Marshall McLuhan

LCC 2700: Intro to Computational Media

Marshall McLuhan

Gutenberg Galaxy (1962)

printing changed culture

Understanding Media (1964)

“electric” media change culture

Media shape our senses and perceptions

A new medium means a new shape to human consciousness

McLuhan and Media Ecology

Studying media environments

Technology plays a role in human affairs

Neil Postman, NYU ‘71 — How media communication affect human understanding

Structure, content, effect

Communication technology’s cognitive effect on society

The alphabet, printing press changes the way we think

Print culture (15th c). began to privilege the visual over the oral (and the aural)

Print encourages static, segmented attitudes that resist collaboration and encourage compartmentalization

Gutenberg Galaxy

Mechanization of print

reinforced orientation toward uniform objective truth

introduced a segmented, cause /effect, rationalist worldview

prepared us for a mechanical, industrial, collectivist age

suppressed mythic, multi-sensorial, “organic” experience

Gutenberg Galaxy

Electronic media are poised (1960s!) to replace print

New tribalism — multisensory awareness

The Global Village and “surfing” as rapid, heterogenous movement

Understanding Media(1964)

All media as extensions of ourselves serve to provide new transforming vision and awareness.

Media themselves — not their content — should be the object of study

The properties of the medium are far more important than the “content” they carry

Understanding Media(1964)

The characteristics of a medium affect people;

Not the content the medium delivers

Hot & Cold Media

• “Hot” media affect and enhance a single sense

• Cinema: vision

• “Cold” media affect and enhance multiple senses

• Comic books, Television

• More active participation

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McLuhan Aphorisms from Understanding Media (1964)

The medium is the message:A new medium shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action.e.g. railroad, plane; telegraph, telephone,

mobile phone

The content of any medium is always another medium

Print encapsulates writingWriting encapsulates speech

McLuhan’s sound barrier metaphor

We feel the contours of a medium as we are moving beyond it

Media are invisible when we are hypnotized by their ubiquity

Good or Bad?

Negative reaction toward the increasing number of books in the 17th century

Negative reaction toward the “death of the book” in the 21st century

Media are received relative to their cultural contexts

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“Electric media” are like Cubism: simultaneous viewpoints from multiple angles

Pablo PicassoThe Guitar Player (1910)

The Medium is the Massage

New technology influence the way people think

The way people think becomes culturally encoded, and changes the way they behave

1967 book with experimental style, including collage, mirror writing, juxtapositions

Meant to “perform” its theoretical position

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The Medium is the Massage

Question about the title

Printing mistake?

Media change or “massage”

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What counts as a medium?

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