

Marshall McLuhan Speaks - ivankirigin
http://www.marshallmcluhanspeaks.com/

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gruseom
I was surprised to learn from a review of Coupland's recent biography
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2115029>) that McLuhan largely deplored
the social changes he was writing about. "Anything I talk about is almost
certain to be something I'm resolutely against, and it seems to me the best
way of opposing it is to understand it, and then you know where to turn off
the button." The popular image of McLuhan (and he was extremely popular - up
there with rock stars) was definitely not that of a button-turner-offer.

Such a mindset in many critics would make them predictable and boring, but to
me it makes McLuhan more interesting. The knock against him was always that he
was glib, but this suggests a depth that isn't obvious.

I remember hearing that McLuhan was once at an academic conference where some
professor excoriated him after his talk (McLuhan was loathed by his fellow
academics). McLuhan shrugged and said, "You don't like these ideas? I got
others."

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ivankirigin
Folks at Facebook talk about McLuhan all the time. <http://livestre.am/wRA>

I wonder if they know that. It's the first I've heard of it. I certainly
disagree with it. I think the internet makes us more connected and aware of
what is important in the world. For some, it is an addiction, but that isn't
really the average case. Maybe Zynga developers would disagree.

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oasisbob
This is great, McLuhan has a lot to teach.

I tend to find his work much more insightful and broadly applicable than Kevin
Kelly, et al.

His ideas reproduced in _The Medium is the Massage_ are the most popular, but
my favorite is the concept of the media tetrad because it tends towards the
descriptive, instead of the prescriptive:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrad_of_media_effects>

Taking Twitter for example, instead of saying "Twitter has foo effect on
society", McLuhan's tetrad provides a framework for discussion and analysis.
e.g., Perhaps you think Twitter retrieves the telegraph, maybe you don't, but
McLuhan provides an easy method for discussion.

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zeteo
"The Medium is the Massage (sic)"

Freudian slip? :)

~~~
oasisbob
Heh, actually, no.

Says McLuhan Biographer, W. Terrence Gordon: _"by the time it appeared in
1967, McLuhan no doubt recognized that his original saying had become a cliché
and welcomed the opportunity to throw it back on the compost heap of language
to recycle and revitalize it. But the new title is more than McLuhan indulging
his insatiable taste for puns, more than a clever fusion of self-mockery and
self-rescue — the subtitle is 'An Inventory of Effects,' underscoring the
lesson compressed into the original saying."_

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jberryman
Wow, thanks for posting that quote. This and the parent post assuming the
title was a typo is really making my day.

To add to the discussion, the first pages of the book are a photograph of a
hand over an ear, overlaid with the words "...the massage?"

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phr
If, like me, you have heard bits and pieces about McLuhan, but never delved
deeper, the 20 minute introduction by Tom Wolfe is well worth your time.

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commandar
I'll have to look into it given my knowledge of McLuhan extends as far as his
_Annie Hall_ cameo.

