Marshall McLuhan

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Marshall McLuhan

• LCC 2700 Intro to Computational Media

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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
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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
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Gutenberg Galaxy
Communication technologys 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
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Gutenberg Galaxy
Mechanization of print reinforced
orientation toward uniform objective truth
introduced a segmented, cause /effect,
rationalist world view prepared us for a
mechanical, industrial, collectivist age
suppressed mythic, multi-sensorial, organic
experience
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Electronic media are poised (1960s!) to replace
print New tribalism multisensory awareness The
Global Village and surfing as rapid,
heterogenous movement
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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
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Understanding Media(1964)
The characteristics of a medium affect
people Not the content the medium delivers
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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 writing
• Writing encapsulates speech

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McLuhans sound barrier metaphor
Media are invisible when we are hypnotized by
their ubiquity
We feel the contours of a medium as we are
moving beyond it
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Good or Bad?
Media are received relative to their cultural
contexts
Negative reaction toward the increasing number of
books in the 17th century Negative reaction
toward the death of the book in the 21st century
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Electric media are like Cubism simultaneous
viewpoints from multiple angles

• Pablo Picasso
• The Guitar Player (1910)

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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 Message / Massage / Mass Age
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What counts as a medium?