McLuhan Fer Ya
A guest I interviewed today for Spark reminded me of a great McLuhan quotation: “We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.”
We’re always looking at technological change in its immediate technical impacts, but with very little sense of all the social organization that surrounds it. The way the social changes with new technology always seems to catch us by surprise. Reminds me of another great bit of McLuhanism: “As long as we adopt the Narcissus attitude of regarding the extensions of our own bodies as really out there and really independent of us, we will meet all technological challenges with the same sort of banana-skin pirouette and collapse.”
What would it mean to look at our technologies, those ‘extensions of our own bodies’ as imbued with culture, and embedded within culture?
There are 5 Comments to "McLuhan Fer Ya"
http://mycanvassesaresurrealist.blogspot.com/
Hi Nora… your FeedBurner link has been busted for a few days….
http://crispermachine.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default points to http://feeds.feedburner.com/Crisper which is returning an error.
Hmm. Thanks! I will look into it….
hi nora – hope you’re well.
hmmm.. i’ve wondered about the extensions of ourselves idea since reading about technologies as interfaces with experience (http://transition.turbulence.org/blog/2007/10/22/prosthetic-technologies-as-interfaces/).
thinking about it this way creates a means to engage, and really engage, with the technology as one part of a greater context, flipping a switch to map the larger ecosystem.
I was always struck by McLuhan’s terribly prescient words from his “Understanding Media” back in 1964, where he spoke of our technologies as being extensions of ourselves and how electronic tech was an extension of our nervous systems:
“Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from 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.”
Wise words from over 40 years ago. I hope we’re ready to listen.
cheers