The electric light is pure information. It 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. If it is asked, “What is the content of speech?,” it is necessary to say, “It is an actual process of thought, which is in itself nonverbal.” An abstract painting represents direct manifestation of creative thought processes as they might appear in computer designs.

That the content of writing is speech, and the content of speech, thought, etc. seems fairly self-evident. The bigger jumps here are accepting electric light as “pure information” and abstract painting as a “direct creative thought process” Perhaps a more specific content of electric light, which may or may not have occurred to MM in his own time is “non-virtual-space.” Electric light makes content possible by illuminating space or surfaces that are otherwise not illuminated by the Sun or another source of light. While this is comes pretty close to being the bottom line of “information” it clearly is only important to information that pertains to the eye. Electric light has little bearing on hearing, say. To call it a “medium without a message” sort of goes against his next, more important, point…

What we are considering here, however, are the psychic and social consequences of the designs or patterns as they amplify or accelerate existing processes. For the “message” of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs. 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 work and leisure. This happened whether the railway functioned in a tropical or a northern environment and is quite independent of the freight or content of the railway medium.

The “message” then is the effect. As such, the message of electric light is the effect it has on its environment including human affairs. It is not without a message, only it has such a large message(such a large effect on human affairs) that is difficult to see the forest for the trees, at least at this point in history. The railway example is important in that it shows the the effect from a high-level societal perspective. The introduction of railways, like electric light, disrupts the patterns of living of those in its sphere of influence a great deal. As regards the railway system, its effect can be seen a little better than electric light because it is now less ubiquitous. While his use of the terms “medium” and “message” tends to have some range, the phrase “The medium is the message” is essentially a call to pay attention to the effects of the means of conveyance and not only what is conveyed.

In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. This 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 by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology. -p. 8

MM starts off the first chapter with his most enduring truism “The Medium is the Message”. The “bit of a shock” he alludes to remains true, I think. One of his more salient examples which occurs at some point in UM is the relationship between bee and flower. On the level of bee or flower the process of pollination must appear as something like good natured work toward self-interested ends. However, in the case of either bee or flower, an awareness of the pollination process isn’t necessarily needed to complete it, just the drives from which the process is emergent. We are accustomed to working on the scale of drives and not necessarily processes, and we are particularly blind to processes of which we play an unacknowledged part. This is the shock I think MM is alluding to: the acknowledgement of processes that happen beyond the level of our conscious involvement.

MM goes on to discuss Automation as one example:

Thus, with automation, for example, the new patterns of human association tend to eliminate jobs, it is true. That is the negative result. Positively, automation creates roles for people, which is to say depth of involvement in their work and human association that our preceding mechanical technology had destroyed. Many people would be disposed to say that it was not the machine, but what one did with the machine, that was its meaning or message. In terms of the ways in which the machine altered our relations to one another and to ourselves, it mattered not in the least whether it turned out cornflakes or Cadillacs. The restructuring of human work and association was
shaped by the technique of fragmentation that is the essence of machine technology. The essence of automation technology is the opposite. It is integral and decentralist in depth, just as the machine was fragmentary, centralist, and superficial in its patterning of human relationships. -pp. 8-9

To extend the metaphor of the bee to the hive, another culture “long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control”, we certainly see a process of central control, fragmentation of roles, and superficiality of relationships. Indeed we graft our own experience on the bee and call it a “worker.” MM’s assumption seems to be that people of his time and possibly ours resist understanding themselves in this way, or perhaps expect deeper involvement. Is this true? If so, is this historically novel? Does it exist in opposition to an industrial society? Does it exist in relation to family/friend dynamics(for instance, one could look to family in an industrialized world for depth involvement not achieved outside of family. Does this weaken family bonds?) What other factors or technologies exist and are ubiquitous enough now that did not exist before that amplify either fragmentation or depth involvement as regards work? Is the proliferation of electronic communication the greatest factor?

“The aspiration of our time for wholeness, empathy and depth of awareness is a natural adjunct of electric technology. The age of mechanical industry that preceded us found vehement assertion of private outlook the natural mode of expression. Every culture and every age has its favorite model of perception and knowledge that it is inclined to prescribe for everybody and everything. The mark of our time is its revulsion against imposed patterns. We are suddenly eager to have things and people declare their beings totally.“

pp5-6

Here again MM appeals to the nowness of his own time. In many ways he is a kind of self styled tour guide of the 60s generation gap. This is part of the last couple paragraphs of his short introduction, and he appears to be marketing his work as a way to understand changing times. As the focus from understanding ourselves as mechanical processes shifts toward electronic processes, young people(or those most vulnerable to the media environment) prefer speed, spontaneity, and involvement to discrete or private association.

This makes me wonder if MM, writing nearer the onset of the electronic age views this as a novel reaction to the stimulus at the time. MM will argue later that the instantaneous nature of the electronic age is a reversal to tribal thought patterns. From the vantage-point of contemporary technology, does it not begin to look as if specialization is a short inter-period between actual pre-agrarian tribalism and electronic tribalism? That is, is tribal thought simply the more natural mode?

MM is closing out the introduction here and I’d like to make reference to a few recent things from my own media diet:

Richard Powers’ environmental fiction work The Overstory which i’ve recently read, is structured in such a way that it appears at first as anthology, then many of the characters are part of one story, then they diverge into separate stories. This coalescing and fragmenting is formatted to be much like the growth of a tree. The book is divided respectively into sections: Roots, Trunk, Crown, and Seeds. This of course made me think of MM’s anthropological perspective of tribalism>collectivism>tribalism as a roots>trunk>crown scenario. Adding the tree metaphor to UM’s many symbols. Hopefully this metaphor will be of continued use as I continue to post.

Rodney Asher’s new docudrama film A Glitch in the Matrix, contains a sequence where one of its subjects describes learning in school how different societies have different models for perception based on current technology (ie Roman Aquaducts=Bodily Humors theory). The subject speaks of the importance of realizing how tempting it is to take our favorite models of perception for granted. Of course the current model is the computer. Is MM’s electronic model closer to the computer, or perhaps internet, or is it something else?

And as regards internet prophecy, the NYT recent ran an article on Michael Goldhaber who is responsible for popularizing the term attention economy. While the politics of attention economy are certainly on topic for UUM, I want to use it to instead point out how theorizing often leads to authority. The article refers to Goldhaber as the “Cassandra of the Internet Age.” Like MM, there is an authority conferred on him not only because he was saying it first, but that he was saying it before the possibility of being tainted by the very thing he is describing. As contemporaries of our own problems with technology, there is a sense in which we are ruined by them and can not be trusted to see the forest for the the very enticing trees. It’s a common myth but is it really the case?

MM closes out his introduction with a quote from Robert Theobald on economics which is “There is one additional factor that has helped control depressions and that is the better understanding of their development”. He’s intimating that we mis-understand the power of media environments at our own peril, and that the consequences may be as lasting and as far reaching as economic depression. MM tends to be hyperbolic, so I doubt even he knew this would end up being an understatement.

“If the nineteenth century was the age of the editorial chair, ours is the century of the psychiatrist’s couch. As extension of man the chair is a specialist ablation of the posterior, a sort of ablative absolute of backside, whereas the couch extends the integral being. The psychiatrist employs the couch, since it removes the temptation to express private points of view and obviates the need to rationalize events.”

-p5

An early foray in UM into literalizing “extensions.” If these extensions seem a stretch, I would suggest considering them a prosthetic, which I’m sure MM eventually gets around to. Considering something like a chair a prosthetic and not merely an object or tool helps to move toward the meaning which is that every tool is a type of prosthesis(an assumption easier to consider with a wrench and tougher to consider as with a television)

Thinking of the chair specifically, Gabrielle Belle’s graphic short Cecil and Jordan in New York comes to mind. A story in which after many social disappointments the protagonist decides to become a chair. The surrealism here may work specifically because of the symbolism of objectification toward prosthesis.

While I agree that the chair and the couch obviate separate cognitive modes, I would add something to this distinction in direct relation to psychiatry. While the supine posture extends the integral being, it would also be said to nullify the body. Taking MM’s surgeon metaphor, a supine body is a posture prepared for intervention. Sitting to supine is a gesture that moves from active to passive.

“Electric speed in bringing all social and political functions together in a sudden implosion has heightened human awareness of responsibility to an intense degree. It is this implo-sive factor that alters the position of the Negro, the teen-ager, and some other groups. They can no longer be contained, in the political sense of limited association. They are now involved in our lives, as we in theirs, thanks to the electric media.”

-p5

While this is no doubt a commentary upon both the the civil rights and student activists movements that were happening around the time of the publication of UM, these ring particularly true in our current moment. In the 60’s this meant the use of widely available hand held camera footage as disseminated through national media outlets. In the 2010s this meant ubiquitous cell phone footage as disseminated through the internet(and then subsequently without fail through national media outlets) As I’ve written elsewhere in this piece on the rise of Trumpism:

Just like 40 years prior, new technology — cell phone cameras, and the internet — gave citizens more access to intolerable images of human tragedy. That same technology offered them images of confrontation and destruction. These images permeated the entire media environment, and scandalized a largely older, largely white, and largely rural and suburban voting public, and in the next presidential election in 2016 a “law and order” candidate emerged victorious. In those intervening years, the mass media had become far more sensational, pervasive, conservative, addictive, powerful and unmoored from the facts. Trump simply met that media on it’s own terms.  

That is, TV shifted the power dynamic, and the internet is again shifting that dynamic, and each has had their backlash or reversal.

“Western man acquired from the technology of literacy the power to act without reacting. The advantages of fragmenting himself in this way are seen in the case of the surgeon who would be quite helpless if he were to become humanly involved in the whole of mankind and to incorporate us with in his operation. We acquired the art of carrying out the most dangerous social operations with complete detachment.“

-p4

MM smartly uses the surgeon as his reference point for utter detachment, however his “most dangerous social operations” bring to mind the social operation of war. Clearly this is a social operation that doesn’t happen with full detachment as can be evidenced by the existence of PTSD in so many survivors of war. If McLuhan’s assumption that this fragmentation and aloofness decreases as electronic culture draws further into “involvement” with our actions, then this should bear out in the inability for soldiers to separate themselves from the violence they personify, the decreased inability to simply say “I had a job to do.” One could see this “involvement” going one of two ways 1. A soldier who has become personally involved in the carnage decides he/she cannot continue to make war. 2. A soldier who continues to make war either possesses the values (or lack thereof) that allow them to make the carnage of war or they must realign or work their values into “involvement”–to change their mind to reflect their choice. My suspicion is that the latter is actually the more prevalent. Involvement may not necessarily mean bringing your values into action, but turning actions into new values.

“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.

To kick off Mud Maps, I’ve decided to do a re-read of Marshall McLuhan’s book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. I’m reading the 1966 McGraw-Hill paperback reprint of the 1964 title with an introduction by McLuhan. I’ll be posting as I go, and offering comments, critiques, and conclusions drawn. Thanks for reading!