Marshall McLuhanisms

IF IT WORKS, IT’S OBSOLETE Marshall McLuhanisms The story of modern America begins With the discovery of the white man by The Indians. Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity. Whereas convictions depend on speed-ups, justice requires delay. The nature of people demands that most of them be engaged in the most frivolous possible activities—like making money. With telephone and TV it is not so much the message as the sender that is “sent.” Money is the poor man’s credit card. We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future. Spaceship earth is still operated by railway conductors, just as NASA is managed by men with Newtonian goals. Invention is the mother of necessities. You mean my whole fallacy’s wrong? Mud sometimes gives the illusion of depth. The car has become the carapace, the protective and aggressive shell, of urban and suburban man. Why is it so easy to acquire the solutions of past problems and so difficult to solve current ones? The trouble with a cheap, specialized education is that you never stop paying for it. People don’t actually read newspapers. They step into them every morning like a hot bath. The road is our major architectural form. Today each of us lives several hundred years in a decade. Today the business of business is becoming the constant invention of new business. The price of eternal vigilance is indifference. News, far more than art, is artifact. When you are on the phone or on the air, you have no body. Tomorrow is our permanent address. All advertising advertises advertising. The answers are always inside the problem, not outside. “Camp” is popular because it gives people a sense of reality to see a replay of their lives. This information is top security. When you have read it, destroy yourself. The specialist is one who never makes small mistakes while moving toward the grand fallacy. One of the nicest things about being big is the luxury of thinking little. Politics offers yesterday’s answers to today’s questions. The missing link created far more interest than all the chains and explanations of being. In big industry new ideas are invited to rear their heads so they can be clobbered at once. The idea department of a big firm is a sort of lab for isolating dangerous viruses. When a thing is current, it creates currency. Food for the mind is like food for the body: the inputs are never the same as the outputs. Men on frontiers, whether of time or space, abandon their previous identities. Neighborhood gives identity. Frontiers snatch it away. The future of the book is the blurb. The ignorance of how to use new knowledge stockpiles exponentially. A road is a flattened-out wheel, rolled up in the belly of an airplane. At the speed of light, policies and political parties yield place to charismatic images. “I may be wrong, but I’m never in doubt.” —Copyright © 1986, McLuhan Associates, Ltd.

Response to chapters 5-7

I try not to dwell on the reading to much and focus more on what I take from it but alas, I will start out with a comment about the book. Chapter 5 was not too bad, chapter 6 I understood completely and chapter 7 kind of went over my head a little. Maybe I was kind of tired or maybe it was because I was sitting on the back porch reading and started thinking things like, "What does a tree think?" or "Do butterflies get tired from flapping their wings so much?". But I digress and apologize for it.

I find myself using the type of language described in the book quite often when I am communicating online and even when I am texting with my phone. I don't really get into all of the "r u there" or "2 kewl 4 school" kind of typing because it annoys me but I do use the "lol" and "brb" acronyms when I am on MSN Messenger. It's easy to type and saves a little time. I think it is so cool how in the past decade (or however long it's been in use) that communicating via the Internet has spawned a whole new language. Emoticons have gone from just using plain symbols to something fancy like typing in the symbol and when you hit the send button it turns it into a moving happy face or sad face with tears coming out of it. Commercials have popped up using the language such as the cell phone commercial with the mother and daughter in a quibble about how much she texts. The daughter talks in all acronyms and the mother argues back in regular English, so to speak, understanding every word (or letter) her daughter said. As convenient as it is, I still prefer to type the complete thought most of the time.

Presenting myself online has always been a truthful approach. What I mean is I have never set up a profile in which I make something up or represent myself other than I really am. I think it would be fun though. I have thought of this idea when I look around MySpace or Louisville Mojo. Who is faking it and who is real? I assume if there is not a picture of the person being represented or it is a cartoon, inanimate object or their dog/cat then the profile is not completely legitimate. I have learned over the years to be skeptical of what I read unless it is from a credible source or if I actually know the person in some fashion.

I have experienced the anxiety that comes with revealing something online that maybe I didn't want to or didn't mind revealing but then was a little nervous for the response. I had been chatting with a friend on my messenger and we got into a very detailed and "deep" conversation. She was asking me about certain things in my personal life and even though I told her it was okay and to ask whatever she wanted, I still felt weird and nervous for the rely to what I said. I am also guilty of firing off an email I knew would cause some reason for argument but at the time I didn't care. A little while after I sent it, I got worried. It caused a big ruckus and temporarily damaged a friendship but it was resolved and through a little time everything went back to normal. It's hard to do that knowing what the repercussions will be and even thought I knew what I did, I was hoping the friend wouldn't read the message but I was not so lucky. Needless to say, I won't do that again.

If one is going to form an online friendship then it is important to keep the doors of communication open so it doesn't die out. I found that out with a friend I met online. We chatted online a lot and it was fun. We shared funny websites and pictures with each other and the meeting was based on the fact we both liked Chewbacca and went to Catholic schools. Strange I know but it worked. We met each other once but mostly talked via messenger. It slowly came to a halt when the lines of communication fizzled out. We stopped sending messages and email then just kind of quit talking. I wasn't really upset about it because we didn't get close or anything. I use the Internet as a means of connection to family and friends first then for entertainment next. I occasionally use it to research or read about news and events but not very often.

I, along with everyone else, never really think about people other than the recipient reading the messages I send. I know that messages and communication can be retrieved off of a computer long after it has been deleted but I don't worry about it. I have thought about what if I misspell the email address and my thoughts and feelings email goes to Joe Schmo instead of Sally McFriend? Nothing I can do about it once I hit the send button. One of the great things about sending messages online is waiting for the response. Just like when I used to write letters to my cousins across the country before anyone I knew had a computer with any kind of email, I wait in anticipation for the response and check whatever medium I used to send the message often for the return message. Response is a form of being accepted and validation of the message one sends and whether it's positive or negative, it needs to be there so the sender of the original message has feedback to go off of.

As I read I am thinking of CMC as a more and more complex thing. It's putting the actions I do everyday online in a different perspective and making me think more about why I do them and how it will affect the person on the other end.

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