Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

Today the words of Understanding Media seem in many ways to be merely the utterances of facts which are readily available to our understanding when looking at the continuous flattening of the world around us. However, at the time of McLuhan's writing, the age of the isolated Western intellect was finally influencing itself back to a more tribal reality of unity by means of its own technological achievements. McLuhan's media analysis is perhaps something which should be approached with the realization that he was writing at this truly stupendous speed up of the technological age which slowly had crept from human literacy all the way to the general literacy of the Gutenberg press to the eventual changes which were concomitant with electricity. Because of his temporal placement, he perhaps places a great deal more of what seems to be a positive moral spin on the developments of media as the Western world moves from the isolated world of the individualistic form of the book to the more tribal, immediate world of electricity.

Nevertheless, his message is a salient reminder of the fact that we are still on the verge of something which is wholly new and yet wholly old in the understanding of humanity. It has often been our tendency in the West to work segmented specialists with tendencies toward dualities, dichotomies, and segmentation as opposed to the more holistic view which is more noticeable in the smaller-scale tribal world of our ancestry. However, as McLuhan astutely observes, it is of great importance that we pay attention to the media of our day, not just in the traditional sense, but in the broader sense of how we represent the extensions of our humanity in all forms, from the most simple of media, light, to those far more complex forms of transportation and those forms of communication more commonly referred to as media in contemporary colloquial settings.

His assertion that "the media is the message" can seem to overplay the importance of the means of humanity's self-extension in contrast to the content of that extension. However, his insight of various forms of media, with their tendencies toward individualization versus tribalization as well as propensities for or against participation, should give us all pause as we look at the new forms of media which are developing in our own day. Humanity is further extending itself by means of globalization which is quickly allow for a greater extend of tribalization and communicative unity in the world. In many ways, the issues of globalization and the increased individual participation which is concomitant with it must give the Western mind no little pause as we venture into a world which is in many ways foreign to our individualized character.

However, the hope is in a revitalization of all that is good in the West through McLuhan's concept of the hybridization of media which proffers the possibility of new forms unforeseen when seemingly disparate media combine. While McLuhan's work appears to be something of a panegyric for the sun-setting of individualism in the Western way of thought, his work is highly instructive in the forces which face us in a day when a great involution of humanity is quite possible if we have the moral rectitude to see it through to a good end.

Instead of writing a lengthy appraisal of McLuhan's UNDERSTANDING MEDIA and try to summarize his importance as a thinker and philosopher, I think I'll just quote Tom Wolfe:

"Suppose he is what he sounds like, the most important thinker since Newton, Darwin, Freud, Einstein, and Pavlov?"

McLuhan was, is, and (I suspect) will be required reading for anyone interested in media, as a participant or observer. His prose is turgid, repetitive, and challenging. Some of his concepts change to fit the way he wants to use them to argue a given point. He was daring; he tried to stare into the future, and he got it wrong at least as often as he got it right. But, when he DID get it right, it is astonishing to think that he was writing over forty years ago as he absolutely nails a trend in media in 2007. So, for that reason, I think that the words visionary, prophet and seer - so frequently thrown around - actually do apply to McLuhan. Once you've read a bit of him, it's also fun to watch how often McLuhan's ideas are erroneously cited or used elsewhere, as in that great scene in Annie Hall where, as I remember it, Woody and Annie are standing in line waiting to buy movie tickets and someone is spouting off about McLuhan. Finally, Woody can't stand it any longer so he drags McLuhan in person back down the line to have him tell the spouter - paraphrasing here - "It's clear to me that you know nothing about my ideas."

McLuhan rewards, confounds, and infuriates the reader. He's worth the trouble.

With all the ink spilt over UNDERSTANDING MEDIA it is easy to forget that it is just a book full of printed words, one of the media McLuhan discussed. Wait one second, if the message, in itself, doesn't really matter, if the media is the message, what differentiated this book from any other? It was his literary style, his dichotomies, his analogies and his metaphors.

The fact is that inventing dichotomies is like asserting theories without any evidence. How can you prove the validity of a dichotomy? Couldn't these dichotomies become distortions, even an abuse of language? And although Marshall doesn't proclaim any morality involved by using his dichotomies, it is implicitly there.

McLuhan's linguistic technique was to use dichotomies such as media and message, such as hot and cold media, such as electric and pre-electric culture. He placed his dichotomies like stones across a river. Once the readers step off the shore they must keep stepping on these stones, these dichotomies, or go splash. There is no way to turn around.

The problem with McLuhan's message, with his vocabulary, with particularly his terms "extensions" and "media" is that he implied a rather ridiculous metaphor with them. His term, "extensions" depicted man being jerked by the unseen puppeteer, outside strings attached to the numb puppet to make him dance.

As he discussed at length in Chapter 21, The Press, McLuhan was very aware that he was spinning the words. He had a corporate image of his own to enhance, UNDERSTANDING MEDIA, itself. He was his own press agent. Listen to him on P. 213,: "Today's press agent regard the newspaper as a ventriloquist does his dummy." McLuhan was both writing a book and advertising that book at the same time. He wasn't hung up on being accurate -- he knew the spinning power of fiction. On P. 216 he speaks of "dressing up language." It becomes obvious that he used all the techniques he discussed in advertising while writing this book.

His idea that man's brain was a blank tableau, a tabula rasa, set the reader up for his dichotomies that all media were extensions of man's brain or central nervous system, CNS. But is man's CNS a tabula rasa? One thinks not. The various media he listed are all part and parcel of man's CNS. It would have been more accurate to term McLuhan's so called "extensions" as dimensions. These "extensions" never actually existed outside McLuhan's thesis and vocabulary.

A VERY GOOD BOOK INDEED. A POWERFUL LITTLE THING. TAMP OUT YOUR JOINTS. CLEAR YOUR HEADS OF COCAINE. GET A GOOD OLD FIFTY YEAR OLD DICTIONARY AND SETTLE DOWN TO A GOOD READ...