McLuhan For Beginners

W. Terrence Gordon, Susan Willmarth

• Publisher: For Beginners
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781934389751
• eBook ISBN: 9781939994165
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Marshall McLuhan was one of the most brilliant and original thinkers of the 20th century. He was so far ahead of his time that he predicted the future and offered a critique of human behavior in a media saturated world that is perhaps more valuable in today’s Internet age than it was in his own time.

McLuhan pioneered the study of Media, unified Art and Science, and warned us about the perils of a televised, computerized, famous-for-15-minutes, social media world. A world where we would live in each other’s faces, and become so alike, so isolated, so anonymous that violence would become a scream of identity, a way of saying, “I am not invisible.” McLuhan tried to teach us to guard against these dehumanizing, debasing effects of technology, and a thousand other things, but we got reality television anyway.

The centennial celebration of McLuhan’s life and the re-release of his books has led to a surge of new interest in his thinking and teachings. McLuhan For Beginners provides an essential introduction that is clear, comprehensive, and easy to remember. It is full of wise and witty art by Susan Willmarth that is a perfect match to W. Terrence Gordon’s writing. McLuhan envisioned the media generated Global Village before it existed, and no one since McLuhan has described its allure and pitfalls better.

n this book McLuhan notes that his objective is not to offer a static theory of human communication but to probe the effects of anything humans use in dealing with the world. “To understand media,” he wrote,

If that approach makes academics nervous, it is certainly one that every artist is comfortable with.

McLuhan’s method? It’s all in the fingers:

“Most of my work in the media is like that of a safecracker. In the beginning I don’t know what’s inside. I just set myself down in front of the problem and begin to work. I grope, I probe, I listen, I test—until the tumblers fall and I’m in.” (From the Introduction to Gerald Stearn’s McLuhan Hot and Cool)

cLuhan called his way of thinking and investigating “probes” (you know, like the things we shot off into outer space in the ‘60s and ‘70s?) Throughout his writings he relies on such probes to gain insight into media and their effects.

To many academics of McLuhan’s era, his concept of probes remains one of the most irritating aspects of his method. Faith in the power of the probe allowed McLuhan to take stabs at a wide range of topics, from the serious to the ridiculous, without necessarily committing himself to conclusions or testing his hypotheses scientifically—a habit that infuriated his critics and detractors.

TWO “PROBING” QUESTIONS

uring McLuhan’s heyday, people argued for hours about what he really meant. In Woody Allen’s charming film “Annie Hall,” Woody and Diane Keaton were standing in a movie line, when a nerd ahead of them started spouting off about what McLuhan really meant, McLuhan—who just happened to be standing nearby—began to explain himself. (Actually, to misquote himself.) One of McLuhan’s favorite retorts to hecklers was “You think my fallacy is all wrong?” But in the film, McLuhan’s “probing” question was changed into a statement: “You mean my fallacy is all wrong.”

QUESTION: Why do you think McLuhan was displeased with the change he was asked to make in the form of this quip in his cameo as himself in “Annie Hall”?

Answer: In the film, McLuhan’s question is turned into a statement and is no longer a disabling tactic against an aggressive opponent. As a question, it forces an opponent to stop and think, because it is unexpected—a probe! As a statement, it loses this force and undermines the authority that McLuhan represents in the scene.

Canadian artist Alan Flint shapes words out of wood, brick, cardboard, plastic, plaster, etc. In a field he dug out the word WOUND in giant letters to symbolize the effect of human systems on the earth.

QUESTION: Is this an example of the medium being the message?

Answer: Yes. For McLuhan, language is technology and words are artifacts. Flint’s WOUND is part of the technology of language executed in a way that reminds us that the technology of digging wounds the earth. Flint weds his words to different technologies but in every case reminds us of the link between the word’s meaning and the technology used in spelling it out. He also reminds us that words are artifacts and forces us to reflect on the medium and the message by forcing them together in new ways. (This is an example of an artist making probes out of clichés, a process that is explained in detail on page 107.)

And, boy, did he ever! Wired notes that while McLuhan was a political conservative and a devout Catholi...

Table of contents

• Coverpage
• Copyright
• Contents
• Titlepage
• Acknowledgments
• Marshall McWHO?
• What Is So Special About Marshall McLuhan?
• McLuhan’s Point Of View
• Stepping Into McLuhan’s Bio
• THE MECHANICAL BRIDE
• EXPLORATIONS & Idea Consultants
• Exploring THE GUTENBERG GALAXY
• Understanding UNDERSTANDING MEDIA
• CULTURE IS OUR BUSINESS = Business Is Our Culture
• The Global Village
• FROM CLICHE TO ARCHETYPE
• THE MECHANICAL BRIDE: Comic Strips
• Kroker’s PANIC ENCYCLOPEDIA
• Closure: THE LAWS OF MEDIA
• Wrapping It Up
• Bibliography
• Index