# Marshal McLuhan: Prescient Body of Work or Clever Sound Bites? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 5, 2005, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marshal-mcluhan-prescient-body-of-work-or-clever-sound-bites/315811 "2005-08-05T23:35:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![deevee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/57b2e6/32.png) [@deevee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deevee)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2005, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marshal-mcluhan-prescient-body-of-work-or-clever-sound-bites/315811/1 "2005-08-05T23:35:42Z")
The CBC is running a heritage moment (or whatever they call that 60 second slice of cheese) on Marshal McLuhan and his epiphany in coming up with “the medium is the message” We briefly touched on him in an organizational behaviour class I took in university and I seem to recall some controversy about him then (mid 80s). I also recall thinking that he took a few nifty sounding sentences and beat them to death. What’s the dope on him today? Is he regarded as an influential thinker who foresaw the information age or an academic who got lucky with a few sound bites? ---
**Author:** ![Spudo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bbce88/32.png) [@Spudo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spudo)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2005, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marshal-mcluhan-prescient-body-of-work-or-clever-sound-bites/315811/2 "2005-08-05T23:44:13Z")
His idea about the world developing into a global village through new communication methods was spot on, the rest is gibberish as far as I can tell. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2005, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marshal-mcluhan-prescient-body-of-work-or-clever-sound-bites/315811/3 "2005-08-06T00:11:40Z")
I think this one is gonna need an airing out in GD, rather than have a nice, neat specific answer. So, moved from GQ to Great Debates. **samclem** GQ moderator ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2005, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marshal-mcluhan-prescient-body-of-work-or-clever-sound-bites/315811/4 "2005-08-06T00:15:15Z")
I think Cecil did an article on this subject a few years ago. I’ll see if I can dig it up later (time permitting…getting ready to go on another of my long trips). -XT ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2005, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marshal-mcluhan-prescient-body-of-work-or-clever-sound-bites/315811/5 "2005-08-06T00:15:39Z")
> [@](#): > > Prescient Body of Work or Clever Sound Bites? In this day and age, one could argue that a body of work consisting of clever sound bites **is** prescient. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2005, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marshal-mcluhan-prescient-body-of-work-or-clever-sound-bites/315811/6 "2005-08-06T00:25:45Z")
Here is what [Cecil](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030725.html) has to say about it if you are interested. > [@](#): > > I put McLuhan in the same category as Andy Warhol, who was described in a recent magazine article as a “honkie bullshitter.” Most of the time that seems like an apt characterization of Warhol, but then I catch myself using some variation of his most famous dictum, “In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes,” and I think: Well, the son of a bitch sure got that right. My take on McLuhan is pretty similar. **Though 99 percent of what he wrote was horse manure, the remaining 1 percent was dead on.** > > Herbert Marshall McLuhan (1911-'80), an English professor at the University of Toronto for most of his career, was fascinated by the impact of the mass media on society. Of his many books, two attracted particularly wide notice: Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), which some consider his masterpiece, and The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (with Quentin Fiore, 1967). Both have recently been reissued, and the publisher claims the latter has sold more than a million copies to date. > > Although McLuhan isn’t a household name anymore, the astonishing growth of the Internet has burnished his reputation. He’s listed as “patron saint” on the masthead of Wired magazine. The upper tier of academics didn’t take him too seriously in the 1960s (this was a man who, during a public debate, allegedly told his interlocutor, “You don’t like those ideas? I got others”), and I don’t see much evidence that they do now. But to generations of grad students, as well as to the many publicists and popularizers of cyberspace (so named in 1982 by sci-fi writer William Gibson, a McLuhanesque writer if ever there was one), he’s a prophet. > > Some of McLuhan’s key concepts: > > The medium is the message. Never mind the content; what’s important is the medium itself. The media are extensions of our senses; as they change, they utterly transform our environment and affect everything we do–they “massage” or reshape us. > Hot versus cool media. Hot media are high definition (“well filled with data”) and demand a relatively passive audience; cool media are low definition and require intensive audience participation to fill in the blanks. Hot media intensely engage a single sense; cool media loosely engage multiple senses. According to McLuhan, movies and radio are hot media while television and conversation (on the phone or in person) are cool ones. Print is generally a hot medium (the eye must closely follow a linear arrangement of symbols) but can be cooler depending on context. > The global village. Today’s instant communications have all but erased time and space and rendered national boundaries meaningless. > Even given a close reading, many of McLuhan’s ideas seem simplistic, naive, or incoherent. (He liked to disarm detractors by saying, “You think my fallacy is all wrong?”) The notion of a global village, while appealing to Web surfers and CNN junkies, is a dangerous illusion–witness the ongoing debacle in Iraq, which has come to pass in part because U.S. leaders kidded themselves into believing that Iraqis were just like us and would embrace democracy as soon as Saddam Hussein was gone. The hot/cool dichotomy has limited usefulness as an analytical tool. Consider a kid doing his homework while simultaneously watching TV, playing his stereo, and IMing with his friends, who pauses to rip and burn a few tracks for later listening, E-mail a photo, and send a text message via cell phone. Which part of this multimedia environment is cool and which hot, which interactive and which not? > > Still, McLuhan was right about one thing: the central place media would assume in our daily lives. Less a systematic thinker than a provocateur (read: honkie bullshitter), he was among the first to raise the public’s consciousness–another McLuhan-era term–about communications. No one doubts now that we live in a postindustrial age or that we traffic not so much in material goods as in information. It’s a stretch to say that McLuhan predicted the contours of the modern world, but the extent to which it has evolved in directions he anticipated is remarkable. The global village, for example, may have been oversold, but a version thereof is definitely emerging: On the Straight Dope Message Board, for instance, we’ve got one moderator in Amsterdam and another in Bombay. Scoffers may say that McLuhan didn’t have any grasp of what it all meant and was only pointing out the obvious. But how many would-be seers even manage that? “99 percent of what he wrote was horse manure, the remaining 1 percent was dead on”…in todays day and age that makes him…practically a politician. 🙂 -XT ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2005, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marshal-mcluhan-prescient-body-of-work-or-clever-sound-bites/315811/7 "2005-08-06T01:14:15Z")
When I was frosh he reviewed some of my papers (my T.A. was one of his students). ---
**Author:** ![deevee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/57b2e6/32.png) [@deevee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deevee)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2005, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marshal-mcluhan-prescient-body-of-work-or-clever-sound-bites/315811/8 "2005-08-06T12:58:58Z")
It’s gratifying to know I wasn’t whooshed by his stuff. I got it and just wasn’t impressed. Maybe I’m right about Jackson Pollock too. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2005, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marshal-mcluhan-prescient-body-of-work-or-clever-sound-bites/315811/9 "2005-08-06T14:33:40Z")
I’m fascinated the Great Master would say this: > [@](#): > > No one doubts now that we live in a postindustrial age or that we traffic not so much in material goods as in information. Gosh, I doubt it very much. It’s plainly and objectively false. The great majority of human economic activity, even in the rich countries, is dedicated to making, changing, and/or transporting physical things. It’s a popular meme on the Internet to blather about how we trade in information and not physical products in today’s world. It’s also wrong. ---
**Author:** ![tnetennba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2005, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marshal-mcluhan-prescient-body-of-work-or-clever-sound-bites/315811/10 "2005-08-06T14:58:21Z")
I was really into McLuhan when I was an undergrad. I agree with the “honkie bullshitter” line in general, but there are a few reasons McLuhan is cool: (1) He may be the only person in history to read all of Finnegan’s Wake and understand it. (2) He had one of the best cameos in movie history, in the movie Annie Hall. (3) His ideas inspired William Gibson’s work. In addition to being cool, though, McLuhan shouldn’t just be dismissed. His 4 Laws of Media are useful for speculating on the effects of new media, for example. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2005, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marshal-mcluhan-prescient-body-of-work-or-clever-sound-bites/315811/11 "2005-08-06T15:17:55Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > I’m fascinated the Great Master would say this: > Gosh, I doubt it very much. It’s plainly and objectively false. The great majority of human economic activity, even in the rich countries, is dedicated to making, changing, and/or transporting physical things. > > It’s a popular meme on the Internet to blather about how we trade in information and not physical products in today’s world. It’s also wrong. Well certainly when you buy a car, you get a physical object. But did you really get sold a car, or simply a load of marketting hogwash? I have no numbers, but I wouldn’t be suprised if the advertising and customer research divisions of automobile companies have a larger budget than the hard-core techological R&D divisions. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2005, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marshal-mcluhan-prescient-body-of-work-or-clever-sound-bites/315811/12 "2005-08-06T17:16:39Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Gosh, I doubt it very much. It’s plainly and objectively false. The great majority of human economic activity, even in the rich countries, is dedicated to making, changing, and/or transporting physical things. Well, arguably, the “things” in a post-industrial nation are in fact complex machines whose assembly and use required the rapid exchange of information (consider all the planning required to design a car and the training necessary to operate it). There are relatively few “things” we have that were just dug up and put into instant use. It isn’t like the grow the grain, haul the grain, sell the grain, eat the grain economies of agricultural societies. Granted, we have a _lot_ of grain-eating, and basic foodstuffs haven’t really changed in hundreds (if not thousands) of years, but McCluhan was apparently thinking about the changes and increasing complexities we’d get from the movement of technology and information. Of course, that could be a gross misunderstanding, hardly unusual when McCluhan is involved. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2005, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marshal-mcluhan-prescient-body-of-work-or-clever-sound-bites/315811/13 "2005-08-06T18:42:23Z")
> [@Sage Rat](#): > > Well certainly when you buy a car, you get a physical object. But did you really get sold a car, or simply a load of marketting hogwash? I got sold a car, dude. It’s sitting in my driveway; it weighs four thousand freakin’ pounds. It probably cost about twelve thousand dollars for Hyundai to construct it. How could I drive “marketing hogwash” to work? How could I put by baseball equipment into the back of marketing hogwash? No, I am fairly certain that I am paying for a physical device. > [@](#): > > I have no numbers, but I wouldn’t be suprised if the advertising and customer research divisions of automobile companies have a larger budget than the hard-core techological R&D divisions. R&D is information, isn’t it? Or did you mean production, instead of R&D? The biggest expense in running an automobile factory - by far - is the cost of actually physically constructing the car, both labor and materials. Automobile manufacturing, incidentally, is by far the single largest industry in the first world. ---
**Author:** ![tnetennba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2005, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marshal-mcluhan-prescient-body-of-work-or-clever-sound-bites/315811/14 "2005-08-06T18:49:07Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Automobile manufacturing, incidentally, is by far the single largest industry in the first world. Cite? ---
**Author:** ![rfgdxm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c0e974/32.png) [@rfgdxm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rfgdxm)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2005, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marshal-mcluhan-prescient-body-of-work-or-clever-sound-bites/315811/15 "2005-08-06T19:42:10Z")
> [@cricetus](#): > > Cite? I’d have guessed agriculture. ---
**Author:** ![tnetennba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2005, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marshal-mcluhan-prescient-body-of-work-or-clever-sound-bites/315811/16 "2005-08-06T20:15:49Z")
According to [this reliable source](http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GQRTable?_bm=y&-qr_name=ECN_2002_GQRT4&-geo_id=01000US&-ds_name=EC0200A1), insurance is the biggest industry, followed by information, and then auto sales (not the same as manufacturing). This would seem to give some support to McLuhan’s prophecy, even if he didn’t fortell the growth of the insurance industry. If you sort by annual payroll, health care is the biggest industry. That was my WAG as to biggest industry, and I sort by payroll just to make me be right. 😉 This is just for the US, of course, but I’m a little suspicious that if we got a working definition of “first world” and were able to compile all the data it would turn out auto manufacturing is the biggest industry… given that it’s pretty far behind in the US, nonexistent in Canada, and the less prominent roll of auto manufacturing in European economies. Incidentally, googling has a lot of references to “travel” as the biggest industy in the world, while US newspapers talk about the growth of the “service” industry, whatever that is. Presumably both of those compile several industries as one – hospitality, food service, retail sales, etc., and sorting by whatever data is convenient. ---
**Author:** ![tnetennba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2005, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marshal-mcluhan-prescient-body-of-work-or-clever-sound-bites/315811/17 "2005-08-06T20:17:20Z")
> [@cricetus](#): > > This is just for the US, of course, but I’m a little suspicious that if we got a working definition of “first world” and were able to compile all the data it would turn out auto manufacturing is the biggest industry… given that it’s pretty far behind in the US, nonexistent in Canada, and the less prominent roll of auto manufacturing in European economies. Ack. What I mean to say is that if we did get all that data, I highly doubt auto mfg would be close to #1, but reading it now it sounds like I mean the opposite. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2005, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marshal-mcluhan-prescient-body-of-work-or-clever-sound-bites/315811/18 "2005-08-07T03:49:18Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > I’m fascinated the Great Master would say this: > Gosh, I doubt it very much. It’s plainly and objectively false. The great majority of human economic activity, even in the rich countries, is dedicated to making, changing, and/or transporting physical things. > > It’s a popular meme on the Internet to blather about how we trade in information and not physical products in today’s world. It’s also wrong. Well, as soon as one hears the word “information,” one should wonder “information about WHAT?” Information in and of itself is meaningless. Now, if it’s information about Inventory or Sales or Input Costs, then we’ve got something to talk about. But for those things to exist, SOMEBODY, somewhere, has to be manufacturing physical, tangible goods for sale. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2005, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marshal-mcluhan-prescient-body-of-work-or-clever-sound-bites/315811/19 "2005-08-07T04:27:12Z")
> [@cricetus](#): > > This is just for the US, of course, but I’m a little suspicious that if we got a working definition of “first world” and were able to compile all the data it would turn out auto manufacturing is the biggest industry… given that it’s pretty far behind in the US, nonexistent in Canada, Surely you jest. The auto industry is enormous in Canada; Ontario alone produces more cars than any U.S. state. Canadian 2003 production of vehicles was $66 billion, producing about two and a half million vehicles. OEM and after market parts production produced another $50 billion in sales. That’s, umm, a long way from nonexistent. ---
**Author:** ![tnetennba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2005, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marshal-mcluhan-prescient-body-of-work-or-clever-sound-bites/315811/20 "2005-08-07T13:42:05Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Surely you jest. The auto industry is enormous in Canada; Ontario alone produces more cars than any U.S. state. Canadian 2003 production of vehicles was $66 billion, producing about two and a half million vehicles. > > OEM and after market parts production produced another $50 billion in sales. > > That’s, umm, a long way from nonexistent. Cite? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marshal-mcluhan-prescient-body-of-work-or-clever-sound-bites/315811.md?page=2)