Marshall McLuhan: How a Pre-Internet Academic Changed the Way We Think About the Web
The Internet, or rather the “Web 2.0″ or the “social web”, is the single most important communication invention of our time. Still, considering its seminal importance in all aspects of our lives, it is very important to consider its unintended effects and consequences. While there are many new books coming out now that do just that, from “The Net Delusion” to “The Shallows” to “The Information”, you may find it surprising that an academic, writing pre-1970, discussed the effects of the Internet ad nauseam, basically paving the way for Internet media analysis later down the line. Here are some of McLuhan’s basic ideas:
1. “The medium is the message.”
This is perhaps one of the best known of McLuhan’s sayings, one that catapulted him to fame after the publication of his book “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”. What McLuhan essentially means here is that the “content” of a message is the least important thing to analyze, even though it is the most apparent. When thinking of the Internet, something that McLuhan conceptualized as “the global village,” we should look at how messages are transmitted in order to gauge how they affect our perceptions and behaviors.
2. “Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn’t know the first thing about either.”
This is an especially salient quote when we are talking about the Web as it exists today. While online schools are still in their infancy, the learning potential of the Internet is already being exploited through educational games for children, OpenCourseWare initiatives, and more.
3. “As technology advances, it reverses the characteristics of every situation again and again. The age of automation is going to be the age of ‘do it yourself.”
Can any one phrase apply to the Internet of the 21st century better than “do it yourself?” McLuhan suggested in many of his books that media could be grouped into two types—”hot” and “cold,” one engaging different faculties and the other being more passive. McLuhan believed that we would cycle through the different types, one dominating the other, and he thought we were heading toward a highly interactive form of media, a very “do-it-yourself” type.
4. “In this electronic age we see ourselves being translated more and more into the form of information, moving toward the technological extension of consciousness.”
While this is a very vaguely worded assertion, and many people thought that, during the time that McLuhan was cranking out his ideas, he was stark raving mad. However, considering the recent publication of the popular general science book, “The Information: A Theory, A History, A Flood” by writer James Gleick, much of what McLuhan prophesized, especially this sentence, is only now becoming true.
Of course, McLuhan wrote about media very conceptually, and the way in which he approaches his theories are often convoluted and difficult to follow. But McLuhan spent a long career teaching composition and rhetoric at the university level, and, as such, he perhaps values more than anyone framing ideas into persuasive arguments.
For those of us who are interested in education and technology from a research perspective, McLuhan’s ideas can be easily applied in the classroom, especially one that is increasingly media-saturated. According to a New York Times article, Generation Y spends about 8 hours a day consuming media, which represents an unprecedented period of time. As such, talking about any form of media, but especially the Internet, will be relevant to all students in the 21st century.
This perhaps explains why McLuhan’s work has seen a resurgence in popularity, especially among younger academics and professionals. As noted in a Wired Magazine article:
“… in recent years, the explosion of new media – particularly the Web – has caused new anxieties. Or to put a more McLuhanesque spin on it, the advent of new digital media has brought the conditions of the old technologies into sharper relief, and made us suddenly conscious of our media environment. In the confusion of the digital revolution, McLuhan is relevant again.”
Author Bio:
This guest post is contributed by Leslie Johnson, who writes about health, green living, parenting related articles at masters in health administration.
