Somehow, it seems I meant to post the following message to Futurework,
but
only in fact seem to have sent it to Tom Lunde. But that turns out not
to have
been all bad, since, in the interim, I have received
confirmation that what I wrote is correct about McLuhan, and I also have
thought of a [at least, relatively...] *cheerful* postscript. So I hope
the following is not redundant:
-- Begin original note --
Thomas Lunde wrote:
>
> This post is in response to my challenge to Bob McDaniel on identifying
> events or facts that would indicate our society is at a point of change. I
> had been looking forward to your answer and I have not been disappointed
> and with your permission, perhaps we can extend this conversation for
> awhile. Somedays, God is good, I went to the library last week and behold,
> two new McLuhan books, one, a very comprehensive biography entitled Marshall
> McLuhan by W. Terrance Gordon and the other titled ON McLuhan by Paul
> Benedetti and Nancy DeHart who identify themselves as being involved in a CD
> Rom production on McLuhan's ideas - what a feast. Surely my cup
> overfloweth, along with that I picked up The Web of Life by Fritjof Capra.
>
> Bob said:
>
> The Tofflers (and others of their ilk) have been telling us for years their
> answers to these questions1 I take it that you don't believe them. McLuhan
> observed that what we're experiencing isn't a breakdown, but rather a
> breakthrough (presumably to something better).
[snip]
It is my understanding (and I have sent a copy of this posting
to someone who personally knew McLuhan very closely, to check if I am
right in this), that, while McLuhan was and perhaps even prided himself
on
being a *keen observer* of the media shift which he saw happening,
and which he also seemed to see that many persons were not
understanding,
McLuhan did not, in general *LIKE* what he was seeing. He was a devout
Roman Catholic, and student of classical English
literature, who, personally, would probably have preferred if even the
radio had not been invented -- but it was there, and, as a
polymath genius, he was interested in just about everything -- from
an analytical / imaginative perspective.
If McLuhan was a prophet of any Wave of The Future, it was
in the sense of an Old Testament prophet, who warns us of impending
dange. It is my understanding
that McLuhan's essential message was something like: There are
immense transformations of our social life happening around
us but we don't see them because we're part of them. We need
to understand these changes so that we can try intelligently to
respond to them (and, to the best of our ability, restrain
them in the interest of a somewhat conservative form of social order).
I speculate (and here, I admit I am speculating) that McLuhan would
probably have highly approved of us learning something from the
last great media upheaval: Gutenburg --> namely, that, this time,
instead of just dumping our heritage in the trash can (in the
15th-16th century, that heritage was "Scholasticism"; today,
it may be "print culture"), what we need to do is to find
a constructive way to combine the good parts of the old with the
constructive potentials of the new. Today, we need print scholars who
are
not latter-day avatars of Peter Ramus (which should not be all that
difficult, since McLuhan was, albeit with flaws, such a one himself;
Elizabeth Eisenstein and Walter Ong are two more...).
McLuhan was not any kind of Futurist (i.e., enthusiast for
embracing "progress" in an uncritical way), even though his
sometimes quasi-manic prose style may easily be misread this
way by speed-readers (I once knew a man who coined the
phrase: "...as anyone can see who reads the scriptures,
or even [just] looks at the pictures..."). I think there is a lesson
for
us n > 2 th (but hopefully, not *last*...) wavers, here.
-- End original note --
>From Prof. Emeritus Forsdale (personal friend of McLuhan):
> Interesting stories about McLuhan and modern technology. He didn't (couldn't)
> drive a car, but his frequent insights about cars, when they were right, were
> dead on.
[snip]
Now for the promised [at lest relatively...] *cheerful*
postscript:
There is a cliche which perhaps all have heard, to the effect that
the spoken word gives life, whereas the written word kills (or
at least is deadening). The "logical" consequence of this would be to
celebrate a future in which children no longer
read books, but rather listened to multi-media
computer presentations, in the new "Global Village"....
Of course there is much truth to the claim that the
printed word has often been used to deadening effect, although
the deadening of bodies and spirits long antedated cuneiform tablets
(and Walter Ong's book on Peter Ramus goes far beyond the cliche in
documenting some of the innovative(!) contributions of print
technology!).
But there is also another side to this issue of the
effect of "the written word" on the human spirit. If Steven Spielberg
had
done nothing else, the one line from Schindler's List would
go far to redress the balance:
"The list is life."
(I also have a CPA tax accountant who generally *enjoys* his
work, and, when once I called him at his office the day before "April
15", somewhat amazingly to me, he answered the phone in
chatty *good spirits*....)
\brad mccormick
--
Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but
Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world.
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(914)238-0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
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