipedia because of it's current lack of internal and external control, THIS page talks a bit about McLuhan, and may help to clarify the reading.
First off, let me mention that McLuhan was criticized a bit for his ideas. You can easily search the internet for some opinions about McLuhan, but let's skip over the for now, and focus on who McLuhan was, and his ideas as presented in the present piece.
The article starts on page 203 with an explanation of how and why McLuhan thinks the medium really IS the message. The rest of the article goes on to support this idea by bringing up a number of examples. He also throws in some other ideas here and there, but he is pretty succinct in asserting his idea throughout the writing. Here are some excerpts that stood out to me:
*pg. 203 - "This is merely to say that the persona and social consequence of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology". After this statement, the author goes on to explain job elimination and a creation of roles, etc.... After this, McLuhan states, "Many people would be disposed to say that it was not the machine, but what one did with the machine, that was its meaning or message".
*pg. 203 - "For the "message" of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs".
(I'm backtracking a bit here)
McLuhan is brilliant in explaining the electric light. You might be thinking, "I already read that, and he lost me pretty quickly". that is understandable. Go back and read the parts on page 203 about the electric light - just those parts, and see what you can extrapolate from his explanation. This short description of the meaning of the electric light, or lack thereof, is the essence of the reading. McLuhan states, "The instance of the electric light may prove illuminating in this connection. The electric light is pure information. It is a medium without a message, as it were, unless it is used to spell out some verbal ad or name. This fact, characteristic of all media, means that the 'content' of any medium is always another medium". Brilliant! (am I geeking out again - sorry!). :) But then if you keep reading he comes back to the electric light and explains, "Let us return to the electric light. Whether the light is being used for brain surgery or night baseball is a matter of indifference. It could be argued that these activities are in some way the "content" of the electric light, since they could not exist without the electric light. This fact merely underlines the point that "the medium is the message" because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action". If you keep reading a couple of sentences beyond this excerpt, it says, "...it is only too typical that the "content" of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium".
As an aside - I am looking through my notes on the McLuhan article, and if you can get past some of the wording, the meaning is incredible!
Here are some other brief quotes. I will try to limit my commentary so that you can simply absorb what McLuhan is saying, and the implications it has for us today in our current 'media state'. I suggest that you read these in context, that is, have your book/the reading close by so that you can follow along and really absorb what is being said and implied. It may take a second to simply sit there and think about the concept for a few seconds before the light bulb (pun intended) flashes on and you 'get' what he is saying.
*pg. 205 "In other words, cubism, by giving the inside and outside, the top, bottom, back, and front and the rest, in two dimensions, drops the illusion of perspectives in favor of instant sensory awareness of the whole. Cubism, by seizing on instant total awareness, suddenly announced that the medium is the message."
*pg. 205 "Before the electric speed and total field, it was not obvious that the medium is the message. The message, it seemed, was the "content", as people used to as what a painting was about. Yet they never thought to ask what a melody was about, nor what a house or a dress was about. In such matters, people retained some sense of the whole pattern, of form and function as a unity".
*pg. 205 "...He understood the grammar of gunpowder". Think about this for a second. I mean, really think about this statement. What does this statement say to you? Does it not explain in 6 words what McLuhan is trying to convey?
*pg. 206-207 "But with electric media Western man himself experiences exactly the same inundation as the remote native. We are no more prepared to encounter radio and TV in our literate milieu than the native of Ghana is able to cope with the literacy that takes him out of his collective tribal world and beaches him in individual isolation. We are as numb to our new electric world as the native involved in our literate and mechanical culture".
*pg. 207 "Our conventional response to all media, namely that is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. For the "content" of a medium is like the juicy piece of mean carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind".
*pg. 208 "Today when we want to get our bearings in our own culture, and have need to stand aside from the bias and pressure exerted by any technical form of human expression, we have only to visit a society where that particular form has not been felt, or a historical period in which it was unknown".
I can go on with quotes from this piece that would be great conversation starters, especially the last couple of pages, but I will stop here. As I mentioned earlier in the post, many folks did not agree with McLuhan's assertions, and if you do not agree, explain your position in your post. You certainly do not have to agree with the folks who have written the articles we will be reading throughout the semester. I simply ask that if you do not agree, or even if you do agree for that matter, that you state your position clearly.
Each of the pieces I have selected for us to read throughout this class will confront a myriad of issues. I find Lickliders piece relevant for a completely different reason than McLuhan's piece. McLuhan brings up a completely different set of issues and ideas, and that is the exact reason why we will read through a number of different pieces. Simply because I would like the class to be exposed to a number of different perspectives, focuses, etc... throughout the semester. Licklider was a forward thinker, as was McLuhuan, but McLuhan brings up some controversial ideas.
I hope you enjoyed this article as much as I did, and I hope this post helped to clarify some of the ideas from McLuhan.
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