I love how people were able to converse and criticise one another in those days without shouting over one another. The endless shouting and derogatory tone of debate now is exactly the outcome that McLuhan predicted.
Well most "debate" that is in the corporate media nowadays is meant to be like that. It's what people "want". There is still debate like this, it's just not happening in your feeds because it doesn't rise up in our current economic system which largely seems to drive what we see on our feeds.
"Victor Hugo wrote the famous line there's one thing stronger than all the armies in the world and that is an idea whose time has come. The second strongest thing in the world is an idea whose time has not yet gone." -John Anthony West
I know there's modern conversations like this freely available on places like UA-cam but it's a real shame they're not as public in our current decade. People care about important things and like to learn and discuss them in detail. I think there's always been an appetite for intellectually difficult content like this but I guess the venues that offer it aren't being marketed well enough or something.
The thing is intellectual content is demanding. It requires preparation, it requires commitment, and it requires concentration. Compare that with already digested, emotion based content; and one can see why the later is more "democratic" or profitable, in the sense of beign able to appeal to everyone. There's no barrier to understanding a video of a cute cat or a fast car, and you can consume hundreds of those in the span that it takes you to consume one lecture. Plus, you need to work in digesting the content of the lecture later. That's why, even when tackling complex issues, content tends to be rewarded when it's already predigesteed by someone the public finds appealing, so they can absorb the information presented without the need of forming an opinion for themselves. It is also a structural issue in the sense of social media design. Social media does not promote comunication, debate or interaction by design. It is very onesided in the sense that people are encouraged to engage with it by either uploading their content or as spectators of that content; which is something very different to be able to build on that content. Beign visible in the digital space through your content puts you in a fundamentally different possition of those that are anonimous or invisibilized as a mere number in a like count. Mantaining a conversation or discourse becomes very challenging, since even when you respond that response is somehow disconected from the original premise by time when not by format. Video responses would be a reaction to this visibility impairment, a way to come around that notion that "if you don't have online pressence, you don't exist as an individual" or are not perceived as "important" as the OP. Forum format would be the closest thing to debate or conversation, and it's easy to see how within that format the rules of debate and conversation still fail. Online inverviews, podcasts or streamed conversations have tried to come round that while giving the audience a semblance of participation; and they may be very effective in that. But there is still that issue of parciality ingrained in design, since everyone is the own little dictator of their little social media world and audience, its highly unlikely they will engage genually with people with different oppinions, or with issues outside their niche of interest.
He actually has a point about the difference between European/Asian and American attitudes in this regard. In an episode of the Soprano's, Tony's Russian mistress states "That's the problem with Americans, u expect nothing bad ever to happen, when the rest of the world expect only bad to happen....and they are not disappointed." -not the precise statement but close. Both attitudes result from their own cultures.
Hello there. Interesting comment buddy. I hope you don't mind my late comment. I can recall some part of that scene (and much of that relationship between Tony and Irina) but I can tell you she spoke about and from a place only few of us would know a thing or two about. The horrors of the soviet life and much of "EASTERN-Europe" cannot be discussed comparatively in this case vis-a-vis those that were lived, experienced and whatnot in some parts of the so-called "Western-World" (e.g., USA).
“And this is the old myth of Narcissus. The word Narcissus means narcosis, numbness and drugged; and Narcissus was drugged into thinking that that image outside himself was somebody else. Narcissus did not fall in love with his own image, he thought it was somebody else. And the same with us, in our technology and gadgetry and gimmickry and so on, we don’t think that is merely a part of our own physical organism extended out there, we’re like Narcissus, completely numb. Now when we put out a new part of ourselves, extend a new part of ourselves by technology into the environment we protect ourselves by numbing that area. The more I looked at this the more I had difficulty explaining why people ignored it.” M. McLuhan
"Such amplification is bearable by the nervous system only through numbness or blocking of perception. This is the sense of the Narcissus myth. The young man's image is a self-amputation or extension induced by irritating pressures. As counter-irritant, the image produces a generalized numbness or shock that declines recognition. Self-amputation forbids self-recognition." [Understanding Media: The Extension of Man, Marshall McLuhan, 1964, Ch. 4: The Gadget Lover; Narcissus as Narcosis]
The thing I find most admirable about Malcolm Muggeridge is how he, albeit late in life, found his stumbling steps brought him miraculously to the deep conviction that Jesus Christ is all that matters. He voiced this to any who would listen, and though many who knew him turned away in consternation and disgust, many others found his faith refreshing, especially in a society in decay.
Had to pause it and look up the Charles Lamb "Burn your house down to roast a pig" thing that McLuhan mentions when talking about the Vietnam War. Interesting little parable/metaphor.
The ideas of a time are like the clothes of a season: they are as arbitrary, as much imposed by some superior will which is seldom explicit. They are utilitarian and political, the instruments of smooth-running government. Wyndham Lewis
So ideas are somehow both utilitarian AND arbitrary... 😂 Perfect example of a quote sounding cool but not really saying anything. If anything ideas are the enemy of governments that want you to have no idea, and that's how they get to run smoothly as they act antithesis to why government is necessary in the first place
When I was younger this is what I dreamed an internet generation would be. No longer held hostage by programmers force feeding us sitcoms, we’d see historical documents f high quality whenever we wanted and all be much more enlightened as a result. Sadly, it’s mostly kids playing video games and badly produced news shows.
To be completely fair, even as a Pessemist myself, I really do think you are being overly cynical. Perhaps it is because you are somewhat older, but I’ll say this from a younger perspective: firstly, there are tons of historical UA-camrs as well as Literature Analysts and even Philosophy Analysts... and they get tons of subscribers from young, middle aged, and old alike. So don’t lose hope on that end. As for the video games, that’s just entertainment. We can’t lose ourselves to purely intellectual activity wothout Aesthetic breaks. But more importantly, there’s plenty of games now that have very well structured and executed stories all around, if that is the concern. All around, don’t lose faith in the internet over things like that. I’d argue it has other darker parts to it than that.
6:37 "... But post-literate tribal is a very different matter than pre-literate tribal... We're tribalizing simply by a greater/ a much closer family... a sense of the human family..." 7:42 "... Playback... Socrates... "
The paradox here is as McLuhan said "we march backwards into the future." His ability to be prescient stems from his ability to put his fingers on the pulse of the present-day. It's this happening of sorts that we seldom take notice of until well after the effects have already taken place.
"Electric information comes from all directions at once and when your information comes from all directions simultaneously you're living in an acoustic world. The acoustic world has no continuity, no homogeneity, no connections and no stasis; everything is changing. Our ancestors lived in a mythic world because they had none of the means of literate classification. A myth is a speeded up following of a process. We live mythically ourselves so that we understand their myths for the first time. You should know the stakes are; the stakes are our civilization versus tribalism and it's a considerable revolution to have been through twenty-five hundred years of phonetic literacy, only to encounter the end of that road." - Marshall McLuhan
"In a word, the message of the electric light is total change. It is pure information without any content to restrict its transforming and informing power. If the student of media will but meditate on the power of this medium of electric light to transform every structure of time and space and work and society that it penetrates or contacts, he will have the key to the form of the power that is in all media to reshape any lives that they touch. Except for light, all other media come in pairs, with one acting as the "content" of the other, obscuring the operation of both." [Understanding Media: The Extension of Man, Marshall McLuhan, 1964, Ch. 5: Hybrid Energy]
In a way I get what the interviewer is trying to say, though. Of course, the rapid evolution of technology has had a large and profound impact on society and mankind - however, men are still human at the end of the day and evolution in the physical sense moves at a glacial pace including human behaviour
Muggeridge is the far wiser voice because he analyzes the timeless constants which emanate from the soul that transcend language itself; McLuhan, smart as he is, remains distracted by the superficial variables that have always danced on the surface of the human psyche, because of the printing press and the alphabet, and notwithstanding printing press and alphabet.
Well said! The eternal soul remains, the truth staring us in the face no matter where we turn, no matter how much we try to engineer ourselves and our physical surroundings otherwise.
I find McLuhan endlessly fascinating, even if his words are often rather elusive. I think he was extremely perceptive. I'd like to know if anyone can shed any light on his claim at the end of the video that we no longer live in a visual society. Is this because of the nature in which we now interact with reality, through a screen, an electric medium? One could argue that our society has become more visual than ever with the advent of TV and now with smartphones replacing more traditional media such as the printed word. Thoughts anyone?
Linear visual time as in the clock came to an end when all things happen at once as they do in the electric/audio/all at once age. 2 year old comment was just new to me now it’s because time as it’s been known no longer exists. This idea of a clock as time/visual has kept things in relative order for some time but now are returning to a tribal time
He was a prophet in a way, he said that the TV isn't visual, but tactile medium, it touches you (your nervous system). You would have to try to read some of his books and try to understand what medium are and how they change the person and society. I say try to read, because it is difficult to understand because it is quite different than anything you could read on the subject.
I find Malcolm Muggeridge rather annoying as he dismisses technology as having no value to his concept of culture such as the printing press yet without that invention he would not have had a career. He seems to make rather shallow comments that are posing as having depth. I find Marshal McLuhan far more interesting and he seems to pose less and argue with greater strength and understanding. Its a fascinating program.
I think we're transferring from an age where the "median is the message" to an age of the "message is the median". In ten years time, chat GPT3 will be feeding itself with mostly outputs as its inputs.
I was going to add something- then I scrolled down and found I needed to contribute nothing... when last did you see comments this insightful? Then again, all these folks chose to listen to this, so they've self- filtered a bit.
When you give all of your time and resources to the nervous systems outside us, we really don't have the extra energy to allocate towards anything else.
We've never been free lol. We are in the throws of gaining freedom, but it *IS* a bumpy ride as it always has for any group of people trying to gain their freedom and respect in this world.
The skeptic (veddy veddy English don’t you know!) denounces television as superficial appeasement... while having an intellectual discussion on a television show. Have to love the British. Marshall McLuhan, would that you could have seen the Internet.
As a cat😻chases its tail, so Society chases its tale📜of Manly Strength🏋️ & Womanly💃 Beauty , but🗣️how the Truth🕴️is told belongs only to the innocently bold telling hot🔥from cold🥶, the wise🦉do scold!
I find myself only agreeing with Muggeridge on ONE thing and ONE THING ONLY: curing the symptoms isn't the same as curing the disease. Other than only just that statement, I think Muggeridge is a ridged inflexible stuffy old bag of wind. lol
Today we have abandoned reasonable discourse for shouting matches and "post tribal literacy", there's a cherry to be picked. But who now remembers Foribius Skibb?... sorry! Don't google that, I made it up. But the point remains poignant. Fads/fashion pass us by but, real truth hidden now as it is, still is superior.
Malcolm Muggeridge was one of these typical old-school British / BBC establishment media types - there because he was well connected and a stupid person's idea of what a clever person is like. Sadly he seems unable to shut up, and adds considerably to the noise-to-signal ratio in this discussion.
Muggeridge wasn't part of any old-school British network, and he certainly wasn't a BBC establishment figure. Nor is he a stupid person's idea of a clever person; you've just taken that description of Stephen Fry and arbitrarily applied it to Muggeridge. Try dealing with the things he actually says instead of engaging in _ad hominem._
The idiocy (look up what McLuhan has to say on the word idiot BTW) of the interviewer bores him into saying stuff he wouldn't otherwise have thought it polite to explain, for sympathy of the intelligence of his audience. That, is another aspect of Socratic dialog.
Someone needs to stand up for Muggeridge: agree with most of what he says. McLuhan's education by war is a nice analogy. Muggeridge's more the idealist, McLuhan's scientifically de facto, but not forward-looking.
Youth is more alienated than ever re the job market, niches etc. almost 50 years later. Electricity brought some unity, a Universal Basic Income will break through to a vaster retribalization, creating space for community, decompressing creativity.
Nonsense. Universal income will create slobs, as it always has done and always will do. It's anti-creative in it's nature, it degenerates a people and a society into idleness.
Nonsense . YOu gut is telling you that cos of all the rich people dogma you have been eating . Every study shows uni. income fosters happiness , creativity and induces people to move much more then when they are saddled down by job and life on the edge of starvation . Just think about it for a second .Uni Income means that it is all the same where you live in your country and cost of moving is the price of move truck . Where would you go ? Where you can do a thing you love ? Where is always warm or cold ? Where others with same intrest live ? You can live in Boulder,Colorado or Miami or NY or somewhere in woods in Montana . Does not matter anymore if there is work where you are just your individual preference . You are simplistically looking at probably only solution to war and death of a planet ...
Lunch Box That is beyond idiotic and I feel sorry for your mum for birthing you. You do understand cost of living is vastly different in different areas right? Have you ever budgeted anything in your life or moved cross country?
Lunch Box Have you ever tried to find a rental apartment in either New York, Miami, or a beautiful ski town in Colorado on a very tight budget? Will landlords simply drop their rates for the greater good of mankind?
Engagement in the electronic environment is impossible to avoid, but that must not blind us to its price. Do not believe this is not costing us much more than anyone who understood it would ever have bargained to pay. So much has been capitulated to it by men blinded by its promise of empowerment that there is now no way to even back up, much less back out. Yet the world sinks into an economic catastrophe and a political maelstrom helplessly buckled to it. I saw an image recently of two men tied by ropes to the back of a moving car and being forced to run faster and faster to keep from falling and being drug by it. I think it would be difficult to deny that we are already at this stage of our technological development. Far, far too much power and far, far too little understanding. Mr. McLuhan's enthusiasm for this man-made reality at its onset is pathetically superficial.
@@andrewharmon2157 I never got that McLuhan was enthusiastic about the electronic environment, or any man-made reality for that matter. When he talks about tribalism, he isn't only talking about strength of affiliation, but also the loss of literacy. Regarding what we are spiraling towards, the major problem behind our algorithmic environment is the incentivisation of human engagement through economic models. The medium is not just the computer, but AI's relationship to money.
Do you mean: Tribalism = identity politics. Economic models = materialism in its manifold expressions? These and AI's relationship to money is a huge problem, but what is at the root of these? The media presents a man-made reality that is stripped of the reality markers human beings use to confirm their own judgments like real time, real space, real proportion, real sequence, real encounter, real risk, real responsibility, real consequences, real reciprocation, etc. The electronic media has also enabled the most tremendous concentration of power and influence the world has ever seen. McLuhan was very right to say the "Medium is the Message" in the sense that the electronic medium itself is far and away the most effective (howbeit subliminal) force man has ever encountered. But as I see it, the Reality it tramples is not something to be tampered with but to be carefully guarded. It is the only link we have with the true nature of things. A man wandering off into a self-manufactured identity unhinged from nature is in fantasy land, no matter how many people concur. Indeed, the more people that concur, the more insane it all is. And when an entire culture is lost in wonderland, all bets are off. Reality is the very thing that unites us. It is what all rational men can agree on. This loss is a human catastrophe. Shouldn't this have been foreseen? People like Muggeridge attempted to mitigate the enthusiasm of people like McLuhan, but to little effect. In those days of the 1960's, the true believers were all devotees of Progress. And now, so quickly, we find we are totally at sea. And the sea is swelling with moving black water mountains and deep, shifting caverns; the sky is lowering and roaring and no one of us can any longer see the shore.
@@andrewharmon3653 When Marshall McLuhan said "the medium is the message" he wasn't referring specifically to electronic media though. And I would argue that electronic media is not even the most powerful media we have made, but that language, which allows an infinite re-sequencing of reality, is. Past cultures have created far more immersive experiences than we have today with mythologies and human sacrifice rituals, which were tied to so-called consequences like weather phenomena and agricultural success; that you are starving because a tribute did not shed enough blood is as detached from reality as anything you can find on the internet. Tribalism in today's world can include identity politics, but there is nothing automatically destructive about identifying with likeminded people. If those with whom you identify are in a pursuit of knowledge, you might even get smarter. But part of the electronic media includes an engagement model fueled by economics, not materialism per-se, but an underlying characteristic of it, which is that it must always inflate. The electronic media is good in a way, because the fact that it is 2-dimensional invites skepticism. Nobody really thinks that Tony Stark snapped his fingers and that's why evil died, but on the other hand, we have created intelligences devoted to finding and exploiting blindspots in our critical thinking in order to keep corporations alive. This is not through the lack of "real time, real space, real proportion" of the electronic landscape, but through a calculated re-sequencing of language. Anyways, I like the way you write about things. I hope you have a blog.
@@pendaflux I am thinking that the electronic media is a being in which the realities of time, space, proportion, scale, and many other markers of ordinary experience have only a modified and in many ways contradictory existence. It requires perhaps ten real time minutes to watch a certain video, but in that video, many people and things from vastly different time-frames may be juxtaposed in bazaar scale to each other with no regard to spacial requirements at all. Yet we experience them in the same way we would if they were standing in our presence. Many other authentication markers are absent or disheveled as well. As we watch it, real time is given the back seat to this dissociated double of real things which has for whatever plausible reasons contorted these realities of time, space, scale and proportion along with many other distortions. McLuhan saw this as a game changer for our culture of the magnitude of a sea change, regardless of the intelligible message carried by it. And I do as well. I suspect he believed the human race was by it to approach the intellectual freedoms of the Cherubim, but after so long a time, I believe a case many be made for the opposite result. That is, our human judgment which is natively dependent upon reality markers, is in itself becoming blurred by this constant immersion in an artificial reality so independent of the means by which we can judge those things presented to us in the natural way. It seems to me a great fatigue is setting in, that prompts many people to feel that thinking things through is no longer a source of probity. (This is the motor for the tribalism McLuhan spoke of). And that which in us is fatigued is exactly the relationship between the senses which are ordered to reality, and the besetting experience of the media which strains and thwarts those senses from drawing their natural conclusions on the subconscious level where they operate. I certainly agree with you that language as communication is not to be compared with the electronic media as medium to medium. Indeed, the electronic media could not exist without language and is a parasite upon it. But, this parasite has a peculiar power all its own which is our subject here. And this power is also the subject of Marshall McLuhan. Of course, reading and hearing audio on line is not included in this critique but require a separate treatment. I thank you for your remarks and responding to my thoughts about this most important issue of our day.
a gathering of unique minds and Marshall shines, he all but predicted Trump, a mass medium manipulator with no discernible skills than being a celbrity
I'm a moderate environmentalist, but here's a list: TRUMP'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS 1) He got conservative judge Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. 2) The stock market is at an all-time high. 3) Consumer confidence is at an all-time high. 4) He created millions of jobs by undoing Obama’s regulations. 5) Mortgage applications for new homes is at a 7 year high. 6) Unemployment rate is at a 50 year low. 7) Signed the promoting women in entrepreneurship act. 8) Gutted over 800 Obama era regulations thus freeing up companies to hire again and get the economy moving once again. 9) Ended the war on coal and caused a new mine for coal mining to open that will mine clean coal. He also put the miners back to work. 10) Weakened Dodd-Frank regulations. 11) Promotes buying and hiring American. 12) Investments from major businesses such as Foxconn, Ford ,Toyota, Intel and others will build here now. 13) Building the border wall as promised. 14) Fighting against sanctuary cities. 15) Changed the rules of engagement against ISIS. 16) Drafted a plan to defeat ISIS. 17) Worked to reduce the cost of the F-35 fighter jets. 18) Imposed a five year lobbying plan. 19) Sanctioned Iran over its’ missile program. 20) Responded to Syria’s use of chemical weapons. 21) Reduced tax reform plan. 22) Renegotiated NAFTA and replaced with the USMCA. 23) He withdrew from the Trans Pacific Partnership thus keeping jobs here. 24) He pulled us out of the Paris Climate Accords thus saving us millions of dollars every year. 25) Created a task force to reduce crime. 26) The DOJ is targeting dangerous gangs like MS-13. 27) Signed independence and economic growth law. 28) Signed an executive order to protect police officers and target drug cartels. 29) Signed an executive order for religious freedom. 30) His administration is working on sending education back to the states. 31) He’s fixing the dept. of Veterans affairs so now vets can choose their own doctors and be covered. This also protects whistle blowers and allows VA to terminate bad employees. 32) Authorized construction of the Keystone and Dakota pipelines. The Dakota pipeline is up and running without harming the environment. 33) Created commissions on election fraud and opioid addiction. 34) Food stamp use is the lowest level in decades along with government dependency. 35) Reduced the White House payroll saving taxpayers millions of dollars. 36) Has donated his Presidential salary to various causes. 37) Signed over 52 pieces of legislation. 38) Cut 600 billion from UN peacekeeping mission. 39) Gas prices lowest in more than 12 years. 40) Making NATO allies pay billions of their fair share of dues owed. 41) Signed Criminal Justice Reform, “First Step Act"."
6:23 #PERSON: "Aren't they becoming tribalized? The way you say the whole world is and they are actually doing it. And they even use the word don't they?." #McLuhan: "I don't know. But tribal is not a new form exactly. But ah, post-literate tribal is very different matter from pre-literate tribal."
Men shock hands ,courtesy . customs ,titles ,addressed by Christian name & code of manners in polite society .learn how to walk ,ride ,be graceful ,hospitality ,comforts offered to travelers, young women learned how to be lady's. life had more social engagement , group activity's ,no Facebook . The end of polite Society - could be .
Hello Alex, if you want to put it beyond all doubt look at the interview MM and a bishop had with John Cleese and Michael Palin when Life of Brian came out...Yikes.
I do not get it either . I think he was famous not cos he said something no one else was saying at the time and he managed to build a personality to sell but past that i do not get it . At those times people where into all that new age crap , they just started to look around after 150 years of exponential technology growth ...
"In a word, the message of the electric light is total change. It is pure information without any content to restrict its transforming and informing power. If the student of media will but meditate on the power of this medium of electric light to transform every structure of time and space and work and society that it penetrates or contacts, he will have the key to the form of the power that is in all media to reshape any lives that they touch. Except for light, all other media come in pairs, with one acting as the "content" of the other, obscuring the operation of both." [Understanding Media: The Extension of Man, Marshall McLuhan, 1964, Ch. 5: Hybrid Energy]
He's still prominent within the zeitgeist, especially for someone that was pre- www. Unfortunately, your concerns parallel mine. His popularity has greatly waned, which is quite paradoxical, considering as time has passed his words have only become prophetic. On spaceship earth we are moving at light speed, and there isn't a chance in hell we are turning back. We've lost control of the ship, and we have the slightest clue as to where we are headed next.
technology is just a tool, manufactured by imagination, life is in fact moore dependant in imagination than technology, however technology easies manual tasks. deceaces are mind made.
Ah, Malcolm Muggeridge and his famous mind-numbing voice, discussing matters as if he were a contemporary of St Augustine, not someone living in the 20th century. Of what use is it to explain colors to the blind? Of course he misunderstands McLuhan completely. I would expect no less from the man who found The Life of Brian completely unamusing.
Oh man... the Muggeridge dude asking him questions is absolutely insufferable. His logic is absurd, bordering on obscenely ignorant and fantastical delusion. Did he get famous for his fancy british vocal fry? or?
I love how people were able to converse and criticise one another in those days without shouting over one another. The endless shouting and derogatory tone of debate now is exactly the outcome that McLuhan predicted.
McLuhan ether'd dude though lol
We got keyboard tactical weapons now so it’s basically worse and more viscous. Terrible thing for society, iPhone - Social media platforms .
Well most "debate" that is in the corporate media nowadays is meant to be like that. It's what people "want". There is still debate like this, it's just not happening in your feeds because it doesn't rise up in our current economic system which largely seems to drive what we see on our feeds.
"Victor Hugo wrote the famous line there's one thing stronger than all the armies in the world and that is an idea whose time has come. The second strongest thing in the world is an idea whose time has not yet gone." -John Anthony West
I know there's modern conversations like this freely available on places like UA-cam but it's a real shame they're not as public in our current decade.
People care about important things and like to learn and discuss them in detail. I think there's always been an appetite for intellectually difficult content like this but I guess the venues that offer it aren't being marketed well enough or something.
The thing is intellectual content is demanding. It requires preparation, it requires commitment, and it requires concentration. Compare that with already digested, emotion based content; and one can see why the later is more "democratic" or profitable, in the sense of beign able to appeal to everyone. There's no barrier to understanding a video of a cute cat or a fast car, and you can consume hundreds of those in the span that it takes you to consume one lecture. Plus, you need to work in digesting the content of the lecture later.
That's why, even when tackling complex issues, content tends to be rewarded when it's already predigesteed by someone the public finds appealing, so they can absorb the information presented without the need of forming an opinion for themselves. It is also a structural issue in the sense of social media design. Social media does not promote comunication, debate or interaction by design. It is very onesided in the sense that people are encouraged to engage with it by either uploading their content or as spectators of that content; which is something very different to be able to build on that content.
Beign visible in the digital space through your content puts you in a fundamentally different possition of those that are anonimous or invisibilized as a mere number in a like count. Mantaining a conversation or discourse becomes very challenging, since even when you respond that response is somehow disconected from the original premise by time when not by format. Video responses would be a reaction to this visibility impairment, a way to come around that notion that "if you don't have online pressence, you don't exist as an individual" or are not perceived as "important" as the OP. Forum format would be the closest thing to debate or conversation, and it's easy to see how within that format the rules of debate and conversation still fail. Online inverviews, podcasts or streamed conversations have tried to come round that while giving the audience a semblance of participation; and they may be very effective in that. But there is still that issue of parciality ingrained in design, since everyone is the own little dictator of their little social media world and audience, its highly unlikely they will engage genually with people with different oppinions, or with issues outside their niche of interest.
@@Ab3ndcgireally thoughtful points here. Would love to have a smoke, drink and walk with someone like you these days. Refreshing.
He actually has a point about the difference between European/Asian and American attitudes in this regard. In an episode of the Soprano's, Tony's Russian mistress states "That's the problem with Americans, u expect nothing bad ever to happen, when the rest of the world expect only bad to happen....and they are not disappointed." -not the precise statement but close. Both attitudes result from their own cultures.
Hello there. Interesting comment buddy. I hope you don't mind my late comment. I can recall some part of that scene (and much of that relationship between Tony and Irina) but I can tell you she spoke about and from a place only few of us would know a thing or two about. The horrors of the soviet life and much of "EASTERN-Europe" cannot be discussed comparatively in this case vis-a-vis those that were lived, experienced and whatnot in some parts of the so-called "Western-World" (e.g., USA).
“And this is the old myth of Narcissus. The word Narcissus means narcosis, numbness and drugged; and Narcissus was drugged into thinking that that image outside himself was somebody else. Narcissus did not fall in love with his own image, he thought it was somebody else. And the same with us, in our technology and gadgetry and gimmickry and so on, we don’t think that is merely a part of our own physical organism extended out there, we’re like Narcissus, completely numb. Now when we put out a new part of ourselves, extend a new part of ourselves by technology into the environment we protect ourselves by numbing that area. The more I looked at this the more I had difficulty explaining why people ignored it.” M. McLuhan
"Such amplification is bearable by the nervous system only through numbness or blocking of perception. This is the sense of the Narcissus myth. The young man's image is a self-amputation or extension induced by irritating pressures. As counter-irritant, the image produces a generalized numbness or shock that declines recognition. Self-amputation forbids self-recognition."
[Understanding Media: The Extension of Man, Marshall McLuhan, 1964, Ch. 4: The Gadget Lover; Narcissus as Narcosis]
The thing I find most admirable about Malcolm Muggeridge is how he, albeit late in life, found his stumbling steps brought him miraculously to the deep conviction that Jesus Christ is all that matters. He voiced this to any who would listen, and though many who knew him turned away in consternation and disgust, many others found his faith refreshing, especially in a society in decay.
G W Agreed. What a fantastic find!
@@gw437 Thanks I'll definitely look into that.
Oh please.
@@tarhunta2111 that's what you'll be saying with your last breath
Dementia often causes delusions like this.
Had to pause it and look up the Charles Lamb "Burn your house down to roast a pig" thing that McLuhan mentions when talking about the Vietnam War. Interesting little parable/metaphor.
Me too! Reading today.
whats funny is they are both correct on many points....it is not either or...its both and.
The ideas of a time are like the clothes of a season: they are as arbitrary, as much imposed by some superior will which is seldom explicit. They are utilitarian and political, the instruments of smooth-running government.
Wyndham Lewis
So ideas are somehow both utilitarian AND arbitrary... 😂 Perfect example of a quote sounding cool but not really saying anything. If anything ideas are the enemy of governments that want you to have no idea, and that's how they get to run smoothly as they act antithesis to why government is necessary in the first place
Sucks i can't find more of the conversation. This was excellent stuff.
mcluhan on a different level. these mediums be programming us
dont be a dummy
They're less programming you as they are deprogramming you from your abilities
When I was younger this is what I dreamed an internet generation would be. No longer held hostage by programmers force feeding us sitcoms, we’d see historical documents f high quality whenever we wanted and all be much more enlightened as a result.
Sadly, it’s mostly kids playing video games and badly produced news shows.
To be completely fair, even as a Pessemist myself, I really do think you are being overly cynical.
Perhaps it is because you are somewhat older, but I’ll say this from a younger perspective: firstly, there are tons of historical UA-camrs as well as Literature Analysts and even Philosophy Analysts... and they get tons of subscribers from young, middle aged, and old alike.
So don’t lose hope on that end.
As for the video games, that’s just entertainment. We can’t lose ourselves to purely intellectual activity wothout Aesthetic breaks. But more importantly, there’s plenty of games now that have very well structured and executed stories all around, if that is the concern.
All around, don’t lose faith in the internet over things like that. I’d argue it has other darker parts to it than that.
@@galahadsoundscape6365 I was probably in an odd mood that day.. this isn't my most nuanced comment. ;)
It was for a.few years
How often today do we get to enjoy and learn from intelligent people having an intelligent and respectful argument?
it's not what they say, it's how they say it
@@virtualpilgrim8645 the how affects the what tho. Heated or one sided conversation does not invite problem solving idea flow.
Absolutely fascinating
6:37 "... But post-literate tribal is a very different matter than pre-literate tribal... We're tribalizing simply by a greater/ a much closer family... a sense of the human family..."
7:42 "... Playback... Socrates... "
this guy is the most prescient person
The paradox here is as McLuhan said "we march backwards into the future." His ability to be prescient stems from his ability to put his fingers on the pulse of the present-day. It's this happening of sorts that we seldom take notice of until well after the effects have already taken place.
Post literate tribal. I’m gonna use that...
Mailer is so well behaved here.
RARE!
"Electric information comes from all directions at once and when your information comes from all directions simultaneously you're living in an acoustic world. The acoustic world has no continuity, no homogeneity, no connections and no stasis; everything is changing. Our ancestors lived in a mythic world because they had none of the means of literate classification. A myth is a speeded up following of a process. We live mythically ourselves so that we understand their myths for the first time.
You should know the stakes are; the stakes are our civilization versus tribalism and it's a considerable revolution to have been through twenty-five hundred years of phonetic literacy, only to encounter the end of that road." - Marshall McLuhan
"In a word, the message of the electric light is total change. It is pure information without any content to restrict its transforming and informing power.
If the student of media will but meditate on the power of this medium of electric light to transform every structure of time and space and work and society that it penetrates or contacts, he will have the key to the form of the power that is in all media to reshape any lives that they touch. Except for light, all other media come in pairs, with one acting as the "content" of the other, obscuring the operation of both."
[Understanding Media: The Extension of Man, Marshall McLuhan, 1964, Ch. 5: Hybrid Energy]
5:20 Marshall: "If you can get rid of all the symptoms, who cares what disease you have?"
McLuhan is SO far ahead of his time, even still in 2022. The interviewer is competent and trying, but he is obviously unequal in intellect and vision.
In a way I get what the interviewer is trying to say, though. Of course, the rapid evolution of technology has had a large and profound impact on society and mankind - however, men are still human at the end of the day and evolution in the physical sense moves at a glacial pace including human behaviour
malcolm was a formidable thinker in his own right, and doubly intelligent as the average television host
The interview cuts off... is there a second part?
McLuhan's expression at 1:23 is classic!
I felt the same way as MM's body expressed.
"No no, we never do anything consciously." lol Isn't that the truth!
I see the very knowledgeable and outspoken Mailer was quiet.
Muggeridge is the far wiser voice because he analyzes the timeless constants which emanate from the soul that transcend language itself; McLuhan, smart as he is, remains distracted by the superficial variables that have always danced on the surface of the human psyche, because of the printing press and the alphabet, and notwithstanding printing press and alphabet.
Well said! The eternal soul remains, the truth staring us in the face no matter where we turn, no matter how much we try to engineer ourselves and our physical surroundings otherwise.
Marshall & Normans chats are always so intriguing, I never understand what's going on but still
What don't you understand exactly
I find McLuhan endlessly fascinating, even if his words are often rather elusive. I think he was extremely perceptive.
I'd like to know if anyone can shed any light on his claim at the end of the video that we no longer live in a visual society. Is this because of the nature in which we now interact with reality, through a screen, an electric medium? One could argue that our society has become more visual than ever with the advent of TV and now with smartphones replacing more traditional media such as the printed word.
Thoughts anyone?
Linear visual time as in the clock came to an end when all things happen at once as they do in the electric/audio/all at once age. 2 year old comment was just new to me now it’s because time as it’s been known no longer exists. This idea of a clock as time/visual has kept things in relative order for some time but now are returning to a tribal time
90% of the Internet is pornography
He was a prophet in a way, he said that the TV isn't visual, but tactile medium, it touches you (your nervous system). You would have to try to read some of his books and try to understand what medium are and how they change the person and society. I say try to read, because it is difficult to understand because it is quite different than anything you could read on the subject.
They'd certainly be horrified now!
Sharp as a pin, man is on a different level yin yang
Miss these debates . Beats modern 2 minutes of cursing out then awaiting votes
I find Malcolm Muggeridge rather annoying as he dismisses technology as having no value to his concept of culture such as the printing press yet without that invention he would not have had a career. He seems to make rather shallow comments that are posing as having depth. I find Marshal McLuhan far more interesting and he seems to pose less and argue with greater strength and understanding. Its a fascinating program.
I think we're transferring from an age where the "median is the message" to an age of the "message is the median". In ten years time, chat GPT3 will be feeding itself with mostly outputs as its inputs.
Medium*
Is there a full version of this discussion? He was, seemingly, only just getting into the part on polite society.
Excellent
I was going to add something- then I scrolled down and found I needed to contribute nothing... when last did you see comments this insightful? Then again, all these folks chose to listen to this, so they've self- filtered a bit.
"Printing was invented 200 years ago." Malcom Muggeridge
Our Society is in the last throws of freedom. Because of technology
Controlling the emotions, is far easier to do than logical control.
When you give all of your time and resources to the nervous systems outside us, we really don't have the extra energy to allocate towards anything else.
We've never been free lol. We are in the throws of gaining freedom, but it *IS* a bumpy ride as it always has for any group of people trying to gain their freedom and respect in this world.
Malcolm Muggeridge was a deep thinker and solid evangelical Christian apologist
these men disagreeing with marshall would be mind blown if they saw china today
china? Look first a little bit closer to your surroundings lol.
The skeptic (veddy veddy English don’t you know!) denounces television as superficial appeasement... while having an intellectual discussion on a television show. Have to love the British. Marshall McLuhan, would that you could have seen the Internet.
Wow. People used to be able to speak so well; people used to be way more intelligent.
They were white. Then came Rocky Balboa: "Adrian!!"
5:16 This old guy claims he knows what Life Is without saying anything about it.
Where is the full video? Is this it?
As a cat😻chases its tail, so Society chases its tale📜of Manly Strength🏋️ & Womanly💃 Beauty , but🗣️how the Truth🕴️is told belongs only to the innocently bold telling hot🔥from cold🥶, the wise🦉do scold!
Is there more of it somewhere?
There's another CBC broadcast with McLuhan and Mailer on the same subjects here ua-cam.com/video/PtrJntaTlic/v-deo.html
where is the rest of the talk?
+Trust in Love not available anywhere. If y find it please let me know
Ack. Marshall is so far ahead. A terse "yup" @5:01 anticipates IOT.
6:58 lol his face after having to correct Malcolm.
Marshall never lets Malcolm finish his thought before he interrupts him.
I find myself only agreeing with Muggeridge on ONE thing and ONE THING ONLY: curing the symptoms isn't the same as curing the disease. Other than only just that statement, I think Muggeridge is a ridged inflexible stuffy old bag of wind. lol
i love light fermented
Do you see? McLuhan is such a paragon of the literate people. He doesn't like a polemic which is at the heart of the acoustic verbal people.
Today we have abandoned reasonable discourse for shouting matches and "post tribal literacy", there's a cherry to be picked. But who now remembers Foribius Skibb?... sorry! Don't google that, I made it up. But the point remains poignant. Fads/fashion pass us by but, real truth hidden now as it is, still is superior.
Malcolm Muggeridge was one of these typical old-school British / BBC establishment media types - there because he was well connected and a stupid person's idea of what a clever person is like. Sadly he seems unable to shut up, and adds considerably to the noise-to-signal ratio in this discussion.
Muggeridge wasn't part of any old-school British network, and he certainly wasn't a BBC establishment figure. Nor is he a stupid person's idea of a clever person; you've just taken that description of Stephen Fry and arbitrarily applied it to Muggeridge. Try dealing with the things he actually says instead of engaging in _ad hominem._
YOu have to admit it was half decent attempt for good old Jonathan to sound smart . He got 3 likes , he is a good boy !
He was fully aware of Stalins lie!
@@mr.coolmug3181 so well said!!! Absolutely beautiful debunking to the ad hominem fallacy
Exactly, thank you
The idiocy (look up what McLuhan has to say on the word idiot BTW) of the interviewer bores him into saying stuff he wouldn't otherwise have thought it polite to explain, for sympathy of the intelligence of his audience. That, is another aspect of Socratic dialog.
So lovely and classy…not to be an aesthetic moralist but hey
@2:47 Peter Falk stood in as Columbo.
Someone needs to stand up for Muggeridge: agree with most of what he says. McLuhan's education by war is a nice analogy. Muggeridge's more the idealist, McLuhan's scientifically de facto, but not forward-looking.
Not forward looking? He anticipated us!
McLuhan is the last person you can say was "not forward looking".
You know nothing of my work!
You should look up the Mcluhan/WH Auden encounter. Auden toasts him but Muggeridge wd also be small next to Auden.
Most ppl side with McLuhan bc they want to believe nothing can be gained by encountering the past or that film is comparable to literature.
McLuhan is just the inevitable reaction against T.S. Eliot. Re. the past, as Eliot said: you have to sweat for it.
Youth is more alienated than ever re the job market, niches etc. almost 50 years later. Electricity brought some unity, a Universal Basic Income will break through to a vaster retribalization, creating space for community, decompressing creativity.
Thank you.
Nonsense. Universal income will create slobs, as it always has done and always will do. It's anti-creative in it's nature, it degenerates a people and a society into idleness.
Nonsense . YOu gut is telling you that cos of all the rich people dogma you have been eating . Every study shows uni. income fosters happiness , creativity and induces people to move much more then when they are saddled down by job and life on the edge of starvation . Just think about it for a second .Uni Income means that it is all the same where you live in your country and cost of moving is the price of move truck . Where would you go ? Where you can do a thing you love ? Where is always warm or cold ? Where others with same intrest live ? You can live in Boulder,Colorado or Miami or NY or somewhere in woods in Montana . Does not matter anymore if there is work where you are just your individual preference .
You are simplistically looking at probably only solution to war and death of a planet ...
Lunch Box That is beyond idiotic and I feel sorry for your mum for birthing you. You do understand cost of living is vastly different in different areas right? Have you ever budgeted anything in your life or moved cross country?
Lunch Box Have you ever tried to find a rental apartment in either New York, Miami, or a beautiful ski town in Colorado on a very tight budget? Will landlords simply drop their rates for the greater good of mankind?
If you are looking at the comments section, you are engaging in the electric environment. Try not to go tribal, if that’s possible!
Engagement in the electronic environment is impossible to avoid, but that must not blind us to its price. Do not believe this is not costing us much more than anyone who understood it would ever have bargained to pay. So much has been capitulated to it by men blinded by its promise of empowerment that there is now no way to even back up, much less back out. Yet the world sinks into an economic catastrophe and a political maelstrom helplessly buckled to it. I saw an image recently of two men tied by ropes to the back of a moving car and being forced to run faster and faster to keep from falling and being drug by it. I think it would be difficult to deny that we are already at this stage of our technological development. Far, far too much power and far, far too little understanding. Mr. McLuhan's enthusiasm for this man-made reality at its onset is pathetically superficial.
@@andrewharmon2157 I never got that McLuhan was enthusiastic about the electronic environment, or any man-made reality for that matter. When he talks about tribalism, he isn't only talking about strength of affiliation, but also the loss of literacy.
Regarding what we are spiraling towards, the major problem behind our algorithmic environment is the incentivisation of human engagement through economic models. The medium is not just the computer, but AI's relationship to money.
Do you mean: Tribalism = identity politics. Economic models = materialism in its manifold expressions? These and AI's relationship to money is a huge problem, but what is at the root of these? The media presents a man-made reality that is stripped of the reality markers human beings use to confirm their own judgments like real time, real space, real proportion, real sequence, real encounter, real risk, real responsibility, real consequences, real reciprocation, etc. The electronic media has also enabled the most tremendous concentration of power and influence the world has ever seen. McLuhan was very right to say the "Medium is the Message" in the sense that the electronic medium itself is far and away the most effective (howbeit subliminal) force man has ever encountered. But as I see it, the Reality it tramples is not something to be tampered with but to be carefully guarded. It is the only link we have with the true nature of things. A man wandering off into a self-manufactured identity unhinged from nature is in fantasy land, no matter how many people concur. Indeed, the more people that concur, the more insane it all is. And when an entire culture is lost in wonderland, all bets are off. Reality is the very thing that unites us. It is what all rational men can agree on. This loss is a human catastrophe. Shouldn't this have been foreseen? People like Muggeridge attempted to mitigate the enthusiasm of people like McLuhan, but to little effect. In those days of the 1960's, the true believers were all devotees of Progress. And now, so quickly, we find we are totally at sea. And the sea is swelling with moving black water mountains and deep, shifting caverns; the sky is lowering and roaring and no one of us can any longer see the shore.
@@andrewharmon3653 When Marshall McLuhan said "the medium is the message" he wasn't referring specifically to electronic media though. And I would argue that electronic media is not even the most powerful media we have made, but that language, which allows an infinite re-sequencing of reality, is. Past cultures have created far more immersive experiences than we have today with mythologies and human sacrifice rituals, which were tied to so-called consequences like weather phenomena and agricultural success; that you are starving because a tribute did not shed enough blood is as detached from reality as anything you can find on the internet.
Tribalism in today's world can include identity politics, but there is nothing automatically destructive about identifying with likeminded people. If those with whom you identify are in a pursuit of knowledge, you might even get smarter. But part of the electronic media includes an engagement model fueled by economics, not materialism per-se, but an underlying characteristic of it, which is that it must always inflate. The electronic media is good in a way, because the fact that it is 2-dimensional invites skepticism. Nobody really thinks that Tony Stark snapped his fingers and that's why evil died, but on the other hand, we have created intelligences devoted to finding and exploiting blindspots in our critical thinking in order to keep corporations alive. This is not through the lack of "real time, real space, real proportion" of the electronic landscape, but through a calculated re-sequencing of language.
Anyways, I like the way you write about things. I hope you have a blog.
@@pendaflux I am thinking that the electronic media is a being in which the realities of time, space, proportion, scale, and many other markers of ordinary experience have only a modified and in many ways contradictory existence. It requires perhaps ten real time minutes to watch a certain video, but in that video, many people and things from vastly different time-frames may be juxtaposed in bazaar scale to each other with no regard to spacial requirements at all. Yet we experience them in the same way we would if they were standing in our presence. Many other authentication markers are absent or disheveled as well. As we watch it, real time is given the back seat to this dissociated double of real things which has for whatever plausible reasons contorted these realities of time, space, scale and proportion along with many other distortions. McLuhan saw this as a game changer for our culture of the magnitude of a sea change, regardless of the intelligible message carried by it. And I do as well. I suspect he believed the human race was by it to approach the intellectual freedoms of the Cherubim, but after so long a time, I believe a case many be made for the opposite result. That is, our human judgment which is natively dependent upon reality markers, is in itself becoming blurred by this constant immersion in an artificial reality so independent of the means by which we can judge those things presented to us in the natural way. It seems to me a great fatigue is setting in, that prompts many people to feel that thinking things through is no longer a source of probity. (This is the motor for the tribalism McLuhan spoke of). And that which in us is fatigued is exactly the relationship between the senses which are ordered to reality, and the besetting experience of the media which strains and thwarts those senses from drawing their natural conclusions on the subconscious level where they operate. I certainly agree with you that language as communication is not to be compared with the electronic media as medium to medium. Indeed, the electronic media could not exist without language and is a parasite upon it. But, this parasite has a peculiar power all its own which is our subject here. And this power is also the subject of Marshall McLuhan. Of course, reading and hearing audio on line is not included in this critique but require a separate treatment. I thank you for your remarks and responding to my thoughts about this most important issue of our day.
what a boss
a gathering of unique minds and Marshall shines, he all but predicted Trump, a mass medium manipulator with no discernible skills than being a celbrity
I'm a moderate environmentalist, but here's a list:
TRUMP'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS
1) He got conservative judge Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court.
2) The stock market is at an all-time high.
3) Consumer confidence is at an all-time high.
4) He created millions of jobs by undoing Obama’s regulations.
5) Mortgage applications for new homes is at a 7 year high.
6) Unemployment rate is at a 50 year low.
7) Signed the promoting women in entrepreneurship act.
8) Gutted over 800 Obama era regulations thus freeing up companies to hire again and get the economy moving once again.
9) Ended the war on coal and caused a new mine for coal mining to open that will mine clean coal. He also put the miners back to work.
10) Weakened Dodd-Frank regulations.
11) Promotes buying and hiring American.
12) Investments from major businesses such as Foxconn, Ford ,Toyota, Intel and others will build here now.
13) Building the border wall as promised.
14) Fighting against sanctuary cities.
15) Changed the rules of engagement against ISIS.
16) Drafted a plan to defeat ISIS.
17) Worked to reduce the cost of the F-35 fighter jets.
18) Imposed a five year lobbying plan.
19) Sanctioned Iran over its’ missile program.
20) Responded to Syria’s use of chemical weapons.
21) Reduced tax reform plan.
22) Renegotiated NAFTA and replaced with the USMCA.
23) He withdrew from the Trans Pacific Partnership thus keeping jobs here.
24) He pulled us out of the Paris Climate Accords thus saving us millions of dollars every year.
25) Created a task force to reduce crime.
26) The DOJ is targeting dangerous gangs like MS-13.
27) Signed independence and economic growth law.
28) Signed an executive order to protect police officers and target drug cartels.
29) Signed an executive order for religious freedom.
30) His administration is working on sending education back to the states.
31) He’s fixing the dept. of Veterans affairs so now vets can choose their own doctors and be covered. This also protects whistle blowers and allows VA to terminate bad employees.
32) Authorized construction of the Keystone and Dakota pipelines. The Dakota pipeline is up and running without harming the environment.
33) Created commissions on election fraud and opioid addiction.
34) Food stamp use is the lowest level in decades along with government dependency.
35) Reduced the White House payroll saving taxpayers millions of dollars.
36) Has donated his Presidential salary to various causes.
37) Signed over 52 pieces of legislation.
38) Cut 600 billion from UN peacekeeping mission.
39) Gas prices lowest in more than 12 years.
40) Making NATO allies pay billions of their fair share of dues owed.
41) Signed Criminal Justice Reform, “First Step Act"."
Robert Fulford is playing devil's advocate
someone def farted after McLuhan says for the birds
MsFreshadenu definitely the chair
muggeridge was farting the whole time
"You over here do believe"......was winning until he said, "those are just words" when he was talking about computer tech! lmao
Marshall McLuhan is much better in black and white!
6:23 #PERSON: "Aren't they becoming tribalized? The way you say the whole world is and they are actually doing it. And they even use the word don't they?." #McLuhan: "I don't know. But tribal is not a new form exactly. But ah, post-literate tribal is very different matter from pre-literate tribal."
Men shock hands ,courtesy . customs ,titles ,addressed by Christian name & code of manners in polite society .learn how to walk ,ride ,be graceful ,hospitality ,comforts offered to travelers, young women learned how to be lady's. life had more social engagement , group activity's ,no Facebook . The end of polite Society - could be .
HOW CAN AYE TALK TO U
4:46 isn't that interesting
I never realized Malcolm Muggeridge was such a complete fool.
Hello Alex, if you want to put it beyond all doubt look at the interview MM and a bishop had with John Cleese and Michael Palin when Life of Brian came out...Yikes.
What exactly does Muggeridge say to merit such a strong judgement?
Heh, on the contrary, they seem really old-fashioned now, and he seems prophetic.
I do not get it either . I think he was famous not cos he said something no one else was saying at the time and he managed to build a personality to sell but past that i do not get it . At those times people where into all that new age crap , they just started to look around after 150 years of exponential technology growth ...
Idk he seems okay to me.
Muggeridge was the greater man
how?
why?
McLuhan is found correct, all the others wrong. Why is McLuhan so forgotten?
"In a word, the message of the electric light is total change. It is pure information without any content to restrict its transforming and informing power.
If the student of media will but meditate on the power of this medium of electric light to transform every structure of time and space and work and society that it penetrates or contacts, he will have the key to the form of the power that is in all media to reshape any lives that they touch. Except for light, all other media come in pairs, with one acting as the "content" of the other, obscuring the operation of both."
[Understanding Media: The Extension of Man, Marshall McLuhan, 1964, Ch. 5: Hybrid Energy]
He's still prominent within the zeitgeist, especially for someone that was pre- www. Unfortunately, your concerns parallel mine. His popularity has greatly waned, which is quite paradoxical, considering as time has passed his words have only become prophetic. On spaceship earth we are moving at light speed, and there isn't a chance in hell we are turning back. We've lost control of the ship, and we have the slightest clue as to where we are headed next.
technology is just a tool, manufactured by imagination, life is in fact moore dependant in imagination than technology, however technology easies manual tasks. deceaces are mind made.
We shape our tools and our tools ape us.
...so sad and funny that the european guy does not gets what McLuhan gives - do the others, do we by now?
Programmed art.
Ah, Malcolm Muggeridge and his famous mind-numbing voice, discussing matters as if he were a contemporary of St Augustine, not someone living in the 20th century. Of what use is it to explain colors to the blind? Of course he misunderstands McLuhan completely. I would expect no less from the man who found The Life of Brian completely unamusing.
These old codgers
codger is a codger word
I'm an old soul, what can I say?
@@nextspectra you old codger
Electrochemistry.
Gaius Marcus McCluicus. 😂
Malcolm Muggeridge is so elevated that McLuhan simply doesn't know where he's coming from.
Everything McLuhan says is muted by his fastening of the bottom button of his suit jacket.
Oh man... the Muggeridge dude asking him questions is absolutely insufferable. His logic is absurd, bordering on obscenely ignorant and fantastical delusion. Did he get famous for his fancy british vocal fry? or?
Muggeridge BTFO
Marshall was wrong here.