This topic is related to the discussion on how the use of mass media, for example internet, influences our way of life,
our nervous system and consciousness. Is this provocative to the point of being outrageous? Are some media cool and
are some hot? Are they an extension of our nervous system? A cause of an electrical revitalization of the West?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko6J9v1C9zE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImaH51F4HBw&list=PL354DF11226F1B819
A delightful '70's style presentation
My main interest in this book is, that McLuan's vision was based on that moment in time, that life experience of his.
Looking back now, we can find how and if McLuan's vision and understanding of his world, his box of thinking, holds truth
in finding evidence of it in our present world. And if not, how the causes can be found that shape our virtual reality and
the impact of it on our lives and consciousness, our nervous system, different from the reality McLuan perceived as our
possible future. McLuan may have found, when still alive to this day, that he practiced wishful thinking in his vision of a
virtual world connecting us on all levels, as in interdependency, perceived by Ghandi as a beneficial way of life.
When the book was in print and Marshall received the first, he found that the title "The medium is the message" was
mistakenly changed into "The medium is the massage". He liked it and also used the last word of that title as "Mass-age"
at times.
On my trip through the UK, during a stay with a homeowner, offering her home to share, generously gave me the book,
allowing me time to read it and in due time send it back to her. It's high level acrobatics for my brain
at times in
need of moving in circles, back to where I was..... on the page.... hmmm, where was I?
Here are some parts of the book "The medium is the massage" by Marshall McLuhan:
"Art, or the graphic translation of a culture, is shaped by the way space is perceived. Since the Renaissance, the Western
artist perceived his environment primarily in terms of the visual. Everything was dominated by the eye of the beholder. His
conception of space was in terms of a perspective projection upon a plane surface consisting of formal units of spatial
measurement. He accepted the dominance of the vertical and the horizontal – of symmetry- as an absolute condition of
order. This view is deeply embedded in the consciousness of Western art.
Primitive and pre-alphabet people integrate time and space as one and live in an acoustic, horizonless, boundless, olfactory
space, rather than in visual space. Their graphic presentations is like an x-ray. They put in everything they know, rather than
only what they see. A drawing of a man hunting seal on an ice floe will show not only what is on top of the ice, but what lies
underneath as well. The primitive artist twists and tilts the various possible visual aspects until they fully explain what he
wishes to represent.
(Carl Orff, the noted contemporary German composer, has refused to accept as a student any bu the preschool child –
the child whose spontaneous sense perceptions have not yet been channeled by formal, literary, visual prejudices.)
"Electric circuitry is recreating in us the multi-dimensional space orientation of the "primitive."
"Ours is a brand-new world of all-at-once-ness."Time" has ceased, "space" has vanished. We now live in a global village…..
a simultaneous happening. We are back in acoustic space. We have begun again to structure the primordial feeling, the tribal
emotions from which a few centuries of literacy divorced us. We have and to shift our stress of attention from action to
reaction. We must now know in advance the consequences of any policy or action, since the results are experienced without
delay. Because of electric speed, we can no longer wait and see. George Washington once remarked "We haven't heard from
Benjamin Franklin in Paris this year. We should write him a letter".
"At the high speeds of electric communication, purely visual means of apprehending the world are no longer possible; they are just
too slow to be relevant or effective."
"Unhappily, we confront this new situation with an enormous backlog of outdated mental and psychological responses. We have
been left d-a-n-g-l-i-n-g. Our most impressive words and thoughts betray us – they refer us only to the past, not to the present".
"Electric circuitry profoundly involves men with one another. Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously. As soon
as information is acquired, it is very rapidly replaced by still newer information. Our electrically-configured world has forced us to
move from the habit of data classification to the mode of pattern recognition. We can no longer build serially, block-by-block, step-
by-step, because instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of experience co-exist in a state of active
interplay".
our nervous system and consciousness. Is this provocative to the point of being outrageous? Are some media cool and
are some hot? Are they an extension of our nervous system? A cause of an electrical revitalization of the West?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko6J9v1C9zE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImaH51F4HBw&list=PL354DF11226F1B819
A delightful '70's style presentation
My main interest in this book is, that McLuan's vision was based on that moment in time, that life experience of his.
Looking back now, we can find how and if McLuan's vision and understanding of his world, his box of thinking, holds truth
in finding evidence of it in our present world. And if not, how the causes can be found that shape our virtual reality and
the impact of it on our lives and consciousness, our nervous system, different from the reality McLuan perceived as our
possible future. McLuan may have found, when still alive to this day, that he practiced wishful thinking in his vision of a
virtual world connecting us on all levels, as in interdependency, perceived by Ghandi as a beneficial way of life.
When the book was in print and Marshall received the first, he found that the title "The medium is the message" was
mistakenly changed into "The medium is the massage". He liked it and also used the last word of that title as "Mass-age"
at times.
On my trip through the UK, during a stay with a homeowner, offering her home to share, generously gave me the book,
allowing me time to read it and in due time send it back to her. It's high level acrobatics for my brain
at times in need of moving in circles, back to where I was..... on the page.... hmmm, where was I?
Here are some parts of the book "The medium is the massage" by Marshall McLuhan:
"Art, or the graphic translation of a culture, is shaped by the way space is perceived. Since the Renaissance, the Western
artist perceived his environment primarily in terms of the visual. Everything was dominated by the eye of the beholder. His
conception of space was in terms of a perspective projection upon a plane surface consisting of formal units of spatial
measurement. He accepted the dominance of the vertical and the horizontal – of symmetry- as an absolute condition of
order. This view is deeply embedded in the consciousness of Western art.
Primitive and pre-alphabet people integrate time and space as one and live in an acoustic, horizonless, boundless, olfactory
space, rather than in visual space. Their graphic presentations is like an x-ray. They put in everything they know, rather than
only what they see. A drawing of a man hunting seal on an ice floe will show not only what is on top of the ice, but what lies
underneath as well. The primitive artist twists and tilts the various possible visual aspects until they fully explain what he
wishes to represent.
(Carl Orff, the noted contemporary German composer, has refused to accept as a student any bu the preschool child –
the child whose spontaneous sense perceptions have not yet been channeled by formal, literary, visual prejudices.)
"Electric circuitry is recreating in us the multi-dimensional space orientation of the "primitive."
"Ours is a brand-new world of all-at-once-ness."Time" has ceased, "space" has vanished. We now live in a global village…..
a simultaneous happening. We are back in acoustic space. We have begun again to structure the primordial feeling, the tribal
emotions from which a few centuries of literacy divorced us. We have and to shift our stress of attention from action to
reaction. We must now know in advance the consequences of any policy or action, since the results are experienced without
delay. Because of electric speed, we can no longer wait and see. George Washington once remarked "We haven't heard from
Benjamin Franklin in Paris this year. We should write him a letter".
"At the high speeds of electric communication, purely visual means of apprehending the world are no longer possible; they are just
too slow to be relevant or effective."
"Unhappily, we confront this new situation with an enormous backlog of outdated mental and psychological responses. We have
been left d-a-n-g-l-i-n-g. Our most impressive words and thoughts betray us – they refer us only to the past, not to the present".
"Electric circuitry profoundly involves men with one another. Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously. As soon
as information is acquired, it is very rapidly replaced by still newer information. Our electrically-configured world has forced us to
move from the habit of data classification to the mode of pattern recognition. We can no longer build serially, block-by-block, step-
by-step, because instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of experience co-exist in a state of active
interplay".
