User:ThomasW/Notes McLuhan Marshall Understanding Media The Extensions of Man

Still reading it, not done + got some problem with OCR when copying from the PDF to text files.. need editing, this is a quick copy past to get it on to the kiwi to later decide if the texts are worth fine tuning..

McLuhan_Marshall_Understanding_Media_The_Extensions_of_Man

McLuhan suggests that in the twentieth century as in the sixteenth, the literary man prefers "to view wit h alarm to point wit h pride, while scrupulously ignoring what's going on." " page 12

If the media are nothing more than the means of storing and transporting information, and , if by assuming the character of information commodities can be moved by fiber optics, fax machines, and AT M cards, then why , , , bother to maintain an infrastructure geared to the purposes of medieval Europe or ancient Rome? Page 14

McLuhan accurately accounts for the orders of priority by saying that the historians and archeologists one day wil l discover that the twentieth century's commercial advertisements (like the stained-glass windows of fourteenth century cathedrals) offer the "richest and most faithful reflections that any society ever made of its entire range of activities."  Page 15

we become what we behold. . . . We . shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us" page 19

Typographic man assumed that A follows B, that people who , made things—whether cities, ideas, families, or works of art— , , , measured their victories (usually Pyrrhic) over periods of time longer than those sold to the buyers of beer commercials. Graphic man . imagines himself living in the enchanted garden of the eternal now. If all the world can be seen simultaneously, and if all mankind's joy , and suffering is always and everywhere present (if not on CN N or Oprah, then on the "Sunday Night Movie" or MTV) , nothing " , necessarily follows from anything else. Sequence becomes merely . additive instead of causative. Like the nomadic hordes wandering . across an ancient desert in search of the soul's oasis, graphic man , embraces the pleasures of barbarism and swears fealty to the sovereignty of the moment. Page 21

In the electric age, when our central nervous system is technologically extended to involve us in the whole of mankind and to incorporate the whole of mankind i n us, we necessarily participate, i n depth, in the , , , consequences of our every action. Page 26

There is one additional factor that has helped to control depressions, and that is a better , understanding of their development. Page 28

Thi s is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium—that is, of any extension of ourselves—result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs b y each extension of ourselves, or b y any new technology. . Page 29

The electric light is pure information. I t is a medium without a message, as it were, unless it is used to spell out some verbal ad or name. This fact, characteristic of all media, means that the "content" of any medium is always another medium. The content of writing is speech, just as the written word is the content of print, and print is the content of the telegraph. I f it is asked, What is the content of speech?," it is necessary to say, "I t is an actual process of thought, which is i n itself nonverbal." A n abstract painting represents direct manifestation of creative thought processes as they might appear in computer designs. Page 30

The railway did not introduce movement or transportation or wheel or road into human society, but it accelerated and enlarged the scale of previous human functions, creating totally new kinds of cities and new , kinds of wor k and leisure. . Page 30

content" of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium. . Page 31

"W e are too prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for the sins of those who wield them. The products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value." Tha t is the voice of the current somnambulism. Suppose we were to say, "Appl e pie is i n itself neither good nor bad; it is the wa y it is used that determines its value." Or, "The smallpox virus is i n itself neither good nor bad; i t is the wa y i t is used that determines its value." Again, "Firearms are i n themselves neither good nor bad; it is the wa y they are used that determines their value." Tha t is, if the slugs reach the right people firearms are good. I f the T V tube fires the right ammunition at the right people it is good. I am not being perverse. Page 31

Three hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets." Page 35

Consider the phrase "It's a man's world." As a quantitative observation endlessly repeated fro m withi n a homogenized culture, this phrase refers to the men , in such a culture wh o have to be homogenized Dagwoods i n order to belong at all. Page 39