This article was so comprehensive. So interesting. I so appreciate how you connect things.
Repeated explanations of topics ingrains the essence of them. The astrology, the points you are consistently making.
I'll play the student in the class who isn't embarrassed to ask stupid questions.
Re-visiting "the medium is the message". I'm so glad you explain it so many ways b/c I find it challenging to comprehend. I understand what you are saying, but it is a paradigm shift, it is not exactly an inversion but conceptually it kind of is. Am I right about that?
I never thought of Sputnik in the context of it being an "electrical" event. Electric in the way it affected people all at once? Not b/c without electric it couldn't have happened.
Am I understanding this correctly?
It kind of explains Covid - computer generated virus that was global in a very short period of time, that was an electric event. Right?
"..Most people would point to the ideology as the agent of change when really it is coming along for the ride like the foam at the crests of waves. The waves are the product of tidal forces. The foam is decorative..."
The way I'm seeing it is "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" This is a hard concept.
So, nothing is coming about naturally, it is the medium that is the tidal force delivers the foam which causes people to change. Without the medium, how would people progress? How would ideas spread?
All those phones on the wall at the museum!
"...the fact of having comments added in real-time demonstrates that the print edition and the online edition are two totally different things...." yes.
Commenting on something just read in real time without having a long think about it, generates
opinions that are knee jerk. Something hit a nerve and it's off to the races.
It would be fun to do a test have people read an editorial, comment immediately, then have them re-read it the next day and then see how their comment changes when they've had a good think about it and weighed it.
But in the world today, if a person doesn't comment immediately, it likely won't be read, and they won't be satisfied b/c there will be no likes or replies to validate their feelings, or b/c they were looking or a fight. :)
"..Shep commented that with radio, people think you’re talking directly to them — but this never happens when you’re on television. Nobody takes TV personally; but they take radio personally.."
My mom listened to him when she was in bed at night.
That is so true. That is indeed my experience, having been a radio listener for years. We just morphed into podcast listeners.
When I listen to your show, I do feel like it's personal. I want to jump in and have a conversation about what you say.
Boomers are being blamed for all kinds of things, including according to the NY Times,
we are hoarding all the wealth.
I love ediblespaces comment - Pluto did it. Indeed, we are all under the influence of astrology one way or another.
It is not so complicated, though it's more than a paradigm shift. What do you think drives the story of the modern world? What McLuhan has proposed and well demonstrated is that the only historical events that get a result are the imposition of new technologies and how they transform consciousness, relationships and all of society.
The wars, the economic conditions, the "elections," the ideology -- all of it is coming along for the ride. They are not the causative events. They are the foam on the wave. This can be demonstrated before the printing press but is especially relevant since books and literacy transformed consciousness.
It will make more sense if you realize how profound that transformation was, which must be studied to be understood; and if you don't want to do that, you can consider the examples I give, mostly in other places but a few of them here. And you will note that most people who thrash and resist this idea have not done the work to be able to explain this idea; they cannot argue both sides. Their argument is generally, "I am right, and you are wrong."
This is not chicken and egg; you're going too fast. First comes the phone, then come the visinle effects of the phone. However there are instances where the effect appears to precede the cause because people do not know the environment is changing but it still is. Please read some of what he wrote and watch some of his lectures on YouTube. It's important to not think of events as falling dominoes. You can consider that the 24-hour news cycle gave rise to the Pesian Gulf War because the war would not have worked without high res 24-hour news to push it. If not for technological changes there would a much different historical process. Historians hate these ideas, but they have also never seriously considered them. And if you read what McLuhan is saying in the colored box sample of his presentation that day, it's all there.
I don't know why someone would resist the premise, but I trust that it is a thing you have encountered. You have exposure to so many kinds of people.
I understand about events are not simply falling dominoes. Elections, economic conditions, ideology, all the result of some kind of technology that changes perceptions of reality, but the technology then kind of creates our reality, and thus changes us. (We clearly see the Tech Bros who have been consumed mind, body, and soul, by the tech, and how dangerous they are.)
So books and literacy could be considered in the same category.
What McLuhan said that day in the colored box about Sputnik. That was what I commenting about..."I never thought of Sputnik in the context of it being an "electrical" event. Electric in the way it affected people all at once?
Not b/c without electricity it couldn't have happened."
Now I realize that yes what he is using electric and electronically to mean is immediate and simultaneous.
Which is why I related it to covid was his statement "...in an electronic age, the consequences of change are simultaneous, GLOBALLY.."
I also may be confusing two things....McLuhan's theory and use of electric more as a verb, as compared to what you speak of often. The idea that actual literal electricity has physically effected people (i.e. women, as in the woman in the book The Electric Rainbow being the first to experience anxiety and illness after the installation of electric wiring.) as in the Feminist movement, and the falling of the desire for motherhood.
As I was responding, a thought occurred to me.
The historical event that changed everything was not technological....exactly.
It happened at Mt. Sinai. The events that took place the way it is explained in Torah, and expanded by word of mouth; that generation in the desert passed to the next one over and over, the Oral Torah; then it may be interpreted as technology of sorts.
The sounds, the sights, the Ten Commandments written in stone. Supernatural.
I recall learning that it is said the Israelites saw the sounds, and heard the sights.
Atheists like Cliff High says it was Aliens.
This thought lead me to the question, Did Marshall McLuhan believe in God?
"Yes, Marshall McLuhan was a devout Roman Catholic who actively believed in God. Although raised in a loose Protestant tradition and identifying as an agnostic during his early university years, he converted to Catholicism in 1937 after reading G. K. Chesterton and experiencing what he described as a personal revelation.
McLuhan viewed his faith not merely as a set of doctrines but as a sensory perception and a primary way of understanding reality, comparable to sight or hearing. He was a daily Mass-attender who prayed the rosary and
believed that God permeates the material world, a concept he paralleled in his media theory through the idea that the "medium is the message."
For McLuhan, technology and communication were ultimately reflections of a divine order, and he saw his work as a way to help people resist the "obliteration of the person" in the modern electronic age. "
This is indeed a revelation, that he believed that God permeates the material world.
God being the first medium?
I deeply understand this belief. I think people who believe in God in the way that McLuhan did, would be more likely and more successful at resisting the "obliteration of the person" in the modern age. It seems his work was an outcrop of his devotion to his beliefs.
But I see in the last sentence where you are picking up the football to bring awareness to the concepts so people will resist being obliterated by the electric age.
We MUST resist!!!
All this made me think of the song
The Electric Boogie from 1981, which then started the Electric Slide dance.
"It's electric! / You can't see it / It's electric! / You gotta feel it."
The irony is so crazy.
I will most definitely watch some of McLuhan's lectures.
<< So books and literacy could be considered in the same category. >>
Not exactly. For one thing, books and literacy had their effects over several centuries. Each wave of electrical technology seizes society overnight. And books have the opposite effects of electrical technology, guiding people into themselves not ripping them out of themselves. Books compel and refine thought. Electrical media is tribalizing anesthesia.
"Each wave of electrical technology seizes society overnight" leaving us unprepared, and that's what McLuhan was worried about, and that's what we are all worrying about now.
Pluto did it.
This article was so comprehensive. So interesting. I so appreciate how you connect things.
Repeated explanations of topics ingrains the essence of them. The astrology, the points you are consistently making.
I'll play the student in the class who isn't embarrassed to ask stupid questions.
Re-visiting "the medium is the message". I'm so glad you explain it so many ways b/c I find it challenging to comprehend. I understand what you are saying, but it is a paradigm shift, it is not exactly an inversion but conceptually it kind of is. Am I right about that?
I never thought of Sputnik in the context of it being an "electrical" event. Electric in the way it affected people all at once? Not b/c without electric it couldn't have happened.
Am I understanding this correctly?
It kind of explains Covid - computer generated virus that was global in a very short period of time, that was an electric event. Right?
"..Most people would point to the ideology as the agent of change when really it is coming along for the ride like the foam at the crests of waves. The waves are the product of tidal forces. The foam is decorative..."
The way I'm seeing it is "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" This is a hard concept.
So, nothing is coming about naturally, it is the medium that is the tidal force delivers the foam which causes people to change. Without the medium, how would people progress? How would ideas spread?
All those phones on the wall at the museum!
"...the fact of having comments added in real-time demonstrates that the print edition and the online edition are two totally different things...." yes.
Commenting on something just read in real time without having a long think about it, generates
opinions that are knee jerk. Something hit a nerve and it's off to the races.
It would be fun to do a test have people read an editorial, comment immediately, then have them re-read it the next day and then see how their comment changes when they've had a good think about it and weighed it.
But in the world today, if a person doesn't comment immediately, it likely won't be read, and they won't be satisfied b/c there will be no likes or replies to validate their feelings, or b/c they were looking or a fight. :)
"..Shep commented that with radio, people think you’re talking directly to them — but this never happens when you’re on television. Nobody takes TV personally; but they take radio personally.."
My mom listened to him when she was in bed at night.
That is so true. That is indeed my experience, having been a radio listener for years. We just morphed into podcast listeners.
When I listen to your show, I do feel like it's personal. I want to jump in and have a conversation about what you say.
Boomers are being blamed for all kinds of things, including according to the NY Times,
we are hoarding all the wealth.
I love ediblespaces comment - Pluto did it. Indeed, we are all under the influence of astrology one way or another.
It is not so complicated, though it's more than a paradigm shift. What do you think drives the story of the modern world? What McLuhan has proposed and well demonstrated is that the only historical events that get a result are the imposition of new technologies and how they transform consciousness, relationships and all of society.
The wars, the economic conditions, the "elections," the ideology -- all of it is coming along for the ride. They are not the causative events. They are the foam on the wave. This can be demonstrated before the printing press but is especially relevant since books and literacy transformed consciousness.
It will make more sense if you realize how profound that transformation was, which must be studied to be understood; and if you don't want to do that, you can consider the examples I give, mostly in other places but a few of them here. And you will note that most people who thrash and resist this idea have not done the work to be able to explain this idea; they cannot argue both sides. Their argument is generally, "I am right, and you are wrong."
This is not chicken and egg; you're going too fast. First comes the phone, then come the visinle effects of the phone. However there are instances where the effect appears to precede the cause because people do not know the environment is changing but it still is. Please read some of what he wrote and watch some of his lectures on YouTube. It's important to not think of events as falling dominoes. You can consider that the 24-hour news cycle gave rise to the Pesian Gulf War because the war would not have worked without high res 24-hour news to push it. If not for technological changes there would a much different historical process. Historians hate these ideas, but they have also never seriously considered them. And if you read what McLuhan is saying in the colored box sample of his presentation that day, it's all there.
I don't know why someone would resist the premise, but I trust that it is a thing you have encountered. You have exposure to so many kinds of people.
I understand about events are not simply falling dominoes. Elections, economic conditions, ideology, all the result of some kind of technology that changes perceptions of reality, but the technology then kind of creates our reality, and thus changes us. (We clearly see the Tech Bros who have been consumed mind, body, and soul, by the tech, and how dangerous they are.)
So books and literacy could be considered in the same category.
What McLuhan said that day in the colored box about Sputnik. That was what I commenting about..."I never thought of Sputnik in the context of it being an "electrical" event. Electric in the way it affected people all at once?
Not b/c without electricity it couldn't have happened."
Now I realize that yes what he is using electric and electronically to mean is immediate and simultaneous.
Which is why I related it to covid was his statement "...in an electronic age, the consequences of change are simultaneous, GLOBALLY.."
I also may be confusing two things....McLuhan's theory and use of electric more as a verb, as compared to what you speak of often. The idea that actual literal electricity has physically effected people (i.e. women, as in the woman in the book The Electric Rainbow being the first to experience anxiety and illness after the installation of electric wiring.) as in the Feminist movement, and the falling of the desire for motherhood.
As I was responding, a thought occurred to me.
The historical event that changed everything was not technological....exactly.
It happened at Mt. Sinai. The events that took place the way it is explained in Torah, and expanded by word of mouth; that generation in the desert passed to the next one over and over, the Oral Torah; then it may be interpreted as technology of sorts.
The sounds, the sights, the Ten Commandments written in stone. Supernatural.
I recall learning that it is said the Israelites saw the sounds, and heard the sights.
Atheists like Cliff High says it was Aliens.
This thought lead me to the question, Did Marshall McLuhan believe in God?
"Yes, Marshall McLuhan was a devout Roman Catholic who actively believed in God. Although raised in a loose Protestant tradition and identifying as an agnostic during his early university years, he converted to Catholicism in 1937 after reading G. K. Chesterton and experiencing what he described as a personal revelation.
McLuhan viewed his faith not merely as a set of doctrines but as a sensory perception and a primary way of understanding reality, comparable to sight or hearing. He was a daily Mass-attender who prayed the rosary and
believed that God permeates the material world, a concept he paralleled in his media theory through the idea that the "medium is the message."
For McLuhan, technology and communication were ultimately reflections of a divine order, and he saw his work as a way to help people resist the "obliteration of the person" in the modern electronic age. "
This is indeed a revelation, that he believed that God permeates the material world.
God being the first medium?
I deeply understand this belief. I think people who believe in God in the way that McLuhan did, would be more likely and more successful at resisting the "obliteration of the person" in the modern age. It seems his work was an outcrop of his devotion to his beliefs.
But I see in the last sentence where you are picking up the football to bring awareness to the concepts so people will resist being obliterated by the electric age.
We MUST resist!!!
All this made me think of the song
The Electric Boogie from 1981, which then started the Electric Slide dance.
"It's electric! / You can't see it / It's electric! / You gotta feel it."
The irony is so crazy.
I will most definitely watch some of McLuhan's lectures.
<< So books and literacy could be considered in the same category. >>
Not exactly. For one thing, books and literacy had their effects over several centuries. Each wave of electrical technology seizes society overnight. And books have the opposite effects of electrical technology, guiding people into themselves not ripping them out of themselves. Books compel and refine thought. Electrical media is tribalizing anesthesia.
"Each wave of electrical technology seizes society overnight" leaving us unprepared, and that's what McLuhan was worried about, and that's what we are all worrying about now.
Yup.
Most people are not specifically concerned. Their anxiety is generalized.