This question may well belong in IMHO or GD, but I’m putting it in GQ, if only to resolve the question of which forum it truly belongs in.
Basically, I read a couple of Marshall McLuhan’s books, and the first one (the Jerome Agell comic book) seemed to have one or two ideas in it, neither of which seemed all that radical. The second appeared to me to be little more than highly readable, vivid gibberish, with a lot of hip buzzwords thrown in. A typical passage would run something like, “Today’s teenager is smarter than the last generation, because, having grown up watching television, they are tactile thinkers, rather than auditory thinkers like the last generation to grow up reading books. Equipped with beehive hairdos, that most tactile of hairdos, a modern teenager can dive into the seas of television like an Acapulco cliff diver, the sunlight of information dappling her skin with hieroglyphs of knowledge.”
My question is, does any of this mean anything? I have to wonder whether McLuhan carried out a hoax on an enormous scale. (Although one could debate much the same about, say, Derrida.)
I guess my questions would be as follows:
What is the general opinion of McLuhan? How was he received by academia? How do academics view him today? Among ordinary, well-educated folks like Dopers, how many people think his works are meaningless? (For example, the folks at Wired think he’s a god. Are they the only ones?)
If his works aren’t meaningless, are they any more profound than, “Kids think differently today because they watch a lot of TV”? Is there any rational scheme behind his division of things into “tactile” and “non-tactile”? At any point in his books, does he present a clear and lucid explanation of his terms?
What to say? When his books came out, they made a major splash upon the scene. Regularly universities across the continent would have debates on the validity of his theories. Course were offered in “McLuhan Thought”. He lectured at most major universities and a number of minor ones. He was the focal point of a great deal of intellectual thought and discussion.
I once heard a questioner ask of the Marharishi Yogi, “On what plain of existence is Marshall McLuhan?” (The question was not answered)
Many of his theorys (especially in regard to mass communication) have been proven to be valid. Look at the Internet for heaven’s sake. It is the manifestation of his “Global Village”. Look at the demise of traditional mass print media. Look at the booming nature of cable television. Look at the specialized television networks. All are very McLuhan.
Socially, he was a bit more off the mark, he did predict the “dumbing down” of test scores as the television generation matured. That was proven very true. He did predict the lowering of attention spans which has also become a valid point. Governmentally he was a bit more off, however. He said as the populus got more plugged in there would be less government.
Stylisticly he wrote in what today would be called “sound bite” writing. It got the attention of his readers and communicated a concept not merely through the words, but through the images and, as you said “buzzwords,” that were provided and were prevelant at the time. It was very effective and powerful in its time. For that to work, however, those images and words have to be understood by the vast majority of those reading, which it was. But much of that shared knowledge has been lost over time or at least has lost significance so the power of what he was communicating (especially on a conotive level)is much less.
Was he meaningless? No, I don’t think so. Everytime you watch a politician react to the daily polls with a shift of an idea or stance or everytime you watch any “reality” show on television you are seeing McLuhan’s predictions born out. But was he as affecting as many in the 1960s predicted? Probably not.
But then again, McLuhan said that if the Medium was really the Massage, then we would not be aware of it. We would only take part.
OK, I’ll take part - ahhh, yeah, right there, that feels gooooood …
Seriously, I would say McLuhan made some valid points in a flashy way that made them seem far more Earth shattering than they were. Not exactly a fraud, but definitely a hype. Stripped of his style, you could easily accuse him of being trite. Though, come to think of it, that illustrates the point he was making.
In one of his movies (“Annie Hall”, maybe) Woody Allen shows a couple of people debatin Marshall MacLuhan. Alen goes up to them.
“You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” he protests. When the guy arues with him, Allen says, “Well, I happen to have MacLuhan right here,” then pulls Marshall MacLuhan (it really was him) out from behind a sandwich board to argue his own case.
I think that a lot of people have caught MacLuhan’s buzz words and phrases withut knowing what they really mean – “global village”, “the medium is the message”, etc. I have to add myself to this lot – I’ve read precious little MacLuhan.
But what I’ve read I’ve diagreed with. I don’t like his theory of “warm” and “cool” media, which seems a gross oversimplification to me. An he evidently really believed that the Medium IS the Message – not that it SHAED the message (which I agree with).
I’ve got a book around here somewhere that is an eloquent critique of MacLuhann’s ideas, but I can’t find it right now.
My take on McLuhan is this: He was the first to really start thinking about the topic of media influence in a global/satellite/digital age, and directed the attention of the intelligentsia to something that nobody had noticed or was talking about. However, while he opened the door and established the overall architecture, his specific contributions to the field turned out to be lacking in the details, and have since been superseded by far more complex and thoughtful analysis.
In other words: He got the ball rolling, and put his finger on something that in retrospect seems obvious, but ultimately his views were expanded and revised into something far more complicated than even he had predicted. So give him credit for an initial burst of inspiration and perception, but then just nod politely and put him on a back burner.
This is kind of a, well, I don’t know, “woo-woo” way of looking at it, but basically he’s more of a prophet than an intellectual, with all the limitations that implies. But no wonder the Wired guys put him on a pedestal…
McLuhan’s theories still hold up, we just think they’re obvious since we integrated them whole into our cultural mindset. I don’t know anyone else’s theories of that era that held up as well, in toto. Others seem to agree with me:
I took a semiotics course last semester at the University of Toronto, where McLuhan used to teach, so I’ve heard a bit about him. The faculty here considers him prophetic. I haven’t read McLuhan’s own work yet, but his ``global village’’ is now realized through the Internet and modern telecommunications.
McLuhan defined a medium as anything that extends the body, not only communications media; a car, by his definition, is a medium. My understanding of the idea that ``the medium is the message’’ is that a medium is more important than the content of the message. Using the car example: a car is an extension of the body; it lets you live a suburban lifestyle and commute to work, it lets you travel between cities at your leisure, and it lets you pick up your dates and drive them to isolated parks. But the specific make and model of the car doesn’t matter nearly as much as the car and road (the medium) itself. The medium, then, has much more weight than the content of the message; or, stated concisely, the medium is the message.
Oh boy, more authoritative pronouncements from person who never read McLuhan’s books. On the other hand, I have read his books.
You absolutely misunderstand McLuhan. He defined a medium as anything capable of carrying information. More specifically, he dealt with electronic media, which carries information without moving physical matter. His most fundamental example of a medium was a rather odd one, perhaps he was stretching the point, but he was serious. He considered the electric power distribution grid as a medium. It is capable of carrying precisely one bit of information to the end user. That bit, on or off, tells us only one thing, whether the power plant is generating electricity or not.
Thanks for the quick correction, but if I can offer a defense for myself: I actually tried to avoid sounding authoritative because I know I could be wrong. You realize yourself that I obtained my information from secondary sources, and I specifically wrote (admittedly, a little later) that I was presenting ``my understanding’’ of McLuhan. This understanding comes from studying at the institution where he once taught, under a media/semiotics/languages professor who has been there long enough that (now this is speculative) he could have been a colleague of McLuhan.
In this vein, I posted to invite commentary, rather than to lecture: I appreciate being told I’m wrong when I’m wrong.
Since it turns out I’m mistaken, I’ll pick up one of McLuhan’s books the next time I get the chance.
Chas.E., I went searching for McLuhan’s own definition of a medium and I found this:
(Marshall McLuhan. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1964. p. 7.)
The definition is given in the bold text and the subtitle of the book. Perhaps he offered multiple definitions, but this one is consistent with my first post.
I retract my retraction.
Ben, this doesn’t really answer either of your questions, but it seems that McLuhan’s ideas are still controversial and open to interpretation today.
I’m not sure that qualifies as a definition, but I’ll accept that it’s close enough. He does get a lot more explicit about these definitions, they’re more based on traditional Information Theory (sender-carrier-reciever). Now you’ve got me intrigued enough to dig up my old books and read them again.
BTW, my favorite McLuhan bit was something he said about cars. He said that the car was the only place we can go and be in a crowd but still be “alone.” He said Americans would never give up their cars because it is the only place you can go and yell and curse at other people and they can’t hear you.
