HERBERT MARSHALL MCLUHAN Born Edmonton, Alberta, Canada 21 July 1911 Moved to Winnipeg at an early age - 23 years Born - U. MANITOBA 1934 MR - U. MANITOBA 1935 Converted Holy Thursday 1936, at age of 25 Married Corinne Lewis 1939 6 children -- 4 daughters, 2 sons. D.Litt - Cambridge in 1942 "Place of Thomas Nashe in the Learning of his Time" under F.R. Leauis. Taught at U of Wisconsin, St. Louis, Assumption College in Windsor, Ontario. Join English Dept at St. Mike's in 1946 Centre for Culture & Tech University Prof. 1963 Stroke in Fall, 1979 Died Toronto, age 69, 31 Dec 1 980 Major Books: Mechanical Bride Gutenberg Galaxy - Gou. Gen Understanding Media (x10sions of man) Laws of the Media. papers and speechs number in the hundreds. 11 honorary doctorates REVIEW MY HISTORY I chose this topic because being a teacher on exchange has made me conscious, in a new and valuable way, of what being a teacher is, and how much I owe to the teachers I have had. It also occured to me, that not much has been said about McLuhan as a teacher. In fact McLuhan was a uery special teacher, and those qualities in him which made him special, deserve recognition. McLuhan was special because he was uery willing to give time to any and every student who wanted it, and my case is only one example among very, very many. Not only was he willing to give time, he also had ABSOLUTE respect for his students -- not in any mundane or formal sense, but in a much deeper way, that made them more aware of their own unique qualities and value. My own case exemplifies both his willingness to take time and his ability to generate self-respect. He took the time, at my request, to examine my reading skills. Because I thought something was wrong. I was reading so slowly. He assured me that there was nothing wrong with my skills, and that there was nothing wrong with being a slow reader. This may not seem like much, but it made all the difference for me. Other examples of his willingness to make time for me would be his agreement to come and talk to a group I was connected with, at no cost, even though he was capable of commanding hundreds of dollars in fees for his presentations. Also, when I decided to go into graduate school at the Uniuersity of Alberta, he remembered me after an absence of about three years. He was willing to write me a letter of recommendation, and even connected me with colleagues there so I could be involved in the creative vortex of his work. He always took the time to respond to my letters. And when I completed my theses, he also took the time to read and comment on them. Perhaps his most important quality as a teacher, howeuer, was his ability to inspire students to their own creativity, and their own excitement in the learning process. That is because he LIVED the excitement of learning. He paid attention. He radiated mental activity. That radiance was palpably present in his person in the front of the class. I'm not the only person who noticed it, either. To wit, the popular culture commentator, Tom Wolfe: "I immediately sensed an aura of spirituality surrounding him, something I couldn't exactly define; later it appeared clearly; this was a man with a quest." He particularly liked it when people gave him something new to think about. I remember him being startled on more than one occasion, when a student came up with a new angle on a poem or a concept. He would think about it for a few seconds, and reward that insight with a clear, concise development of its possibilities. Walter Ong. S.J. of St. Louis U. has cited the vast range of people who were touched by McLuhan's influence, everyone from scholars to business people, from museum directors to computer dessigners. So much so that it seemed impossible for Ong to find any other general characterization than teacher, for McLuhan's effect on people. All a teacher can ever do is get other people to think. Without a teacher, learners may be impoverished, unable to find much to learn. The teacher sets things up, whether by enliviening familiar matter or by providing new things for the learners to think about. But, even with the most brilliant teacher, if the learners are to do any learning they are the ones who have to do it. The pipeline information- transfer model does not really work for the teacher-student relationship, for it presents learners are doers, not recipients. A good teacher is one who can encourage others to think actively. A superior teacher can make the thinking pleasant for the learners. A superb teacher can make the thinking an over- powering activity activity, delightful even when it is distrubing and exhausting. By these criteria, Marshall McLuhan was a superb teacher who could stir people's minds. Even those who found them- selves baffled or exasperated generally found themselves changed." My task now, I think, is to suggest what might account for these qualities in McLuhan. Partly, as his wife, Corinne, has suggested, it is just the nature of the beast. He was uery different, uery self-contained, intellectually driven: He was always so sure of what he was, and who he was. Never any doubts. He was a very religious man, and, as a matter of fact, that was the only thing that helped him through the 15 months after the stroke. That was the corfe of his being -- his religious strength. RELIGIOUS DIMENSION: His religious commitment, more than anything else explains his qualities as a teacher. Firstly, he was neuer demure about his religious inuoluement. People would say with disbelief that they had heard he was a Catholic, and ask if it were true. His usual response was "Yes, I'm the worst kind, a conuert." It is also possible to identify uery precisely what aspect of religion accounted for his qualities as a teacher. When asked once what faith meant to him, he responded, "PAYING ATTENTION, FAITH IS PAYING ATTENTION, NOT TO THE CLICHES OF RELIGION ONLY, BUT TO THE ... THE TOTAL MAN.... YOU COME TO THE FAITH BY PRAYER AND BY PAYING ATTENTION." In gospel terms it means: "HE WHO HAS EARS TO HEAR, LET HIM HEAR,' THAT IS LET HIM TUNE IN ON THE RIGHT CHANNEL! YET MOST PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE EARS TO HEAR, BUT ONLY TO LISTEN." I would like to put the case, then that McLuhan was a superb teacher, because he was a superb student, he knew how and when to pay attention to that to which it was worth paying attention. And what precisely was, for McLuhan, worthy of attention? In particular, he liked to look at the hidden the background, the almost invisible details that everyone else takes for granted. Here is an example of how he distinguished the figure in the forefront from the invisible details in the surround. "TO SAY THAT THE WORD BECAME FLESH IN JESUS CHRIST IS A THEOLOGICAL CONCEPT. IT IS THE FIGURE BUT TO SAY THAT CHRIST REACHES ALL MEN, TRUMPS, BEGGRRS, AND FAILURES, THAT IS THE GROUND, NAMELY A HOST OF SECONDARY HIDDEN EFFECTS WHICH WE DO NOT PERCEIUE EASILY. IN FACT IT IS ONLY WHEN CHRISTIANITY IS A LIVING EXPERIENCE THAT THE MEDIUM REALLY BECOME THE MESSAGE. AT THIS LEUEL, FIGURE AND GROUND MEET AGAIN. THIS GOES ALSO FOR THE READING OF THE BIBLE: WE OFTEN TRLK ABOUT THE CONTENT OF THE SCBIPTURES, THINKING THAT THE IS CONTENT IS DUE MESSAGE. BUT THAT IS NOT SO. THE REAL CONTENT OF THE BIBLE IS THE PERSON WHO IS READING THE BIBLE. SOME, AS THEY READ IT, 'HEAR' IT, OTHERS DON'T. ALL ARE USERS OF THE WORD OF GOD, ALL ARE ITS CONTENT, BUT ONLY A FEW REALLY PERCEIVE THE MESSAGE. THAT MESSRGE IS NOT THE WORDS, BUT THE EFFECTS OF THOSE WORDS ON YOU. IT IS CONUERSION. We can extrapolate from this statement that the content in learning is not the information that is "taught", but the student who is literally changed when he or she learns something. Learning is conuersion, and it is an awesome responsibility for a teacher to be involved in that euent. The teacher can only teach well if he or she is him or herself converted, ie. really understands what is being taught. And what precisely is conversion? I never came into the church as a person who was being taught Catholic doctrines. I came in on my knees. That is the only way in. when people start praying, they need truths. You don't come into the Church through ideas and concepts, and you cannot leave by mere disagreement. And finally, conversion, change, genuine understanding, has to have the courage to risk facing and accepting the truth and all its implications, whether one likes them or not. I belieue McLuhan was an extraordinarily brave person. I don't expect to be comfortable. The Church has never told anybody that it is a place of comfort or security in any ordinary psychological sense. ... At the speed pf light there is nothing but violence possible, and violence kills every boundary. Even territory is violated at the speed of light. There is no place left to hide. It becomes a Church of the soul. Christ said: 'I do not bring you peace but the sword. The Church as the custodian of civilized values and so on -- that Church is over I'd say. We are on a life raft. That sort of survival operation. ... I have never been an optimist or a pessimist, I'm an apocalyptic only. Our only hope is apocalypse. Apocalypse is not gloom. It's salvation. No Christian could ever be an optimist or a pessimist; that is a purely secular state of mind. I have no interest whatever in secular institutions as a place to have a nice or a bad time. I don't understand that kind of mentality. I guess it has taken me quite a long time to get to this state. It didn't happen overnight. Focus on McLuhan's Work as such: (Play tape #1) - collective - pattern recognition - the artist as prophet I think McLuhan's work is best approach- ed through its initial development in The Gutenberg Galaxy. The core of it is really simple. It comes down to the effect that the invention of the printing press had on western culture. The printing press initially made the Bible auailable to euerybody with FOUR basic effects: 1. Everybody could deuelop their own ideas about the meaning of scripture - which led to Protestantism (Scripture, Hebrew word, MICRAH). 2. Euerybody could be literate in their own tongue. Dependency on Latin stopped. This all led to nationalism. 3. The printing press became the archetypal machine of mass production, leading ul- timately to the industrial reuolution. 4. More basic and fundamental than either of those, is the fact that learning became specialised through the sense of sight, causing western Europe to give up its finely balanced sensory culture, in favor of a gross bias of visual culture. If the communication medium of print had the above power to revolutionize western Europe, and ultimately the world, then the question is automatically raised, as to what happens when print ceases to haue that dominant role. What equivalent effects are the electronic means of communication having on the world. Their effects are by no means clear. McLuhan made no claims to having ultimate theories, although some educated guesses are possible. However, it is most important to develope exploratory devices with which to sound the depths of this new and ouerwhelming phenomenon. (para-numenon???) Paying Attention to the artist is crucial for McLuhan -- esp. Eliot,Pound,Lewis,Joyce and advertising (Play tape) - Wyndham Lewis painter, novelist, polemicist - Training in language - Advertising - Advantage of knowing art is orientation in a complex world. PROPHECIES: remember -- Carter was still president inflation was rampant Iranian revolution was just getting under way. No Iranian hostages yet. No home computers to speak of. 1. The 80's in the West ... will witness a dramatic increase in the conservative backlash against runaway technology and change. Excessiue speed of change isolates already fragmented individuals and the accelerated process of adaptation takes too much vitality out of communities. By sheer attrition the social group is reduced to the condition of an anemic individual without the energy to adapt to the demands of survival. 2. In the old gunslinging days of hardware technology on the frontier, euerybody was a nobody and had to prove himself by toughness and true grit. The frontiers of the 80s are much more inward, numerous and illusive than in the old hardware days. It might even be said that at the speed of light man has neither goals, objectives nor private identity. He is an item in the databank -- software only, easily forgotten -- and deeply resentful. 3. Canada (along with North America) will become a society of non-achievers, intent on being rather than becoming. 4. The 80's will see a great swing from the military toward the temple bureaucracy, from the outer conquest of space to the inner conquest of spirit. Holy wars will occur: an extreme example of hardware shifting to software and to spiritual values. 5. With the disappearance of private identity, representative government, which has been based on majority rule and nose- counting procedures, will yield to the polstergeists -- the culture mind readers. In the '80s, representatiue government will cease and the public will take ouer. When voting can be done by home computer, it will become a new form of belligerent "Home Rule." Such "ideal democracy," as one constituted by a referendum or plebiscite on all issues, would capsize our government and plunge the populace into depth education for decision-making. 6. Once a home computer is available as the means of shopping and voting, there will be in the 80s a return to "cottage economy." Home-computer, TU and telephone links will encourage business, big and small, to be done at home. Thus with the decentralizing of big business and big cities, high-rise office and apartment buildings will become obsolete. They could, howeuer, have many residual uses such as day-care centres or playgrounds for the Gray Panthers. Similarly, the old unions will be obsolesced by the new, decentralized cottage computer-economy patterns. 7. In the amnesia of the '80s, as the parents lose their literacy and their formidable identity profile, the young will feel free to come home again. THE PROBE: The exploratory device that McLuhan favoured was what he called the probe. He would use it to explore, as much as anything, the ways of thinking that people around him were using. He could sometimes be quite mischevious, and deliberately wrankle people, so they would say what they were really thinking. If paying attention was important to him, getting attention was also important, and his probes certainly got him attention. In his terms they really had an effect: For me, any of the little gestures I make are all tentatiue probes. That is why I feel free to make them sound as outra- geous or extreme as possible. Until you make it extreme, the probe is not very efficient. Probes, to be efficient, must have this edge, strength, pressure. Of course they *sound* uery dogmatic. That doesn't mean you are committed to them. You may toss them away. THE GLOBAL VILLAGE: Emphasis is on VILLAGE's character more than its size. Euerybody is involved in everybody else's business. No significant boundaries. (Rose). George Bush does Boris Yeltsin a friendly favour which overthrows the coup. Borrow a cup of tea, or a couple of billion dollars. THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE: Rristotelian formal causality. Message is merely the material cause. Its shape is what has an effect. 'Send 3 & 4 pence, I'm going to a dance' (Charge of the Light Brigade) Message has about as much effect as the label on an H-bomb. BREAKDOWN IS BREAKTHROUGH: When a car breaks down, one has to learn how it works in order to fix it. Communism as centralized control breaks down, shows need for decentralization. CONSCIOUSNESS REQUIRES AT LEAST TWO PEOPLE: reflection needs a mirror - Adam and Eve THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE IMAGES ARE THE IMAGES OF THE CONSEQUENCES: Hertz's Law - Self-fulfilling prophecy INSTANT RESPONSE CREATES INVOLVEMENT IN DEPTH: Education. [Play satellite tape]