“After three thousand years of explosion, by means of fragmentary and mechanical technologies, the Western world is imploding. During the mechanical ages we had extended our bodies in space. Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man– the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society, much as we have already extended our senses and our nerves by the various media. Whether the extension of consciousness, so long sought by advertisers for specific products, will be “a good thing” is a question that admits of a wide solution.”

-pp3-4

McLuhan is coming out swinging! I have to think he loses as many readers as he gains here in the first paragraph with his use of conversational voice, the grandiosity of his predictions, and the way he simply expects the reader to jump in to the already moving stream of his thought. Seems he relies on the provacative nature of his assertions to draw the reader further on to suss out the meaning. This feels like the narrative mode and not the philosophical or scientific necessarily in that it draws the reader on through intrigue and may take knowing the whole of the work, really to understand any of it’s constituent parts. Although, this is the intro, so he’s allowed some broad strokes.

He sets up a 3 part narrative here of which only the 3rd part remains “The technological simulation of consciousness” Part of the thrill of reading UM some 60ish years since its publishing is deliberating on whether any of his predictions have come to pass. Cinematically, this “simulation of consciousness” could be read the iconic scene in The Matrix when the protagonist, NEO, declares “I know Kung-fu” after having the knowledge of it downloaded like a computer into his brain. This sort of simulation is still a ways off it seems, but as is usually the case, McLuhan’s prophecies admit quite a bit of speculation. Another film, Netflix’s “The Social Dilemma” a recent 2020 docudrama about the moral implications of data collection by internet social network platforms lays out a picture of consciousness simulation through the creation of digital proxies of users that can help advertising platforms predict if they will be open to the suggestion of types online advertising (perhaps the most ubiquitous contemporary version of simulation). With “Much as we have already extended our senses,” MM includes the extension into the “simulation” atmosphere of television by the 1960s and the already colossal power of TV advertising. It would seem we haven’t yet fulfilled this 3rd state of his prophecy as laid out here quite yet, but surely making “rapid” strides toward it.

On a personal note, my first reading of UM would have been around 2006, just about 15 years ago. It’s worth noting that in that 15 year period, we have gone from the height of social networking optimism with the advent of many platforms such as Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter, the various “Spring” and “occupy” movements they’ve helped create, to a very wary attitude about these platforms and the future of the internet itself after numerous scandals, such as Cambridge Analytica and QAnon. McLuhan’s question of whether more powerful simulations will be “a good thing” begs the moral question that is perhaps more relevant now than then.