4 ms·

How Marshall McLuhan Became a Famous Media Scholar

51 points by Hooke 10y ago

supernumerary 10y ago
I always short-circuit McLuhan, 'the medium is the message' at its logical extreme really means that... the message is McLuhan, the concerted pr campaign described in this article would back this up.
- adpoe 10y ago
  I do like McLuhan's work, and there's more to it than that sound byte--though it's very memorable. He has a pretty wide body of literature, and some of the more interesting aspects of it are about how technology (especially media) become an extension of the nervous system and body itself. (Of course this logical extreme is hive mind, singularity, etc...) One of the other more interesting points (that has seemed more or less accurate) is that connecting the world via communication technology returns man to a mentality more like our tribal ancestors (I.e. 'the global village'). He also has some very interesting narratives about how new technologies create pain as they are introduced to the world, going back to stirrups, the printing press, and other historical examples. Some of his books are full of illustrations and are generally very strange and forward thinking; most of all, McLuhan was an extremely creative person with an agile mind and mischievous sense of humor. You can get the sense that much of what he did was trolling the media & academia at some level. And that's where his quirky PR personality comes in. Above all, he was enjoying himself and his 30minutes of fame. Nothing wrong with that!
  - beautifulfreak 10y ago
    His use of language always made me wonder if I had understood any particular point he made. It seems so vague and uncertain. I get the same thing from Buckminster Fuller's writing, or Marcuse. Abstractions of abstractions. This explanation of his rise to fame at least helps me understand why he was considered important. It also helps explain his appearance in Annie Hall. He was doing PR. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wWUc8BZgWE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wWUc8BZgWE
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  Have you actually read Understanding Media? It's a slim book but it was a slow read for me because it was so densely packed with solid ideas. McLuhan was writing in the 1960s but he was envisioning something very like today's world.
  - chillingeffect 10y ago
    Yes I often wish he had the chance to witness the internet, including facebook. It's true we've become a global village.
mwfunk 10y ago
McLuhan is fascinating to me. A lot of the criticisms people level against him are correct- much of his writing is composed of terse declarative statements that sound deep and insightful, but aren't really backed up by much. It's like reading a series of bombshell opening statements about different topics, but instead of following up with arguments to flesh out those statements, he just moves on to another bombshell opening statement about some other issue that also doesn't get fleshed out. A lot of people take that to mean that's it's all fluff, but I think that's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. He was known to keep track of ideas on index cards- something interesting would occur to him, so he'd make an index card for that concept, and flesh it out with more thoughts on the topic, sketches, etc. He would then pick out a related set of index cards as the basis for a book. So, his process went a long way towards defining the structure of his books. So, it's true that his books tend to be a loosely-connected series of concepts presented in an evocative and profound-sounding manner, but never fully fleshed out. But they're often great food for thought- maybe he doesn't go into sufficient detail, but they're full of nuggets of intellectual goodness that are great starting points for thinking about modern media and the flow of information in the modern world (even if the end result is coming to the conclusion that he was wrong about something).
- jgalt212 10y ago
  > It's like reading a series of bombshell opening statements about different topics, but instead of following up with arguments to flesh out those statements, he just moves on to another bombshell opening statement about some other issue that also doesn't get fleshed out. That's basically Elon Musk's marketing scheme.
  - mwfunk 10y ago
    This is my fear about Elon Musk. In a darker timeline he turns out to be a genius gambler who was always upping the ante and getting involved in increasingly diverse ventures, each one bolder and riskier than the last. Each venture is leveraged off the previous one, but the older ventures continue to exist in parallel with the newer ones. Finally, in 2038, the ever-expanding Musk Bubble pops. It had to eventually. No bubble can expand indefinitely when pressurized by constant application of Musk Force (designated by Μμ, or /Mu/mu in LaTeX, although the more interesting number is Musks over time (Μμ/s), assuming a constant Μμ/s^2). I hope this is not that timeline. In a lighter timeline, 100 years from now he's remembered as a Thomas Edison-like historical figure who helped make space travel a reality. Hopefully that's our timeline, I just don't know.
wu-ikkyu 10y ago
This reads more like a vaguely passive aggressive ad hominem attack against McLuhan being a conservative Christian primarily motivated by dreams of stardom rather than an analytical critique of his ideas and writings, which is finally made plain after a long rambling in the last sentence. >McLuhan’s probes, taken as truth-indifferent provocations, really are good to think with. It’s just that the man — rewarded for closeting his gloom — is more instructive than his books.
- fourthark 10y ago
  I guess it's talking about the medium rather than the message? I kept expecting it to return to the ideas but it was only about the hype.
- lern_too_spel 10y ago
  Your critique is itself an ad-hominem. The article gives plenty of examples, including his outlandish disparagement of Blondie. Saying that the article is a passive aggressive attack against a conservative Christian thinker is no more convincing than saying an article about Miscavige is a passive aggressive attack against a Scientologist thinker. You must explain why their ideas have any merit.
  - wu-ikkyu 10y ago
    Indeed. But the important ideas at hand here are of technical design, rather than subjective private metaphysical beliefs. Many scientific and philosophical advancements have come cultures with wildly varying religious beliefs. >You must explain why their ideas have any merit. McLuhan does so if you read his books. Equally so you must explain why ideas do not have merit without ultimately dismissing them because of private metaphysics.
fudged71 10y ago
I had the pleasure of sharing a dinner with two of the McLuhans at a conference in Banff. I'm in the 3D printing business, and it was very interesting to discuss with them what is possible as the digital medium becomes physical.

51 points by Hooke 10y ago

I always short-circuit McLuhan, 'the medium is the message' at its logical extreme really means that... the message is McLuhan, the concerted pr campaign described in this article would back this up.

adpoe 10y ago
I do like McLuhan's work, and there's more to it than that sound byte--though it's very memorable. He has a pretty wide body of literature, and some of the more interesting aspects of it are about how technology (especially media) become an extension of the nervous system and body itself. (Of course this logical extreme is hive mind, singularity, etc...) One of the other more interesting points (that has seemed more or less accurate) is that connecting the world via communication technology returns man to a mentality more like our tribal ancestors (I.e. 'the global village'). He also has some very interesting narratives about how new technologies create pain as they are introduced to the world, going back to stirrups, the printing press, and other historical examples. Some of his books are full of illustrations and are generally very strange and forward thinking; most of all, McLuhan was an extremely creative person with an agile mind and mischievous sense of humor. You can get the sense that much of what he did was trolling the media & academia at some level. And that's where his quirky PR personality comes in. Above all, he was enjoying himself and his 30minutes of fame. Nothing wrong with that!
- beautifulfreak 10y ago
  His use of language always made me wonder if I had understood any particular point he made. It seems so vague and uncertain. I get the same thing from Buckminster Fuller's writing, or Marcuse. Abstractions of abstractions. This explanation of his rise to fame at least helps me understand why he was considered important. It also helps explain his appearance in Annie Hall. He was doing PR. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wWUc8BZgWE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wWUc8BZgWE
anigbrowl 10y ago
Have you actually read Understanding Media? It's a slim book but it was a slow read for me because it was so densely packed with solid ideas. McLuhan was writing in the 1960s but he was envisioning something very like today's world.
- chillingeffect 10y ago
  Yes I often wish he had the chance to witness the internet, including facebook. It's true we've become a global village.

mwfunk 10y ago

McLuhan is fascinating to me. A lot of the criticisms people level against him are correct- much of his writing is composed of terse declarative statements that sound deep and insightful, but aren't really backed up by much. It's like reading a series of bombshell opening statements about different topics, but instead of following up with arguments to flesh out those statements, he just moves on to another bombshell opening statement about some other issue that also doesn't get fleshed out. A lot of people take that to mean that's it's all fluff, but I think that's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. He was known to keep track of ideas on index cards- something interesting would occur to him, so he'd make an index card for that concept, and flesh it out with more thoughts on the topic, sketches, etc. He would then pick out a related set of index cards as the basis for a book. So, his process went a long way towards defining the structure of his books. So, it's true that his books tend to be a loosely-connected series of concepts presented in an evocative and profound-sounding manner, but never fully fleshed out. But they're often great food for thought- maybe he doesn't go into sufficient detail, but they're full of nuggets of intellectual goodness that are great starting points for thinking about modern media and the flow of information in the modern world (even if the end result is coming to the conclusion that he was wrong about something).

jgalt212 10y ago
> It's like reading a series of bombshell opening statements about different topics, but instead of following up with arguments to flesh out those statements, he just moves on to another bombshell opening statement about some other issue that also doesn't get fleshed out. That's basically Elon Musk's marketing scheme.
- mwfunk 10y ago
  This is my fear about Elon Musk. In a darker timeline he turns out to be a genius gambler who was always upping the ante and getting involved in increasingly diverse ventures, each one bolder and riskier than the last. Each venture is leveraged off the previous one, but the older ventures continue to exist in parallel with the newer ones. Finally, in 2038, the ever-expanding Musk Bubble pops. It had to eventually. No bubble can expand indefinitely when pressurized by constant application of Musk Force (designated by Μμ, or /Mu/mu in LaTeX, although the more interesting number is Musks over time (Μμ/s), assuming a constant Μμ/s^2). I hope this is not that timeline. In a lighter timeline, 100 years from now he's remembered as a Thomas Edison-like historical figure who helped make space travel a reality. Hopefully that's our timeline, I just don't know.

wu-ikkyu 10y ago

This reads more like a vaguely passive aggressive ad hominem attack against McLuhan being a conservative Christian primarily motivated by dreams of stardom rather than an analytical critique of his ideas and writings, which is finally made plain after a long rambling in the last sentence. >McLuhan’s probes, taken as truth-indifferent provocations, really are good to think with. It’s just that the man — rewarded for closeting his gloom — is more instructive than his books.

fourthark 10y ago
I guess it's talking about the medium rather than the message? I kept expecting it to return to the ideas but it was only about the hype.
lern_too_spel 10y ago
Your critique is itself an ad-hominem. The article gives plenty of examples, including his outlandish disparagement of Blondie. Saying that the article is a passive aggressive attack against a conservative Christian thinker is no more convincing than saying an article about Miscavige is a passive aggressive attack against a Scientologist thinker. You must explain why their ideas have any merit.
- wu-ikkyu 10y ago
  Indeed. But the important ideas at hand here are of technical design, rather than subjective private metaphysical beliefs. Many scientific and philosophical advancements have come cultures with wildly varying religious beliefs. >You must explain why their ideas have any merit. McLuhan does so if you read his books. Equally so you must explain why ideas do not have merit without ultimately dismissing them because of private metaphysics.

fudged71 10y ago

I had the pleasure of sharing a dinner with two of the McLuhans at a conference in Banff. I'm in the 3D printing business, and it was very interesting to discuss with them what is possible as the digital medium becomes physical.