MAELSTROM ESC/APE STRATEGIES
If you don’t know this about me already, I am a devout McLuhan head. And over the years have been blessed to become friends with, and intellectually mentored by his grandson, Andrew McLuhan.
Inspired by Snap’s relationship with Nathan Jurgenson (buy a copy of The Social Photo), I commissioned Andrew to write something for Eternal. Simply based on what was on our mind at the intersection of culture and technology.
This project completed two years ago, with a private reading at Eternal of this piece. MAELSTROM ESCAPE STRATEGIES.
Something I’ve been talking about with another mentor of mine, Freddy, is tech’s lack of timing. Just absolute inability to time things correctly.
I think it’s time for the piece to get circulated more widely.
We are stuck in Maelstrom. It is unclear if we are progressing or circling the drain. Where is the unified image of progress we can latch on to? How can we rip ourselves out of the storm, ideally with fellow survivors? And step into… AND BUILD a brave new world.
I think Andrew’s piece below helps to answer some of those questions. Enjoy & please give him a follow / subscribe to his newsletter / take his classes. If you care to investigate the effects of technology, you won’t regret it!
“The problem faced by any explorer in our time, as McLuhan observed, is to invent tools that reveal the current situation, not to make logical connected statements:
“Connected, sequential discourse, which is thought of as rational, is really visual. It has nothing to do with reason as such. Reasoning does not occur on single planes or in a continuous, connected fashion. The mind leapfrogs. It puts things together in all sorts of proportions and ratios instantly. To put down thoughts in coded, lineal ways was a discovery of the Greek world. It is not done this way, for example, in the Chinese world. But to deny that the Chinese have access to reason would be ridiculous. They do not have rational discourse at all by Western standards. They reason by the act of interval, not by the act of connection. In the electric age we are moving into a world where not the connection but the interval becomes the crucial event in organization.”
(Eric McLuhan, ‘Marshall McLuhan’s Theory of Communication’ in ‘Theories of Communication’, 2011)
“In today’s rapidly changing environment, people have two major concerns: to discover the new problems this environment poses, and to develop ways of coping with these problems.”
(City as Classroom: Understanding Language and Media.’)
“We now become aware of the possibility of arranging the entire human environment as a work of art designed to maximize perception and to make everyday learning a process of discovery.”
(‘for Dot Zero Magazine’ tss, 1964)
“By studying the pattern of the effects of this huge vortex of energy in which we are involved, it may be possible to program a strategy of evasion and survival.”
(‘Man as Media’ 1977)
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As early as 1951, in his ‘The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man,’ Marshall McLuhan drew inspiration from Edgar Allen Poe’s 1841 short story ‘A Decent into the Maelstrom.’ In it, Poe’s narrator describes how he was sucked into a giant ocean vortex, or maelstrom, and by keeping his wits about him, by studying the action of his environment, was able to formulate and execute an escape strategy, and live to tell the tale.
“Pattern recognition in the midst of a huge, overwhelming, destructive force, is the way out of the maelstrom. The huge vortices of energy created by our media present us with possibilities of evasion of destruction. By studying the pattern of the effects of this huge vortex of energy in which we are involved, it may be possible to program a strategy of evasion and survival.”
(‘Man as Media’ 1977)
It is one of Marshall’s enduring metaphors which he would deploy over and over during his career, and it boils down to this:
we are not helpless.
WE ARE NOT HELPLESS
despair is optional, as is survival.
DESPAIR IS OPTIONAL, AS IS SURVIVAL
In Poe’s story, a fisherman and his two brothers flirt with disaster one too many times and are rewarded as expected. Two brothers are lost—but one survives.
This story should sound familiar:
In pursuit of wealth, they take great risks, and eventually they can’t avoid the seemingly inevitable.
It’s a numbers game.
IT’S A NUMBNESS GAME
Marshall McLuhan’s hope was that the analogy holds all the way through. There’s little doubt that we are in the midst of a terrible vortex. The signs are all around us. All is not well. Poe’s sailor had the advantage, a dubious comfort, that the cause of his misery was quite obvious. The cause of our misery is less clear.
WE DON’T KNOW WHO DISCOVERED WATER, BUT WE KNOW IT WASN’T A FISH
We’re battling less the forces of Mother nature, more the forces of our own nature. It is in our nature to be ignorant of many things, our heads stuck in the sand. As if ignorance somehow frees us from responsibility.
IGNORANCE OF CAUSES IS NOT FREEDOM FROM EFFECTS
It might be well to ask whether we need to remain in this state. Whether we can afford to.
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“We can think things out before we put them out.”
(1965 interview)
It’s an odd thing. Marshall didn’t always believe that we could do very much. He wasn’t always of the opinion that
“Determinism is the result of the behaviour of those who are determined to ignore what is happening.”
(letter to Life magazine, 1966)
IN AN ESSAY FROM 1955 HE SAID
“Improvements in the means of communication are usually based on a shift from one sense to another and this involved a rapid refocusing in all previous experience. It is, therefore, a simple maxim of communication study that any change in the means of communication will produce a chain of revolutionary consequences at every level of culture and politics. And because of the complexity of the components of this process, prediction and control are not possible.
BUT THEN IN 1960 HE WROTE THAT WE COULD
“…study the modes of the media in order to hock all assumptions out of the subliminal, non-verbal realm for scrutiny and for prediction and control of human purposes.”
(Report, 1960)
WHAT HAPPENED?
How did Marshall McLuhan go from helpless to hopeful? What made him turn around and dive head first into the maelstrom?
In 1958 he was given a grant from the National Association of Education Broadcasters (Washington, D. C.) to develop a curriculum for high school students for the ‘study of new media.’ He took a sabbatical from his position at St. Michael’s College, where he was an English Professor, and spent the next year and a bit deconstructing media and constructing methods for their study.
“Recognition of the psychic and social consequences of technology makes it possible to neutralize the effects of innovation.”
(letter to Life magazine, 1966)
“There is absolutely no inevitability as long as we are willing to contemplate the situation.”
(The Medium is the Massage, 1968)
The NAEB grant gave him the means to study the modes of the media, and it was this work which would give him much of the foundation from which he built his methods.
It was here that he turned communications study into media study by a vast broadening of the category of what a ‘medium’ is.
FROM AN ‘EXTENSION’
“The personal and social consequences of any medium—that is, of any extension of ourselves—result from the new scale that is introduced into human affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.”
(Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1964)
TO AN ‘ENVIRONMENT’
“The medium is the message because the environment transforms our perceptions governing the areas of attention and neglect alike.”
(UM, ’64)
“There is no kind of technology, from speech and clothes to satellites and computers, that does not constitute an environment of services and disservices.
Speech transforms all perception. So does clothing.”
(February 28, 1973)
TO ‘EVERYTHING (A HU)MAN MAKES OR DOES’
“…everything man makes and does, every process, every style, every artefact, every poem, song, painting, gimmick, gadget, theory, technology — every product of human effort...”
(Laws of Media: The New Science, 1988)
Some might argue that the category broadens so far as to be meaningless, but I would suggest that it broadens is far enough to be meaningful.
“The present book, in seeking to understand many media, the conflicts from which they spring, and the even greater conflicts to which they give rise, holds out the promise of reducing these conflicts by an increase of human autonomy.”
(Understanding Media, 1964)
AN INCREASE IN HUMAN AUTONOMY
“It is now perfectly plain to me that all media are environments, all media have the effects that geographers and biologists have associated with environments in the past. … The medium is the message because the environment transforms our perceptions governing the areas of attention and neglect alike.” (‘Education in the Electronic Age,’ 1967)
THE RELATION OF ENVIRONMENT TO ANTI-ENVIRONMENT
Somewhere after Understanding Media was published, Marshall McLuhan took an environmental turn. His 1965 essay, ‘The Relation of Environment to Anti-Environment’ marks this perceptual shift to seeing the ‘psychic and social’ effects of technologies as an ‘environment of services and disservices – as an environment. As it happens, Marshall was yet to realize that this perceptual shift had occurred as a result of Sputnik, as the inevitability of ‘ecological thinking’ applied to his own work in studying the nature of human innovation.
“Any new technology, any extension or amplification of human faculties when given material embodiement tends to create a new environment. This is as true of clothing as of speech, or script, or wheel.”
A crucial feature of the essay is the promotion of the artist from a supplier of aesthetic objects to an indispensable agent of perceptual awareness.
This is one of the big dilemmas in this whole project: how to make known the unknown? How do you perceive what you can’t perceive?
“It is useful to notice all of the arts and sciences as acting in the role of anti-environments that enable us to perceive the environment. … when we live in a museum without walls, or have music as a structural part of our sensory environment, new strategies of attention and perception have to be created.”
This notion of ‘anti-environment’ is very useful.
I often think of comedians as ‘anti-environmentalists’ of this sort. Jerry Seinfeld for example seems to have built a career on perception: “you ever notice that…?”
Street artists are also great at getting us to notice things we don’t generally notice. Banksy, for example, once did a play on Vermeer’s ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring.’ He picked a rather plain looking brick wall which featured a round object (a security alarm I think) and used it as the ‘pearl earring,’ re-creating Vermeer’s piece overtop.
What strategies might we employ to notice what’s happening to us?
What’s become habitual?
Beneath our notice?
“Our typical response to a disrupting new technology is to recreate the old environment instead of heeding the new opportunities of the new environment.”
We generally use the new thing to do the job of the old thing before discovering what new things we can do with the new thing.
It is artists who are out there on the edge exploring the possibilities. They rarely get any thanks.
What they produce is often an insult to the sensibilities of the people who are set in ways formed by earlier technologies.
The funny thing is that what seems edgy today will frequently seem tame tomorrow.
“The artist as a maker of anti-environments permits us to perceive that much is newly environmental and therefore most active in transforming situations.”
It was his contention that ‘when invisible, it’s invincible.’ We can’t break a habit we don’t know we have. We can’t address an effect when we don’t know its cause.
“There is a deep-seated repugnance in the human breast against understanding the processes in which we are involved. Such understanding involves far too much responsibility.” (letter to Maritain, May 6, 1969)
I’m not sure we’re as afraid of responsibility as we once were. The new generation of people leading innovation seem much less motivated by money, much less at the mercy of greed, and much more sincere in wanting to create a better world for all.
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THE MEDIUM (environment) IS THE MESSAGE
It’s an odd thing, ‘the medium is the message.’ Five seemingly straight-forward words, and yet they’ve caused so much confusion and bluster.
THE MESSAGE IS (NOT) THE MESSAGE
What do you mean, ‘the medium is the message? The message is the message.
Newman: Why is the medium the message, why is not the message the message?
McLuhan: Where would you look for the message in an electric light? The medium and the message are the same.
You might be able to break people down into two basic categories when it comes to ‘the medium is the message,’ and for that matter, when it comes to McLuhan work at all. One group of people will encounter a statement like that and say it doesn’t make any sense and move on.
Another will encounter it and say it doesn’t make any sense and move in.
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JUICY PIECES OF MEAT
Content matters. A lot.
BUT THE MEDIUM DOESN’T CARRY THE CONTENT
AS MUCH AS THE CONTENT CARRIES THE MEDIUM
One of the major keys to ‘decoding McLuhan’ is to always keep in mind that he was an English Professor, and expert in Modernist poetry. And he was, in several senses, a poet himself.
This can make people uncomfortable for some reason. They have a hard time reconciling the fact, so they either discount it, or dismiss him.
The relative irony here is that Marshall was very much concerned with content. He made his living teaching poetry.
Metaphors were his bread and butter,
media study was his side-hustle.
“My study of literature became an aid to the perception that led me to undertake the task of understanding the relation between culture and technology.”
(1969 forward to ‘The Interior Landscape’)
A favourite poet of Marshall’s was T.S. Eliot., who wrote:
“The chief use of the ‘meaning’ of a poem, in the ordinary sense, may be (for here again I am speaking of some kinds of poetry and not all) to satisfy one habit of the reader, to keep his mind diverted and quiet, while the poem does its work upon him: much as the imaginary burglar is always provided with a nice piece of meat for the house-dog. “
It was also Eliot who said
AMATEUR POETS BORROW, MATURE POETS STEAL*
*the actual quote is slightly different and worth looking up. See Eliot’s essay on Philip Massinger in ‘The Sacred Wood.’
Marshall McLuhan wrote, thirty years later
“For the “content” of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.”
(UM, ’64)
Which I feel is a hilarious call back to Eliot’s Massinger essay and his assertion that ‘good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.’
Distract?
For what purpose?
What’s being stolen?
Eliot and McLuhan are talking about the same thing only McLuhan takes it out of poetry and into the broader world of human innovation.
“The effects of new media on our sensory lives are similar to the effects of new poetry. They change not our thoughts but the structure of our world.
(1969, forward to ‘The Interior Landscape’)
Eliot is saying that while we read poetry, poetry rearranges our sensibilities, and that this happens while we are involved with or distracted by the content of the poem. It happens on the side, on the sly.
McLuhan is saying that technologies (poetry being a technology, a human innovation) rearrange our sensibilities, and that this happens while we are busy creating, consuming, critiquing, arguing about, even pointedly ignoring, the content.
Actually, ignoring it is about the worst thing you can do.
The medium is the message.
The massage.
It is what it does.
It is not that content is irrelevant, it’s that the main effect doesn’t come from the content. It comes from how we are changed individual and societally because of the presence of these technological extensions of ourselves.
Ignoring it only gives it absolute power.
Content is that juicy piece of meat which keeps us busy.
Zoom, and tools like it, have equally changed work (and much more) regardless of where you work or what your work entails. It’s changed the office, it’s changed the home. If you don’t leave home for work, you don’t come home from work. And it’s changed everything between work and home.
It’s changed you.
Another juicy piece of meat is when we spend undue time debating about whether a given technology is good or bad. It’s not that we shouldn’t have those discussions, but that they are beside the point because how we feel about something like that has nothing to do with its effect on us.
“The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense-ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without resistance.”
(UM, ’64)
The maelstrom gathers force.
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PRACTICE MAKES PERCEPT
Marshall was trying to wake people up. In a 1952 letter to Ezra Pound, Marshall declared
“I am an intellectual thug who has slowly been accumulating a private arsenal with every intention of using it. In a mindless age, every insight takes on the character of a lethal weapon.”
It helps to know just how deliberate McLuhan was as a writer and as a performer – for performer he was. He came from a line of performers. His mother was, in her day, quite a well-known Elocutionist. She would travel around and deliver a one-person show of monologues, poems, plays.
Marshall was trying to get people’s attention, to wake them up. To let them know what was happening around them, to urge them to see for themselves, to take command.
‘The medium is the message’ is an excellent distillation of his overall point about technology: that it is not the content that rearranges our senses, our selves, our societies. The content is what keeps us busy while the environment accompanying these technologies does that work quite underneath our notice.
Environments, when invisible, are invincible.
Marshall’s mission was to make this environment visible, and to share with us the tools he developed for that purpose.
MEDIA ECOLOGY IS NOT A SPECTATOR SPORT
(‘Media Ecology in the 21st Century,’ Eric McLuhan, 2018)
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“Perhaps the largest conceivable revolution in communication occurred on October 17, 1957 when Sputnik created a new environment for the planet. For the first time, the natural world was completely enclosed in a man-made container. At the moment that the Earth went inside this artefact, nature ended and ecology was born. Ecological thinking became inevitable as soon as the planet moved up into the status of a work of art.”
(‘At the moment of Sputnik…’)
In this fascinating 1973 article, Marshall McLuhan comments on how by encircling the globe, circumnavigating the very planet from space, by gaining escape velocity and slipping the surly bonds, seeing the Earth from a bit of a distance – looking in instead of looking out – we suddenly saw the planet in a new light.
The planet was one whole earth. Something to be cared for.
“We don’t know who discovered water, but we know it wasn’t a fish.”
“I’m very careful to only predict things which have already happened.”
One curious item about ‘At the moment of Sputnik…’ is that it was written 15 years after the event it discusses. Marshall did not realize, at the moment of Sputnik, exactly what that meant. At least, he didn’t connect the dots. He did feel the effect of it and this ‘ecological thinking’ that had become inevitable, seeped into his work. In fact, six months after Sputnik went up, Marshall McLuhan said in a speech for the first time
“Print, by permitting people to read at high speed and, above all, to read alone and silently, developed a totally new set of mental operations. What I mentioned earlier becomes very relevant here: the medium is the message. The medium of print is the message, more than any individual writer could say.
(Marshall McLuhan, May 1958 speech to BC Association of Radio Broadcasters.)
Marshall McLuhan noted the effect many years before he realized the cause.
If we are to get ahead, we need to do better.
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Knowledge is something gained, understanding is something hard-won.
To really learn anything is to make the connections yourself. Simply memorizing and being able to repeat something is not the same as learning anything.
It has been true for a century now that the education we need is less in memorization than in training.
“In today’s rapidly changing environment, people have two major concerns: to discover the new problems this environment poses, and to develop ways of coping with these problems.”
That’s the opening statement of the Teacher’s Guide which came with ‘City as Classroom: Understanding Language and Media’. City as Classroom was another attempt at a curriculum for media studies for high school students.
But where attempts before had been aimed at students inside the classroom, this was aimed at getting students outside of the classroom, where all the information was anyway.
‘City as Classroom’ was aimed at the training of perception more than anything else.
One strategy to aid our perception is to sharpen our senses, our organs of perception.
Marshall told us to look to the artist, because the artist is constantly sharpening their senses. His artist is always concerned with novelty. With experiencing the new, and finding new ways to help us experience it.
PERCEPTUAL HABITS DIE HARD
There are many strategies you can employ to sharpen your senses.
For one thing, slow down the pace. Our bodies, our senses, were not built for the speed of light. At speed, things become a blur. To be sure, other things also become clear.
One strategy for slowing down is to do what truckers do on a steep descent: slip into a slower gear. By slowing the gears, the engine, they slow the truck.
Writing by hand is a very low-tech way to slow your mind down.
I speak about 100 words a minute. I type about 80. I write about 40.
Try writing a page every day. Write a journal entry. A letter to a friend or relative. Write anything that pops into your head, heck, describe what you see around you.
The effect is that your mind has to slow down to keep pace. And as you do that, you should feel a corresponding calm. This may not be instantaneous. It may take a week or two but it works. Keep at it.
To go fast, type. To go far, write.
Pace has a lot to do with quality of experience, and with variety and depth of perception.
Where I used to live, in a small town in rural southern Ontario, I had to get the mail from the post office. I could drive there in about five minutes, I could walk in about ten. The ten-minute walk would often turn into half an hour because I would see people I knew and stop to say hello. Other things might catch my attention: I might see something in a shop window. I might notice a feature of the sidewalk and stop to snap a pic. I might smell a freshly-baked croissant and be neither willing nor able to resist the urge to get one.
I just needed to get the mail. I could have driven, and sometimes I would. But more often I would walk because life is short, and community nourishes. I want to live in a community which nourishes me and my friends and family.
In our mad rush we miss much.
So often our conveniences lose their flavour as the disservices stack up, weighing the scales against our enjoyment. The things we miss. The way we were. Yeah, I can get the mail faster. Do I really want to? Is convenience the price we pay for connection, for community?
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MAELSTROM ESC/APE STRATEGIES
The following is a blend of ideas, concepts, what ifs, and also things known and proven based on experience. Just which is which is up to you to decide, and will depend on your level of engagement. Much rests on whether you take these words from my head and yours and make something of them in your life, in the world.
HOPE IS AN UPWARD SPIRAL
Today, we are in a maelstrom of our own making and as we descend ever further, we are in desperate need of our own strategies if we are to make our escape. If we wish to turn things around.
We need three things:
First, to SURVIVE.
When you find yourself in a life- (or identity-) threatening situation, things can get ugly. But like Poe’s sailor, we need to try to collect ourselves and pay attention to what’s going on – take stock, take inventory, take charge -- is there something, anything we can seize to interrupt the horror of the moment, to grab hold of, to get our heads above water and catch our breath, find some respite?
Second, to ESCAPE.
Once we’ve gotten a bit of a handle on the situation, and have found at least a holding pattern to rest in, we need to see if there are ways to get out of our predicament, out of the strongest influence of our technological vortex. Only then can we think about maybe not jumping quite so enthusiastically head-first into another one.
Third, to AVOID.
Now that we understand how technologies operate as shaping forces, and that the untended consequences (unintended or otherwise) can easily become out of hand, maybe we should consider improving our approach.
This divides into two categories: consumer and producer.
Producer: ‘We can think things out before we put them out,’ (MM). Remember ‘Don’t be evil?’ Google adding that into their company structure was a ray of hope. Removing it extinguished that ray. At this stage in the technology game, any ignorance of the existential power of technologies to fundamentally alter who we are individually and collectively amounts to no less than willful ignorance. We know better. We must do better. Fortunately, we have all sorts of tools at our disposal to consider the effects of our innovations before we unleash them, and if we’re ever to get ahead of the cycle, we need to start putting people first.
Consumer: It would be nice to just blame it all on the people who develop technologies. But while they should know better, so should we. The sailor in Poe’s story is responsible for his condition. Everyone knew the maelstrom was there. Essentially, it was his pursuit of profit that led him into the maelstrom of his own volition and while he escaped, his brother did not. Sure, it’s just a story. But is it that different from our situation? I dare you to be honest enough with yourself to consider it carefully.
SURVIVE, ESCAPE
“Survival cannot be trusted to natural response or natural instinct because the brainstem is not provided with any means of responding to manmade environments.”
(‘Man as Media,’ 1977)
So much of our survival rests on each other. Our own habits are most invisible to ourselves. Our friends and family are our best anti-environment because they can spot the change that we can’t. Support each other. Cultivate. Nurture. Heal.
KNOW HOPE
If despair is a downward spiral dragging us down, hope is an upward spiral to lift us up.
“There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.”
(‘The Medium is the Massage’, 1967)
We engineered ourselves into this mess, and we can likely engineer ourselves out of it.
Human ingenuity can go either way.
‘The Medium is the Massage’ is a well-known book. Lesser-known, or paid attention to, is the subtitle: ‘an inventory of effects.’
Much of an environment’s invisibility is due to its complexity. It’s very hard to imagine all parts of an environment. It’s complex. It’s dynamic, shifting, relational.
One thing that helps is to make a map. An inventory.
What do your senses tell you?
What are your assets?
Liabilities?
There’s a certain kind of ad you used to see on television. An ad for a drug company’s latest drug. In the ad you see a middle-aged couple. It’s a beautiful day. The sky is blue with a sprinkling of fluffy clouds. They hold hands, laughing, frolicking through a grassy field. You can sense their contentment, joy. You can almost smell the warm summer day. You smile. And you barely hear the voice in the background rattling off the list of potential side effects that might ruin your day or life if you take this drug.
What does the ratio of cost to benefit look like?
What does it do for you versus what it does to you?
What floats?
OPEN PANDORA’S BOX
In the myth, Pandora opens the box and lets out all the evils contained inside. She closes the box, but too late. But something was left in the box: hope. So open Pandora’s box and let hope out.
Hope floats.
Laughter is light, but only when we laugh with wonder and amusement. Laughing at misfortune only amplifies misfortune.
Beauty brings relief. The world is full of wonder, beauty, kindness. To be sure, it’s also full of unpleasant things. To seek and appreciate the good is not to deny the bad, it’s to offset it. To balance it. Beauty can help restore balance.
THERE’S A REASON WE HAVE SPEED LIMITS ON ROADS.
Our bodies were not built for the speed of light.
This pace we live at presents us with challenges and opportunities. When change happened more slowly, we had time to adjust. At our speeds today there’s no time to adjust and we suffer the consequences—but we also are able to notice things we didn’t when things moved more slowly.
Going from full speed to full stop can be unpleasant, jarring. It can also be effective.
Things quickly become habitual. And many times we get the habit before we get the downside. It’s when we try to break the habit that we realize something is broken with us.
BREAKDOWN AS BREAKTHROUGH
Engineer a breakdown.
It’s when things break down that we notice many things. We notice how dependent on them we’ve become. We notice how we feel when all is not as it should be. We notice the cascade of effects as one thing bleeds to another
Your dog needs a walk. You need a walk. Your phone, your watch, your devices do not need a walk. From time to time, leave these things at home and instead of checking them, check your surroundings. You really do not need to fill every minute with a podcast.
THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE NOTIFIED
Notifications seem really convenient until they become something more. Turn off all notifications.
Interrupt, disrupt.
Turn off as many buttons as possible
“What kind of a world would you rather live in? Is there a period in the past or a possible period in the future you’d rather be in?
No, I’d rather be in any period at all as long as people are going to leave it alone for a while.
But they’re not going to, are they?
No, and so the only alternative is to understand everything that is going on, and then neutralize it as much as possible, turn off as many buttons as you can, and frustrate them as much as you can. I am resolutely opposed to all innovation, all change, but I am determined to understand what’s happening because I don’t choose just to sit and let the juggernaut roll over me. Many people seem to think that if you talk about something recent, you’re in favor of it. The exact opposite is true in my case. Anything I talk about is almost certainly to be something I’m resolutely against, and it seems to me the best way of opposing it is to understand it, and then you know where to turn off the button.”
(Interviewed by Robert Fulford, 1966)
BE THE PDF YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WHIRL
It’s not that kindness is contagious, it’s that it builds your spirit. Acts of kindness, small or large, have a cumulative effect in you. It’s a nice feeling to do something to make someone’s day a bit better, even if they don’t necessarily acknowledge it.
BE A BETTER FRIEND
BE FRIENDLY
Living in the country, visiting the city is always jarring. The internet is like a large city, and people tend to behave similarly. The difficulty is that when we’re confronted with too much information, we have to make compromises in order to function, to maintain some kind of mental integrity. One compromise is that we downgrade friendliness to civility, or sometimes to an impersonal kind of impenetrable bubble that does not reflect the best of us.
SHRINK
It’s the same ‘problem’ I have trying to get my mail but blown out of proportion. In my example, over a small distance (a ten-minute walk) I might see a hundred or two hundred people on foot or in cars, and I might know a handful enough to stop and chat. I might have a nodding acquaintance with dozens more, and I’d guess that at least half the people I see would be vaguely familiar (my wife, who grew up in the area would likely have double my numbers and more than that she’d likely know their family roots and how they are or are not related).
But in a big city, across the same distance you could very well 10x or greater the volume of humanity. And how do you deal with that? You can’t, really. So you shut down. You don’t make eye contact. You don’t engage. You dehumanize.
WE NEED TO REHUMANIZE
Online, without the complicating factor of a body and the concrete identity and consequences which come with it, it’s a whole other situation. A body carries an accountability. You could try to be friendly to the wrong person on the street and end up in a dangerous situation. On the other hand, you can say just about anything to anyone online and suffer no direct consequences, only harming another person. But again, without a body to back it up, it’s as hard to see the impact of your actions, as it is to feel them yourself – because while kindness builds you up a small piece at a time, so an unkind word or action chips you away a piece at a time.
SCALE DOWN
The power of community is the power of mutual flourishing.
Find your people.
Support your people.
WE BECOME WHAT WE BEHOLD
WE SHAPE OUR TOOLS AND THEREAFTER OUR TOOLS SHAPE US
“Prediction and control consist in avoiding this subliminal state of Narcissus trance. But the greatest aid to this is simply knowing that the spell can occur immediately upon contact, as in the first bars of a melody.”
(UM, ’64)
Escape depends to an extent on knowing the danger, and its nature. If you’re drowning, get a life jacket or something to hold onto. If the air is toxic, get a respirator. If you’re on a collision course, apply the brakes.
CALL FOR HELP
Your friends want to help you.
>> >> >>
To address problems of speed, devise strategies to slow down.
To address problems of scale, shrink down.
To address problems of anonymity, introduce accountability.
>> >> >>
When trapped in a downward spiral, create an upward spiral.
KINDNESS
LEVITY
LOVE
Upward Spiral
“the voice of the void,
creation, spoke:
laugh
(always laugh)
for laughter
is a sweet destruction”
(FBC, 2021)
MAKE FRIENDS
MAKE ART
Make lots of art. Make the art only you can make. Allow your heart to relieve your mind and take it off your chest. Make art.
>> >> >>
AVOID A VOID
Consumer: ‘Don’t be stupid’ Producer: ‘Don’t be evil’
Survival and Escape are very closely related, as are the strategies for accomplishing both.
Avoidance is something else. It presumes a position of safety.
Such safety today is a luxury few can afford even if they can obtain it.
Forgive the analogy, but it is an ignorant and wishful-thinking addict who suffers the delusion of self-control.
I CAN QUIT WHENEVER I WANT TO
Or, get defensive and claim it’s your choice to spend your time how you want to. And that’s correct. It’s your choice. And you can spend your time how you want to. But the question is
WHO DO YOU WANT TO BE
And are your choices going to take you there?
“Men have always been manipulated by their own inventions and called it ‘freedom.”
“Awareness of the sensory and perceptual effects of diverse technologies can make possible a human and modest existence for those who seek it.”
“New Art is the survival chart for relevance amidst the technological challenges that incessantly distort and junk our existing sensory patterns.”
(Untitled typescript, February 28, 1973)
I think we kid ourselves a lot of the time, and if we stop and look at ourselves in the mirror, we know the truth. But we want to look at ourselves on the screen more than we do in the mirror. Like Narcissus, we don’t recognize ourselves in what the screen reflects. It’s very much a case of mistaken identity.
Confronting our own ignorance, or own subtle deceit, is really hard. It’s as difficult as stopping to say hello to a person sitting on the street asking for change.
I think we’re all asking for change.
“Over and over I’ve talked to groups and individuals about new technology as new environment. Content of new environment is old environment. The new environment is always invisible. Only the content shows and yet only the environment is really active as a shaping force. … To deal with the environment directly is my strategy Harry. To attack the new environment as if it were an artefact capable of being molded.
… in order to have autonomy we must push past the unconscious and environmental parameters right up into consciousness.
“All that I’ve said about the medium is the message is sound. But it becomes acceptable when put as ‘new technology is new environment.’ Everybody knows that environment is a force. The principle works in many ways e.g. at what point does the supply of any item become environmental? Answer: ‘when it creates demand.’”
(letter to Harry Skornia)
To survive, escape, and then avoid a future maelstrom, you and I must rely on ourselves and each other. Our friends, family, community.
But what about the Maelstrom itself? In Poe’s story, this is a force of nature. But our Maelstrom is of our own making.
WE ARE RESPONSIBLE
WE ARE RESPONSE-ABLE
Once upon a time, at Google, there was a sign on the wall that said ‘Don’t be evil.’ If it was a little tongue-in-cheek, it was also an acknowledgement of the power of technologies.
Perhaps putting the sign up was symbolic. Taking it down was an even more powerful symbol.
Speaking of ignorance and wishful thinking – we know better. It should be patently obvious by now to all that the medium is the message, that the content is the carrier, that the user pays the price.
“In an age of accelerated change the need to perceive the environment becomes urgent. Acceleration also makes such perception of the environment more possible.”
(Env/Anti-Env ’65)
We have many tools at our disposal to design smarter and better and yet we design for the poorest of reasons. Chiefly among them today is that we design to capture and hold user’s attention and participation. And we are seeing what the payoff is. It’s not great.
“New environments reset our sensory thresholds. These, in turn, alter our outlook and expectations … We have no reason to be grateful to those who juggle the thresholds in the name of haphazard innovation.”
(Env/Anti-Env ’65)
I’m not sure demanding better from tech companies is a very effective strategy. The established companies are quite set in their ways to count on for very much.
‘Here lies hope’
(FBC, ’21)
However as the tools become more powerful and more accessible, the power dynamic shifts also. And, as ever, young people are our hope. When I look around me, I see the new technologists doing remarkable things. And doing it with style. And doing it with concern. They are also more savvy than previous generations because I believe they have learned from their mistakes. They are more careful about who they do business with – and they are in such demand that they have the luxury of being picky.
THERE’S A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE FUNNEL
There’s a feeling right now that is similar to the feeling at the dawn of the internet. An enthusiasm, a sense of wonder and possibility. But much less naivitee. I believe we’re in a much better place to do things better. I hope this is not my own ignorance and wishful thinking.
In the end it comes down to hard choices. Individually and collectively. Who do we want to be, and how do we get there? If we decide that human flourishing is more important than harvesting humans for their attention and data, preying on each other like parasites, then we have to drastically change our approach to how and why we innovate.
It’s a race against time because we are rapidly descending into the maelstrom and at any moment we could plunge over and down to be ground up on the bottom of the sea.
But here’s the thing. I believe in us. I believe that human ingenuity can get us out of the mess into which human ingenuity has delivered us.
“Courage!”
(EM, 2018)
Andrew McLuhan
New York City
September 22, 2023
WORKS SIGHTED
‘A Historical Approach to the Media’
Teacher’s College Record, Volume 57, Number 2, November 1955
Untitled
speech to BC Association of Radio Broadcasters, May 6, 1958
‘Report on the Project in Understanding New Media’
1960, National Association of Education Broadcasters, Washington, D. C.
Portions can be found in the 2003 edition of Understanding Media.
‘Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man’
1964
‘for Dot Zero Magazine’
unpublished, 1964
letter to Harry Skornia
October 3, 1964
‘The Relation of Environment to Anti-Environment’
November 1965
‘A Schoolman’s Guide to Marshall McLuhan’
John Culkin, 1965
Interviewed by Robert Fulford, 1966
‘Education in the Electronic Age’
Speech given to the Provincial Committee on the Aims and Objectives of Education in the Schools of Ontario, January 19, 1967.
‘The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects’
1967
Interview
‘Speaking Freely’ program with host Edwin Newman, from a partial transcript, around 1970
forward to ‘The Interior Landscape: The Literary Criticism of Marshall McLuhan 1943–1962.’ Eugene McNamara, editor, 1969
‘At the moment of Sputnik the planet became a global theatre in which there are no spectators but only actors’
Journal of Communication, Volume 24, Number 1, Winter 1974
‘City as Classroom: Understanding Language and Media’
Marshall and Eric McLuhan and Kathryn Hutcheon, 1977
‘City as Classroom Teacher’s Guide’
Marshall and Eric McLuhan and Kathryn Hutcheon, 1977
‘Man as Media’
Lecture at York University, 1977
‘Laws of Media: The New Science’
Marshall and Eric McLuhan, 1988
‘Letters of Marshall McLuhan’
Corinne McLuhan, Matie Molinaro, William Toye, 1988
‘Five Bloody Cannons’
Andrew McLuhan, 2021
‘Theories of Communication’
Eric and Marshall McLuhan, 2011
‘The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism’
T.S. Eliot, 1933
‘Phillip Massinger’
T.S. Eliot ‘The Sacred Wood.’
1920
‘Media Ecology in the 21st Century’
Eric McLuhan, 2018.
I don’t do edits really, so excuse typos and things that don’t make sense.
Thanks so much for giving me your attention. I hope it was worth it, if not… unsubscribing will not hurt my feelings, and will give you back time you literally cannot have back.
Much love.
Live in the light