McLuhan

Summary

In this discussion, the focus is on Marshall McLuhan's 1964 piece 'The Medium is the Message,' which explores how technology reshapes human affairs. McLuhan differentiates between the mechanistic paradigm, characterized by fragmentation and linearity, and the electric paradigm, which introduces immediacy and interconnectedness. He emphasizes the need for a new literacy to understand the impact of electric technology on society, suggesting that without this, we risk being controlled by it. The talk delves into how the shift from print to electronic media has altered our perception of time and space, and challenges us to adapt to the rapid pace of digital communications.

Takeaways

• 📚 Marshall McLuhan's central idea in 'The Medium is the Message' is that the impact of a medium can be understood through the changes it brings to human activities.
• 👨‍🏫 McLuhan criticizes the focus on content over the medium itself, suggesting that the medium's influence is inherent and does not rely on its content.
• 📈 The mechanistic paradigm, exemplified by the printing press, organizes society into fragments and linear sequences, fostering individualism and nationalism.
• 🌐 The electric paradigm, starting with the light bulb, challenges the mechanistic view by unifying time and space, leading to a more interconnected and immediate society.
• 🕰️ McLuhan discusses how the mechanistic paradigm views time as linear and fragmented, whereas the electric paradigm views time as simultaneous and interconnected.
• 🎥 The movie industry serves as an example of how the electric paradigm can represent time in a non-linear, fragmented yet interconnected way.
• 📖 McLuhan suggests that literacy in the mechanistic paradigm allows for detachment and understanding of how technology organizes society.
• 🌐 The electric paradigm's rapid pace and interconnectedness make it difficult for individuals to maintain the distance necessary for literacy as defined in the mechanistic era.
• 🔍 McLuhan anticipates a future (our present) where the lack of distance from electric technology leads to a society that is less capable of critically understanding its influence.
• 📝 The task set by McLuhan is to develop a new form of literacy and rationality that can make sense of the immediate and interconnected nature of electric technology.

Q & A

What is the main thesis of Marshall McLuhan's 'The Medium is the Message'?

McLuhan's main thesis is that the medium itself, rather than the content it carries, is the message. He suggests that the way technology or technological paradigms reorganize human affairs is the true message they convey.

How does McLuhan define 'message' in the context of his work?

McLuhan defines 'message' as the change of scale, pace, or pattern that a technology or a technological paradigm introduces into human affairs.

What are the two technological paradigms McLuhan discusses in his chapter?

McLuhan discusses the mechanistic or mechanical paradigm and the electric paradigm, focusing on how they shape human activities and societal organization.

What does McLuhan mean when he suggests that technology is telling us what it does?

McLuhan implies that the impact and influence of technology on human life are inherent in the technology itself, and we should look beyond the content it carries to understand its true effects.

Why does McLuhan criticize looking for content in technologies?

McLuhan criticizes looking for content in technologies because it distracts from understanding the transformative effects that the medium itself has on society and human behavior.

What is the significance of the 'Gutenberg Galaxy' in McLuhan's analysis?

The 'Gutenberg Galaxy' refers to the era dominated by the printing press. McLuhan suggests that this era gave birth to the individual and the nation due to the mass production and distribution of printed texts, which led to a new form of literacy and societal organization.

How does McLuhan describe the mechanistic Paradigm's effect on time and space?

McLuhan describes the mechanistic Paradigm as fragmenting time and space into sequential and linear units, creating a sense of continuity and rational order in human activities.

What role does the movie technology play in McLuhan's view of the shift from the mechanistic to the electric Paradigm?

Movies, for McLuhan, exemplify the shift from a sequential and mechanistic view of time to an electric view where time is experienced as immediate and interconnected, reflecting a move towards an organic and less linear understanding of experience.

How does McLuhan argue that the electric Paradigm differs from the mechanistic Paradigm?

McLuhan argues that the electric Paradigm, starting with the invention of the light bulb, flattens time and unifies space, breaking down the mechanistic fragmentation and continuity, leading to a more immediate and interconnected experience of the world.

What challenge does McLuhan pose regarding our current technological literacy?

McLuhan challenges that we have not yet adapted our literacy to the electric technology paradigm, which results in a lack of understanding of how current technologies organize and affect our lives.

What is the 'task' that McLuhan sets out for his readers?

McLuhan's task for his readers is to develop a new form of literacy that makes sense in the age of electric technology, one that can understand and navigate the immediacy, interconnectedness, and different speeds of the digital age.

Outlines

00:00

📚 Understanding McLuhan's 'The Medium is the Message'

The speaker discusses the complexity of teaching Marshall McLuhan's work, particularly the concept that the medium itself is the message, and not its content. McLuhan suggests that technology or technological paradigms reorganize human affairs, and the best way to understand them is by observing how they change the scale, pace, or pattern of human activities. The speaker rearranges the lecture to focus on the mechanistic (mechanical) paradigm versus the electric paradigm, emphasizing that literacy in technology means being able to read what it tells us about its impact on society, rather than focusing on the content it carries.

05:01

🕰 The Impact of Technological Paradigms on Time Perception

The speaker explores how different technological paradigms shape our understanding of time. In the mechanistic paradigm, time is fragmented into chunks or blocks, which allows for a sense of continuity and linearity. Examples include the assembly line and the alphabet, where parts are assembled into a whole. The speaker contrasts this with the electric paradigm, where time is flattened and unified, as exemplified by the invention of the light bulb, which allows for work around the clock and challenges the day-night cycle that previously dictated our activities.

10:01

🎥 The Evolution of Time Perception from Mechanistic to Electric Paradigm

The speaker uses the example of movies to illustrate the shift from a mechanistic to an electric view of time. In movies, time is still fragmented but is no longer sequential; instead, it demonstrates immediate connections between different moments. This reflects a move from a linear, fragmented understanding of time to one that is more unified and interconnected. The electric paradigm, starting with the light bulb, challenges the mechanistic worldview by unifying time and space, which in turn affects our ability to read and understand the technological paradigm we are in.

15:01

🌐 The Challenge of Adapting to the Electric Technological Paradigm

The speaker discusses the challenges of adapting to the electric technological paradigm, where linear time has been flattened out and the mechanistic organization of society has been disrupted. McLuhan, writing in 1964, anticipates the current age of digital mass communications and the loss of distance that allows for reflection on technology's impact. The speaker suggests that without the literacy to understand the electric paradigm, technology gains autonomy over us, as we blindly follow its path. The task is to develop a new form of literacy and rationality that makes sense in an age of immediacy and interconnectedness.

Keywords

💡Medium

In the video, 'medium' refers to the tool or technology used to convey messages, such as the printing press or movies. McLuhan argues that the medium itself, rather than the content it delivers, significantly influences human affairs by shaping how people think, act, and organize their lives. This is central to McLuhan's famous idea that 'the medium is the message.'

💡Message

McLuhan defines 'message' as the impact or change that a medium introduces in human behavior and society. Instead of focusing on the content delivered by technology, McLuhan emphasizes that the real 'message' lies in how the medium reorganizes human activities, as seen in the shift from mechanistic to electric paradigms in society.

💡Technological Paradigm

A 'technological paradigm' is a framework or model that shapes human activities through the use of specific technologies. McLuhan contrasts the mechanistic paradigm (which fragments tasks and time, such as in assembly lines) with the electric paradigm (which promotes immediacy and interconnectedness, as with digital media). The shift from one paradigm to another transforms society's structure.

💡Mechanistic Paradigm

The mechanistic paradigm is associated with older technologies like the printing press and the assembly line, which emphasize fragmentation and compartmentalization of tasks and time. For example, McLuhan discusses how this paradigm breaks activities into distinct parts, like in Ford's assembly line, where each worker performs a specific task sequentially.

💡Electric Paradigm

The electric paradigm refers to the shift in society brought about by modern, electrical technologies such as the light bulb and mass communication tools. McLuhan suggests that this paradigm is characterized by immediacy, interconnectedness, and the flattening of time and space, as seen with movies and digital communications. This contrasts with the fragmentation of the mechanistic paradigm.

💡Literacy

In this context, 'literacy' means the ability to 'read' or understand the effects and messages of technology. McLuhan uses examples like the printing press and the work of de Tocqueville to illustrate how people can become literate in the ways technologies shape society. He argues that we need to develop a new form of literacy to understand the electric paradigm.

💡Fragmentation

Fragmentation refers to the division of tasks, time, or processes into smaller, manageable parts, a characteristic of the mechanistic paradigm. McLuhan uses the example of Ford's assembly line, where production is broken into individual steps. This fragmentation also applies to how we understand time and space in a mechanistic worldview, which organizes experience into distinct units.

💡Printing Press

The printing press is a key example McLuhan uses to explain the mechanistic paradigm. It revolutionized society by mass-producing texts, which led to standardized language, the rise of nation-states, and the concept of the individual reader. McLuhan argues that the printing press exemplifies how technology can reshape society by organizing human life in new ways.

💡Time

McLuhan discusses time as something that is fragmented and linear in the mechanistic paradigm, where we break time into segments like hours, minutes, and seconds. This contrasts with the electric paradigm, where time becomes more fluid and interconnected, as illustrated by how movies can manipulate time to show non-linear connections between past and present.

💡Central Nervous System

The central nervous system is a metaphor McLuhan uses to describe how electric technology externalizes the rapid processing of information. Just as the nervous system coordinates stimuli within the body, electric technology processes and connects information at high speeds, flattening time and space and making everything interconnected in ways that are difficult to comprehend through a mechanistic worldview.

Highlights

Difficulties in teaching Marshall McLuhan's 'The Medium is the Message' due to its complexity.

McLuhan's definition of 'message' as the change in scale, pace, or pattern introduced by technology.

The importance of understanding technology through its impact on organizing human affairs.

The mechanistic (mechanical) Paradigm versus the electric Paradigm in McLuhan's analysis.

Literacy in the context of technology means the ability to read what technology is telling us.

Critique of seeking content in technologies as missing the point.

The Talkville example illustrating literacy of the mechanistic technological Paradigm.

The printing press as a technology that organizes society and gives birth to the individual and the nation.

The surgeon analogy explaining the need for detachment to understand technology's impact.

Mechanistic technology's characteristic of fragmentation and its influence on society.

The assembly line as an example of mechanistic technology and its impact on labor and production.

The alphabet as an early mechanistic technology that fragments language into individual letters.

The concept of time as fragmented and linear, influenced by mechanistic technology.

The movie example demonstrating a shift from mechanistic to electric view of time.

Electric technology's role in flattening time and space, and unifying human experience.

The challenge of adapting literacy to electric technology in the digital age.

The need for a new form of rationality to understand the electric technological Paradigm.

Transcripts

hi

um we're going to talk about this

Marshall mcluhan piece now

um get the impression that it's a little

bit difficult for students I had a

difficult time teaching it this

afternoon

um so I rearranged the order of things

so you see me glancing this way it's

because I'm looking at another screen

which has some rearranged notes on it so

this uh chapter of a book from 1964

um is called the medium is the message

of the fact that the chapter you're

supposed to focus on

and

in large part what this is about is how

to read the message of a medium

so mcluhan defines the message on page

eight as the change of scale or Pace or

pattern that a technology or a

technological Paradigm introduces into

human affairs so mcluhan is suggesting

that the best way to understand

technology and technological paradigms

and their advancement

is through the way that technology or

technological paradigms reorganize or

organize and then reorganize human

Affairs human activities right

um

and here he's concerned with the

difference between two different

technological paradigms

um

and their messages

the mechanistic Paradigm

um or the mechanical Paradigm and the

electric Paradigm and this is about

literacy right the ability to read what

technology is telling us he's telling us

that the technology itself

is telling us what it does how it

affects us that we don't need to look to

content there are a few a few points

where he criticizes to look for content

and says to seek content in Technologies

is to miss the point right so we need to

see directly what what is being said to

us

so um yeah we're looking at the

difference between two technological

paradigms the mechanistic or mechanical

Paradigm and the electric Paradigm

um and the literacy that we can have of

them

um when he speaks of the talk Ville are

on pages 14 and 15. he's speaking about

someone who has a particularly Adept

literacy of the mechanistic

technological Paradigm at a particular

time right um so he's talking about the

age of the printing press and he talks

about how

um

the tuckvilles literacies familiarity is

understanding his ability to read the

mechanistic Paradigm in that moment

which uh is suggested as being dominated

by the printing press

allows him to take a distance

from that technology and see how this

technology is organizing our life so

those are some of the anecdotes that he

gives around to talk about earlier

in the essay I think it's on page five

he talks about a surgeon right and he

talks about how the surgeon is able to

take distance from the person that

they're working on

um

in order to be successful in their

surgery right because the idea is that

if they're viewing the patient

immediately in all of their personhood

that this is going to you know cause

maybe nervousness or fear or different

forms of empathy and emotion that could

get in the way of the surgery so we

through literacy

um are able to take distance from the

things that we do

um so back to the printing press for a

second just to mention like what the

talk fill is literate of it's uh you

know this the society that's in Europe

it's becoming dominated by the

repetition of

printed texts in a way that's never done

before and he says that this gives birth

to uh

this gives birth to both the individual

and the nation and some reasons for that

might be that um for the first time the

same thing is being printed on mass

scale and the individual without

mediator becomes the reader right

um printed newspaper means everyone gets

the news it doesn't come by Word of

Mouth it doesn't come from government

officials it's not a word of God coming

through the priests right

printed press language directed at us in

repetition in some sense he's saying

leads to our idea of ourselves as as

individuals in the way that's associated

with liberalism as a

socioeconomic Paradigm and he also says

nation states and and uh just quickly

there

you know um

at a certain point in time you have the

Holy Roman Empire and then suddenly you

have the emergence of a state like

Germany

you have all of these people in what's

today Germany speaking different

dialects or different variations of a

similar language right and so the

printing press um

requires some codification of that

language right so that everyone can read

it right so it's coming out of dialect

and into a formal language that we

eventually come to know as German and

this corresponds to the idea of

german-ness right in German as a nation

so that's just some places that he does

this or uses this um

I thought the taco was a good example of

what literacy means here so literacy of

the technological medium that organizes

society allows for a certain distance

from The Medium itself and there's

another example I'll give you

um or close the passage here on Taco

Bell he says the talk bill was a highly

literate Aristocrat who was able to be

detached from the values and assumptions

of topography

that is why he alone understood the

grammar of topography

and it is only on those terms standing

aside from any structure or medium that

its principles and lines of force can be

discerned so we need this literacy in

order to take distance in order to see

how this technology is affecting the way

that we organize ourselves

so let's talk a little bit more about

the mechanistic Paradigm this is the

Paradigm that we were in for a long time

and that um in some sense uh we still

have a literacy

um

mcluhan is arguing that we still have a

literacy based in or rooted in the

mechanistic Paradigm and the part of the

problem part of the dissonance in

society is that we haven't adapted our

literacy

um to Electric technology right

technology that starts with the light

bulb and leads all the way to the sort

of mass communications technology that

we have today so

um mechanistic the mechanistic or

mechanical Paradigm of Technology one

major thing is fragmentation

it chops bits up chops things up into

bits and parts a good example of

uh

late technology associated with this

would be the four disassembly line right

and if you don't know what that is

assembly line you know the production of

a car is coming through and each person

is doing a part and when they're

finished with that part it goes on so we

have a compartmentalization of the

different labor processes that go on

with making a car or a vehicle or

something like that so that's that's the

forest that's how Ford is some sort of

uh

communicates this fragmentation in terms

of a message that mcloone is talking

about

we can also talk about and I do think

that mcluhan has this in mind

um

mechanistic Technologies in some sense

going all the way back to things like

the alphabet

you have individual letters that can be

grouped together into words they can be

grouped together via grammar into

meaningful sentences and then so on and

so forth and longer and longer alone but

that development of grammar

to string words together is very

important for organization and the type

of literacy that's associated with the

mechanistic or mechanical

technological paradigm

but let's take another example

um which is time

we understand time and sort of chunks or

blocks whether it's a really really

small one like a second a minute hours

or days right

um

you know you might spend two hours a day

working on schoolwork you might spend

six or eight or ten hours a day working

in some other capacity you might spend

one hour a day at the gym things like

this you know or we break down our days

into these parts and it's only because

we break down our days into these parts

or we break time down

into these fragments you know 12 noon

1300 hours 1400 hours 1500 hours 1600

hours Seventeen hundred dollars

and so on and so forth It's only because

these things are fragmented or

compartmentalized in this way that we

have a sense of continuity

because there can't be continuity

amongst things that are not fragmented

right if something was a whole uniform

hole to begin with there's no need for

continuity it's just already flat so in

fragmenting things we we have continuity

and linearity and that's the way that we

understand time right as a continuous

process made up of bits this goes all

the way back to Aristotle who

understands times in terms of points on

a line right before and after the

present point

and we still understand time and and

organize our time and experience time um

based on this linear

structure that comes from fragmentation

and the argument would be that our

experience of space functions similarly

um

so let's talk about the movie example

give me a second to grab it

all right the movie example uh he uses

the movie as an as an example of the

technology here

um to sort of Mark uh

a shift between the mechanistic view of

time and the electric view of time so he

says here on page 12 he says

mechanization was never so vividly

fragmented or sequential

as in the birth of movies

the moment that translated us Beyond

mechanism into the world of growth and

organic interrelation the movie by Shear

speed by Shear speeding up the

mechanical carried us from the world of

sequence and connections into the world

of creative configuration and structure

so what's the difference here we're

still working with fragments chunks but

we're no longer looking at um

this type of particular ordering right

this uh sequential ordering that I was

talking about before with hours and days

when we see move when we watch movies we

have these uh pockets of time that are

displayed to us and then there's a cut

scene and then we see some other time

and we understand the connections

between these things so what we have

um

in movies is a demonstration of time a

time which is still fragmented in a way

but which traverses the linearity right

sometimes you have a movie that starts

um way in the past and that's the first

opening scene and then it cuts

immediately

um to Something in the present

and that

cut what's happening there is that we're

meant to see that actually the moment in

the distant past and the moment in the

present are immediately connected right

so they they it traverses the connection

the time is traversing all this linear

time in between and showing us immediate

connection

um so we're starting to see

um

time conceived through technology in a

different way with the movie that's the

reason that he uses this example

so

mcluhan sees this this way in which our

activity and our understanding and

experience of the world is organized by

a fragmentation via bits that can be

strung together as belonging to a

rational worldview

um this starts to be broken down already

with the invention of the light bulb

right because what's the what changes

suddenly

night time isn't that big of a deal

right so so the sort of natural

fragmentation of time day and night

um which you may say led to this sort of

grammar that we had with the mechanistic

worldview and the the mechanical

technological Paradigm

um this is shattered with the light bulb

because now we can work all through the

night right

um night and day doesn't matter and so

this

of Aristotelian time points of now

on a linear scale mcloone is saying this

is flattened out time is flattened out

it's no longer sequential it's no longer

um fragmented it's flat and unified

electricity unifies time

and

that's in part I think why he refers to

the central nervous system in the

introductory few pages there

the central nervous system receives and

coordinates stimuli and information at a

very fast speed right a speed that's um

difficult for us to comprehend with the

mechanistic worldview but um

with electric technology he's saying

that all of these activities the

organization of information and stimuli

at that speed are are are externalized

out into the world and so with the

electric light it flattens time and

space destroys the distance created in

the mechanistic Paradigm and it also

destroys our ability to read

the technological Paradigm that we're in

because the technological Paradigm that

we are in is no longer organizing Us in

this mechanistic way

proof and point that linear time has

been sort of flattened out already By

the Light Bulb quite some time ago

um so we move he says from a rational

um back into an irrational

um worldview

we were the mechanistic technological

Paradigm allowed for irrational ordering

of society and now we have an irrational

ordering of society

um

and this is where the problem lies right

he's anticipating in 1964 the age that

we're in now this distance that allows

us to take a you know a step away from

action as reaction that's no longer

that's no longer there and I think a

good example of that would be

he says we have no choice but to

participate in everything

um and a good example of that would be

the way that information is being

processed all the time by algorithms you

know I have Breakneck speed and this is

uh

now what I wanted to say is that our

actions are being processed

technologically digitally

um and being brought into

interrelation with

um other things uh without our doing it

right all of this this is why he says

that

um the barrier between individual and

society and societies globally has

broken down all of this stuff is

crossing paths all at once

um but rather than get into

specific examples on my behalf I think

that

you should because we'll do an

assignment about this you should think

about

um

how what he's talking about this shift

from the mechanistic or the mechanical

Paradigm into the electrical Paradigm or

the electric Paradigm how we experience

that today in the age of digital mass

communications

um

mcluhan's suggestion is that in 1964

um we don't have the distance from this

technology to see how it's ordering Our

Lives to see how it's

organizing the sphere of human activity

um

and then not having that literacy and

awareness it gives the technology almost

a certain autonomy over us right because

we're sort of blindly following

the content of the message so to speak

um or we're sort of blindly following

the path set out by the technology

without understanding what it is

um and so the task that he sets out here

is that we need to adapt a form of

literacy which makes sense in the age of

electric technology

yeah different speeds

flat interrelation immediacy

we need to come to terms with this

immediacy in order to develop what I

assume would be a new form of

rationality

so uh

that's your task good luck