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

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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

For the "content" of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried b y the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind. The effect of the medium is made strong and . intense just because it is given another medium as "content." The " content of a movie is a novel or a play or an opera. The effect of . the movie for m is not related to its program content. The "con. tent" of writin g or print is speech, but the reader is almost entirely , unaware either of print or of speech. p40

Money has reorganized the sense life of peoples just because it is an extension of our sense lives. . p41

It is not an exaggeration to say that the future of modern society and the stability of its inner life depend in large part on the maintenance of an equilibrium between the strength of the techniques of communication and the capacity of the individual's own reaction. p42

The alphabet, when pushed to , ;i high degree of abstract visual intensity, became typography. , I lie printed wor d wit h its specialist intensity burst the bonds of medieval corporate guilds and monasteries, creating extreme , individualist patterns of enterprise and monopoly. But the typical . reversal occurred when extremes of monopoly brought back t h e corporation, wit h its impersonal empire over many lives. , . P45

A tribal and feudal hierarchy of traditional kind collapses quickly when i t meets any hot medium of the mechanical, uniform, and repetitive kind. The medium of , , . money or wheel or writing , or any other for m of specialist speed, up of exchange and information, wil l serve to fragment a tribal , structure. P46

I n fact, it is the technique of insight, and , , as such is necessary for media study, since no medium has its , meaning or existence alone, but only in constant interplay wit h , other media. P48

I n the special Russian issue of Life magazine for September 13, 1963, it is mentioned in Russian restaurants and night clubs, "though the Charleston is tolerated, the Twis t is taboo." Al l , " this is to say that a country i n the process of industrialization is inclined to regard hot jazz as consistent wit h its developing programs. The cool and involved form of the Twist, on the other , hand, would strike such a culture at once as retrograde and in -compatible wit h its new mechanical stress. The Charleston, wit h . , its aspect of a mechanical doll agitated b y strings, appears i n Russia , as an avant-garde form . We , on the other hand, find the avant. , , garde i n the cool and the primitive, wit h its promise of depth in , -volvement and integral expression. P49

Margaret Mead described in Time magazine (September 4, 1954): "There are too , many complaints about society having to move too fast to keep up wit h the machine. . P50

I n this connection an insurance ad that featured Dad i n an iron lung surrounded b y a joyful family group did more to strike terror into the reader than all the warning wisdom i n the world . I t is a . question that arises in connection wit h capital punishment. Is a . severe penalty the best deterrent to serious crime? Wit h regard to the bomb and the cold war, is the threat of massive retaliation , the most effective means to peace? P52

The passive consumer wants packages, but those, he suggested, who are concerned in pursuing , , knowledge and i n seeking causes wil l resort to aphorisms, just , because they are incomplete and require participation in depth. P53

The price of eternal vigilance is indifference. P53

The passive consumer wants packages, but those, he suggested, who are concerned in pursuing , , knowledge and i n seeking causes wil l resort to aphorisms, just , because they are incomplete and require participation in depth. P53

to the literary person wh o is quite unaware of the intensely abstract nature of the typographic medium, it is , the grosser and participant forms of art that seem "hot," and the " abstract and intensely literary for m that seems "cool." " p54

As W . B. Yeats wrot e of this reversal, "The visible worl d is no longer . , a reality and the unseen worl d is no longer a dream." P57

Western worl d is going Eastern, even as the East goes Western. , Joyce encoded this reciprocal reverse in his crypti c phrase: p57 

atomic physicist at the present moment is the flunky of the war lords. P59

One of the most common causes of breaks in any system is the cross-fertilization wit h another system, such as happened to print , with the steam press, or wit h radio and movies (that yielded the , ialkies). Today wit h microfilm and micro-cards, not to mention , electric memories, the printed wor d assumes again much of the , handicraft character of a manuscript. But printing fro m movable . type was, itself, the major break boundary i n the history of , , phonetic literacy, just as the phonetic alphabet had been the , break boundary between tribal and individualist man. P61 

Hans Selye and Adolphe Jonas hold that all extensions of ourselves, i n sickness or i n health, are attempts to maintain equilibrium. An y extension of ourselves they regard as "autoamputatdon," and they find that the autoamputative power or strategy is resorted to b y the body when the perceptual power cannot locate or avoid the cause of irritation. P64

Wit h the arrival of electric technology, man extended, or , , set outside himself, a live model of the central nervous system it , -self. T o the degree that this is so, i t is a development that suggests , a desperate and suicidal autoamputation, as if the central nervous , system could no longer depend on the physical organs to be protective buffers against the slings and arrows of outrageous mechanism. P65

T o behold, use or perceive any extension of ourselves i n , technological for m is necessarily to embrace it. T o listen to radio . or to read the printed page is to accept these extensions of ourselves into our personal system and to undergo the "closure" or " displacement of perception that follows automatically. P68


y continuously embracing technologies, w e relate ourselves to them as servomechanisms. P68

Physiologically, man i n the normal use of technology (or his variously extended body) is perpetually modified b y it and i n tur n finds ever new ways of modifying his technology. Man be. comes, as i t were, the sex organs of the machine world , as the , bee of the plant world , enabling i t to fecundate and to evolve , ever new forms. The machine worl d reciprocates man's love b y . expediting his wishes and desires, namely, in providing him wit h , , wealth. One of the merits of motivation research has been the revelation of man's sex relation to the motorcar. P68

The City in History, considers the walled city itself an extension of our skins, as much as housing and clothing. , p69


T he principle of numbness comes into play wit h electric technology, as wit h any other. W e have to numb our central . nervous system when i t is extended and exposed, or we wil l die. , T hus the age of anxiety and of electric media is also the age of the unconscious and of apathy. But it is strikingly the age of . consciousness of the unconscious, i n addition. Wit h our central , . nervous system strategically numbed, the tasks of conscious aware, ness and order are transferred to the physical life of man, so that , for the first time he has become aware of technology as an extension of his physical body. Apparently this could not have . happened before the electric age gave us the means of instant, total field-awareness. Wit h such awareness, the subliminal life, , private and social, has been hoicked up into ful l view, wit h the , , result that we have "social consciousness" presented to us as a cause of guilt-feelings. . P69

I n the electric age we wear all mankind as our skin. P69

Wit h literacy no w about to hybridize the cultures of the Chinese, the Indians, and the Africans, we are , , , about to experience such a release of human power and aggressive violence as makes the previous history of phonetic alphabet technology seem quite tame. P72

For the fragmented man creates the homogenized Western world , whil e oral societies are made up of , people differentiated, not b y their specialist skills or visible marks, , but b y their unique emotional mixes. The oral man's inner worl d . is a tangle of complex emotions and feelings that the Western practical man has long ago eroded or suppressed withi n himself i n the interest of efficiency and practicality. P72

Our private and corporate lives have become information processes just because we have put our central nervous systems outside us in electric technology. . P74

Wha t I am saying is that media as extensions of our senses institute new ratios, not only among our private senses, but among , , ihcmsclves, when they interact among themselves. Radio changed . i he form of the news story as much as it altered the film image in i li e talkies. T V caused drastic changes i n radio programming, and . , in the form of the thing or documentary novel. P75

Artists in various fields are always the first to discover how to enable one medium to use or to release the power of another. P76

By putting our physical bodies inside our extended nervous systems, b y means of electric media, we set up a dynamic b y , which all previous technologies that are mere extensions of hands and feet and teeth and bodily heat-controls—all such extensions of our bodies, including cities—will be translated into informa, tion systems. Electromagnetic technology requires utter human docility and quiescence of meditation such as befits an organism that no w wears its brain outside its skull and its nerves outside its hide. Man must serve his electric technology wit h the same . servo-mechanistic fidelity wit h which he served his coracle, his , canoe, his typography, and all other extensions of his physicalorgans. P79

Having extended or translated our central nervous system into the electromagnetic technology, it is , but a further stage to transfer our consciousness to the computer worl d as well. Then, at least, w e shall be able to program con. , , sciousness i n such wise that it cannot be numbed nor distracted b y the Narcissus illusions of the entertainment worl d that beset mankind when he encounters himself extended in his ow n gimmickry . P82

T o have a disease without its symptoms is to be immune. . P82

I f i t is true that the artist possesses the means of anticipating and avoiding the consequences of technological trauma, then what , are we to think of the worl d and bureaucracy of "art appreciation"? Woul d it not seem suddenly to be a conspiracy to make the artist a frill , a fribble, or a Milltown? I f men were able to be , , convinced that art is precise advance knowledge of ho w to cope wit h the psychic and social consequences of the next technology, p88

T he modern metropolis is no w sprawling helplessly after the impact of the motorcar. As a response to the challenge of . railway speeds the suburb and the garden city arrived too late, or just i n time to become a motorcar disaster. . P88-89

Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those w h o would tr y to benefit fro m taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes , . and ears and nerves to commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the , earth's atmosphere to a company as a monopoly. . P90

Archimedes once said, "Give me a place to stand and I wil l , move the world." Today he woul d have pointed to our electric media and said, " I wil l stand on your eyes, your ears, your , , , nerves, and your brain, and the worl d wil l move in any tempo or , pattern I choose." W e have leased these "places to stand" to " " private corporations. P90

Language does for intelligence what the wheel does f or the feet and the body. . P101

Electric technology does not need words any more than the digital computer needs numbers. Electricity points the . w a y to an extension of the process of consciousness itself, on a , worl d scale, and without any verbalization whatever. P102

The computer, i n short, promises b y technology , , a Pentecostal condition of universal understanding and unity. P102

As a civilized UNESC O experiment, running water—with its lineal , organization of pipes—was installed recently i n some Indian vil -lages. Soon the villagers requested that the pipes be removed, for , it seemed to them that the whole social life of the village had been impoverished when it was no longer necessary for all to visit the communal well. T o us the pipe is a convenience. W e do not think . . of it as culture or as a product of literacy, any more than we think , of literacy as changing our habits, our emotions, or our perceptions. P108 

As we move out of the Gutenberg era of our ow n culture, we can more readily discern its primary features of homogeneity, uniformity, and continuity. These were the characteristics that . gave the Greeks and Romans their easy ascendancy over the nonliterate barbarians. The barbarian or tribal man, then as now, . , was hampered b y cultural pluralism, uniqueness, and discontinuity. , , p109

Lack of homogeneity in speed of information movement creates diversity of patterns i n organization. I t is quite predictable, . then, that any new means of moving information wil l alter any power structure whatever. . P113


The older arrangements had not been made wit h a view to such speeds, and people begin to sense a draining, away of life values as they tr y to make the old physical forms adjust to the new and speedier movement. These problems, . however, are not new. Julius Caesar's first act upon assuming . power was to restrict the night movement of wheeled vehicles in the city of Rome in order to permit sleep. Improved transport . i n the Renaissance turned the medieval walled towns into slums. P117

Division of labor always creates a separation between producer and consumer, even as i t tends to separate the place of , wor k and the living space. . P122

Throughout Western history we have traditionally and rightl y regarded letters as the source of civilization, and looked to , our literatures as the hallmark of civilized attainment. Yet all . along, there has been wit h us a shadow of number, the language , of science. I n isolation, number is as mysterious as writing . Seen . , . as an extension of our physical bodies, it becomes quite intelligible. , p129

Since all media are extensions of our ow n bodies and senses, and since we habitually translate one sense into another in our ow n experience, it need not surprise us that our extended , senses or technologies should repeat the process of translation and assimilation of one for m into another. Thi s process may well . be inseparable fro m the character of touch, and fro m the abra, sively interfaced action of surfaces, whether i n chemistry or , crowds or technologies. . P138

W e are confronted here once more wit h that basic function of media—to store and to expedite information. Plainly, to store is . , to expedite, since what is stored is also more accessible than what , has to be gathered. The fact that visual information about flowers . and plants cannot be stored verbally also points to the fact that science in the Western worl d has long been dependent on the visual factor. No r is this surprising in a literate culture based on . the technology of the alphabet, one that reduces even spoken , language to a visual mode. As electricity has created multiple non. visual means of storing and retrieving information, not only cul, ture but science also has shifted its entire base and character. For . the educator, as well as the philosopher, exact knowledge of wha t , , this shift means for learning and the mental process is not necessary. P180-181

"The more there were, the fewer there are. P181

Wes t had to technologize more intensively than the ancient worl d had done. I n the same wa y the American farmer, con. , fronted wit h new tasks and opportunities, and at the same time , wit h a great shortage of human assistance, was goaded into a , frenzy of creation of labor-saving devices. I t would seem that the . logic of success in this matter is the ultimate retirement of the wor k force fro m the scene of toil. I n a word , automation. If this, . , . however, has been the motive behind all of our human technologies, it does not follo w that we are prepared to accept the consequences. I t helps to get one's bearings to see the process at wor k i n remote times when wor k meant specialist servitude, and , leisure alone meant a life of human dignity and involvement of the whole man. P183

As the retinal impression is intensified, objects cease to cohere i n a space of their ow n making, and, , instead, become "contained" i n a uniform, continuous, and " "rational" space. Relativity theory i n 1905 announced the dissolu. tion of uniform Newtonian space as an illusion or fiction, however useful. Einstein pronounced the doom of continuous or "rational" space, and the wa y was made clear fo r Picasso and the Marx brothers and MAD. P185

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