I lost count of how many times my jaw dropped reading this. Particularly his description of the "global village." And that "man is not designed to live at the speed of light." This man understood humanity and human nature better than most. Absolutely fascinating.
To 'thinking'-type people of my (boomer) generation McLuhan's "the medium IS the message" was a favorite one of our little bag of epigrams - and yes it WAS prescient. Implicit in it were so many aspects of our mass-media industrial complex and more latterly our Digitopia. I'd like to flag just two:
1) in our mass media age, people began to suddenly acquire proxy-opinions on everything beyond their real life experience....off the shelf without any need to make the effort to really know what they were talking about.
2) it snowballed the essentially fake concept of 'The News'. Fake because it could only ever be biased.... given its inevitable editorial selectivity. (Some murders warrant weeks of agonising and outrage while others never get a mention – some stories ‘trend’ and others fail to ‘capture the public imagination’ etc etc.) https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/non-binary-sibling-is-entertaining
From ancient times to today, new technologies provided an extended reach of human capabilities, both good and evil. Taming horses enhanced human ability to travel greater distances. It also enabled the armed calvary and broad conquest and subjugation of other peoples. Mathematics produced great cities as well as the catapults to destroy them. The computer extended human capability to process and manage massive amounts of data. The first practical use of the computer was to keep track of the Jews in Europe and enable their more efficient destruction. Splitting the atom created nuclear power plants able to light and warm astonishing numbers of homes. It also produced Nagasaki and Hiroshima. AI is just the latest new technology. While technology keeps changing, human nature remains constant. We are, on one level, no different than the early cave dwellers. We just have a larger reach and capability for both good and evil. We should expect both.
I bet within 20 or 30 years all humans will be chipped and the government will know where you are at all times and what you are doing. It has already happened. Almost ever body has a cell phone and it can be tracked.
I am a Luddite. I have a cell phone but I rarely use it and it is turned off. I keep if for when Itravel and if I am not traveling it is at home and off.
I'm the original phone phobe. I think humanity took a wrong turn when it decided it was okay for anyone in the world, at any hour of the day, to be able to reach inside your home and ring a bell in it... a bell that shrieks, "Deal with me, right now! Right now! Right now!" This convention has always seemed completely crazy to me, and I refuse to conform to its expectations. Sorry, but if you're trying to reach me by phone you're going to be disappointed; my thoughts and attention follow their own idiosyncratic paths, of interest and importance only to me, and simply aren't available for others to hijack at a moment's notice.
Like you, I own an almost never-used cell phone--but only because my well-intentioned daughters forced it on me as a birthday present. Since it does have the advantage of being compact, I was able to benefit from their gift by using its camera feature when my wife and I were in New Zealand.
Wow! I want to be like you, but I feel like everyone is dependent on/ expecting me to be reachable at all times. And I also am dependent on my cell phone to constantly check my ever-changing schedule so I can adjust accordingly. I wonder if it really is possible for me to put the cell phone down and live daily life without it.
Cs25, you can do it. Let "everyone" know when you are available and when you won't be. They will grumble at first, but when you manage (and stick to) the expectations, people will adapt. How did you manage your schedule before the cell phone? I don't know what you do, but if others are the reason that your schedule is ever-changing, manage their expectations. It is disrespectful to you, if people are expecting you to make last minute changes. I have had this conversation with my husband many time over the years, and he just recently took the advice to heart. He wishes he had made the changes years ago. Good luck and put away your phone (at a couple of days per week)
Cs25 I agree with M Palmer's advice. But the first thing I thought when I read your post was by everybody you meant family. I tried to be one of those mom's who was available 24/7. I hindsight it was not a good decision. Not for me. Not for my kids. And I got to do the first few years without the cell phone leash. This article made me sad because I think digitizing our existence is also dehumanizing us. Stop and smell the roses while there are still roses to smell.
I’m heading out West to be a full time vagabond in my tricked out Jeep and tiny off road trailer in a month. Having done multiple month+ overlanding ( that’s what the kids call it these days ) I have a pretty good idea of what I’m getting into - of course the unknown and Murphy’s Law will be waiting…
Was supposed to leave last June but my 76 year old mother broke her ankle TWICE in a week and that initiated my having to move her in to a small apartment and clean up her house of hoarding and life for 8 months.
😳🤦♂️😇
Looking forward to being a mountain/desert Morlock!
Dear Bill, Nuclear weapons didn't produce Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The hubris and miscalculation of a handful of shortsighted Japanese militarists produced the need to deploy the technology to curb their stupidity. Sort of like the whirlwind the leftists are fervently sowing here in the US.
You've seen 'Oppenheimer' of course? Not sure how that meeting with Truman really went down, but I liked the movie version -- Truman basically tells Oppenheimer to stop feeling sorry for himself over the blood on his hands. 'I dropped the bomb' he says. That was Truman: 'The buck stops here'.
It was pretty good. Not worth it for that single scene tho. But Truman was the opposite of your basic politician, he didn't try to deflect blame for his own decisions.
Seizure and the weaponization of tech for control and manipulation by people, who though they call themselves Globalists, in fact see mankind living in surveilled CCP style 15 Minute Cities exploited for the personal benefit of their fascist narcissism. It is exactly the "juggernaut" McLuhan foresaw "rolling" over culture and civilization. This brief illumination of McLuhan's work may be the opportunity we day-to-day "somnambulists" need to realize we're riding a runaway horse we have no idea how to control.
Living with one foot in and one foot outside time certainly creates a split in the human psyche. Traveling at light speed through the ether it's easy to believe that there is no such thing as a man or woman. No history. No such thing as human reality at all. Hacking off ones sexual organs as a means of streamlining the body for the promised salvation of cyberspace and the metaverse is, after six decades of marxist/capitalist drugs and cultural iconoclasm, an easy rationalization to make. Why? Because there is no "ground control" for Major Tom. It's an altered state of consciousness that has intentionally been distorted and turned into a real bad trip. Indeed, the stars do "look very different today."
"Houston we have a problem!! This is an entirely new age and its vision and promise is being stolen because we, like our dystopian antagonists, have lost contact with the bloody nose moral reason that defines what it is to be a HUMAN BEING. If McLuhan was visionary so were the men and women who chartered the moral gravity necessary to keep human dignity alive and serve as ground control for space travelers of every age: The American Republic, the Constitution and the free citizen.
It's time to get clean.
(Thank you TFP!! -- Articles like this make my subscription worthwhile.)
All of which illustrates I think that is the heart, soul, and mind of man that has built the modern reality. Will we ever evolve to not harm one another? Is it even possible?
Great comments, GC. I am particularly fascinated by people who believe strongly about a subject of which they have spent little to no time seeking to understand. Climate change is a particularly good example of this. Without digital and mass media, this would be far more rare. Where we thought the media fire hose of information would raise overall awareness and understanding, the complexity seems to be too much for humans, who often retreat into the comfortable jacuzzi of their community’s agreed-upon truths.
Yes climate change is a prime example. I try to keep an open mind because I haven't the time to dig deep into the massive amount of research findings. But what I do know is that this also applies to at least 95% of the tens of millions of people who grant themselves license to hold strong, even fanatical, climate alarmist opinions. Great reply by the way.
Regarding Climate. Change is inherent to the planet. Just off of the Florida coast caves can be found under water which have evidence of human habitation. Go inland fifteen miles and an ancient reef was quarried one hundred years ago to provide building materials for the development of Miami.
Sounds like bragging but..... Yes I did. I never read much of his work (if anything...can't remember). But the idea took root in me as a young man that mass media was making people too opinionated without the necessary intellectual curiosity to actually check the provenance of what they were picking up on 'the news'.
Damn good straight-to-the-point question by the way.
I appreciate that- no brag, just fact! Many seem all too willing to jump to insult & the unimaginative ad hominem instead of engaging in true dialogue, making gross assumptions.
The “proctologist and ventriloquist” comment is as pertinent as it is funny. How many would discount the ventriloquist but engage the proctologist based on credentials alone.? I’ve encountered the most wise and insightful HS graduates and the most foolish and shallow non-degreed individuals alike.
One can only determine the difference by carefully listening or reading what they offer.
Yes, the curiosity to actually understand the causes of political/social developments they don't like is not everyone's thing....many just jump straight to the anger and the finger-pointing.
Look forward to reading any comments you might have on my various essays (I only post one per month....don't like to deluge my readers!)
In March, 2020, as Covid took hold and no one knew what to do, I discovered that nearly all of my neighbors and work colleagues had been secretly studying epidemiology, many of them so brilliantly that they were able to tell the rest of us what to do, whom to listen to, and how science really works. Thank god for Covid; it let these virus-savvy autodidacts finally get their day in the sun. Many of them still try to convince me the pangolins did it.
The global village discussion caught my attention too. Western intellectuals seem to think that notions of global villages ( it takes a village) and global citizenry mean their utipia is just around the corner. But when you examine all that is happening in other parts of the world where hate and violence and political control limiting freedom are flourishing , it seems clear that the global notion may not lead to nirvana because of little things like the quest for freedom and good old human nature. The technological advancements have made control much easier to obtain and expand throughout the world and begs the question where will we be in 5, 10 or 20 years when AI has been further developed and EXPLOITED by those seeking ever more power over our information and thoughts.
Dear Seeker, Other parts of the world? Have you considered the effects of the full court press by bringing the vast power of the federal juggernaut and their complicit media against seventy odd million citizens of the US by the insane leftists because they dislike their candidate of choice?
Here’s some clarity. Fortunately, you are wrong. Our next Prime Minister will be Pierre Poliviere. The only difficult things about him are the pronunciation and spelling of his name.
And, thank goodness, unlike America, we do not have the illusory protection of its 2nd Amendment or its lawlessness.
And while we are facing threats from a Conquest Ideology, unlike America, we are not undergoing a wholesale invasion promoted by the regime in power.
I hope Pierre succeeds as I have been saddened to see what has become of Canada under the son of another Pierre ( I am taking the high road on that one Terence:-))
Not sure if that is an insult or a compliment but regardless very clever. If a compliment thank you. If an insult, looking forward to debating facts, issues and analysis woth you in the future. I am happy to be educated when I am wrong and in fact have reversed or modified my views on many issues over the years. But never on the basis of name calling. Cheers.
His ability to see the downsides of being in everyone’s personal business was understated in many ways. His soliloquies (the short clips made them feel this way) are perfectly in-tune to a society more than half a century removed from when they were made. Impressive.
McLuhan was, indeed, prophetic. In the clip discussing “global village”, when he talks about how everyone is in everyone else’s business, it’s hard not to think of the wave of recent protest/riots over issues including racism, environmentalism, Israel/Hamas, etc.
I taught McLuhan’s “Understanding Media” as a TA in grad school (for an intro to communications course). The FP piece doesn’t explain much about his concept of “hot” and “cold” media, which is also quite significant for our times. Essentially, printed matter requires a lot of input from the reader, in order to process the information (which makes it hot); whereas video allows the viewer to sit back, and let the information wash over them without the same amount of engagement (which makes it cool). The hot vs cool concept, fundamentally addresses how our brain processes the information contained on those media. Now that the past couple of generations of young people have garnered most of their information via video (TV, YouTube, now TikTok) means that they are affected by the neurologically passive way that we process cool media. Maybe that accounts for some of the ideological conformity that we’re seeing?
You raise a key insight related to making meaning: the passive and active methods very much affect the extraction of meaning which, in the 'global' body, yields the conflation of feeling with meaningful value. For example, passively learning narratives that makes one feel able to 'do better' by promoting them produces virtue signalling... an empty gesture void of active meaning but full of emotional support from the passive audience for whom it is performed and, in turn, then feel good about 'doing better' by going along and sharing that 'virtue'. Well, golly gee whiz, I wonder why life seems so meaningless to so many? Where can such people go to buy something to 'fix' this emptiness problem? Drugs? But if not drugs then activate the 'smart' phones first to document and then share (monetize) this journey (for likes). Yeah, that'll produce meaning for the global body passively watching this modern Grail quest unfold by such 'influencers'. Blame for failure must be somewhere out there, of course, so maybe it's meaningful to tear everything down first. I'm almost sure following that impulse will reveal a way to 'do better' to find meaning. Rinse and repeat. Is there any wonder how it is turning out?
I really love his hot/cold idea overall, but I think he limited its reach when he assigned the temperature names opposite to the sort of “intuitive” feel of those words.
Cool is generally associated with being slower, measured, undisturbed and hot with being more fiery, fast, and explosive.
The concept is great, but I think would be much more widely known and discussed if the monikers had been reversed.
YouBoob is telling me the link I posted is no longer available. It is. I just watched it. It's a short (no ads when I saw it) 10 minutes of Terrance McKenna on McLuhan.
Laughing as well as I scramble and struggle to find a way to keep these 2 words separate in my mind but am failing miserably as a picture of his first dummy resembling some weird looking sideways derrière talking to an audience. Oh mind be still
They seem like complementary skills! One day he was doing a probing exam and realized he could make people say things if he applied the right pressure in certain spots.
At any rate, it’s a far better title than the similar-sounding “ventriloquist and amateur proctologist.” The placement of the word “amateur” makes all the difference.
I had a college friend who became a urologist. She did have a lot of prior experience with the male reproductive system. Not sure if she became an amateur ventriloquist.
For literally years I have been crafting a joke about the difference between a meteorologist and a mediocre urologist. The former makes piss poor predictions about the weather. I just can’t get the urology part. He definitely looks at urine or something. It’s missing an ingredient. I hope to finish it before I die.
This is why I subscribe to FP. Where else do you find the reach, the substance and the reality of their writing and reporting. Excellent just excellent
Yes- I agree! I was concerned over the last month or so thinking TFP was morphing into MSM but this article is fantastic. Much to think about - what does it mean to be human?
I’m old, and the common thread I find in my age group is that we no longer recognize this world. My greatest comfort is watching old movies, browsing antique stores, and relishing beautiful lovingly made real wood furniture, made in the USA. I take comfort in nostalgia, when my world made sense. The other day I visited my library, and peeked into a room set aside for small children. They were busy creating things at small tables, far from phones, and other electronic devices. I thought to myself if only this would last, but I’m a realist and I too see a future where electronics more and more will rule and take over our lives. I say once again that I’m glad that I’m old, and will not live to see this future.
Although not as mind-blowing as his other insights, this one struck me too:
“As a result, people would be plunged into nostalgia, and yearn for their old, solid identities.”
I am 40-something and work in tech, spending hours daily immersed in the world he describes. Yet I also, almost daily, fantasize about life in the 80’s and early 90’s. Seeing packs of kids riding bikes, boredom, unstructured time, swimming pools, etc. I figured this nostalgia is just a part of growing older but maybe there is more to it…
At 85, I rarely think about the past until someone asks about it or I read something that triggers a memory. I have no desire to return to anything or anywhere. I am where I am. Most of the people I know, are like Joanne Fox and are constantly referencing the past. Memory is a funny thing; one never knows if the memory actually happened the way we remember it. We can make the past and the future into anything we want it to be, neither of which is real. Living in the present is an endless amazement. No, I don't have a smart phone. I had one for a month and got rid of it, it felt like an intrusion into my life.
Amen. I have a "smartphone." I use it to make phone calls, send text messages, and take pictures. Only two dozen people have my number. My friends have finally quit giving me crap for never using it to go on the internet.
I find life and joy in my husband, in my roses, in my dogs, in my children, and in tea table chats with my few friends. In my house, my shelves have a few items I've kept through the years that, when I see them, spark joy in my heart even more than they bring memory to mind.
When my daughter was a child, she would say, "Let's do something special today." I would respond by telling her there is nothing more special than spending an ordinary day together--planting a rose, cooking a meal, and talking about our thoughts and dreams. That is what technology robs us of if we let it.
Ha! Fascinating that you (Mr. Forkenspoon) are able to live in the present, unlike so many other people. It’s because you successfully did resist the present- by throwing out the smart phone- and enabling true presence. True presence- which most of us only get to experience, when we remember the past :-).
You’ve got a couple of years on me, and I’m happy for you that you have found your place in the present. The goal for my remaining years is in trying to make a difference in people’s lives, and giving back to the community. However, since I have given up my computer, I’m not yet able to give up my smartphone!
That's admirable. I don't live in a community so that's not doable for me. I did that 11 yrs. ago and it was satisfying. I'll keep my computer and never own another "smart" phone. If I need to talk to someone, I can call on my dumbphone.
There's a theory that the rise of instant information retrieval in the 2000s spelled the end of linearly progressing culture. You're not nostalgic for the recent past so much as yearning for that sense of being on progressing, forward-moving river, instead of being trapped on an ocean with no current or wind and the shore out of sight.
I recently retired from an IT Director position and often wondered what staring at a computer screen for hours was doing to me physically and to my psyche. I would always go for a one mile walk at lunch time to clear my head. Yet now that I am retired I find myself watching electronic images on TV and staring at computer screens albeit not as long.
I’m 53 and feel the same often. I assumed it’s a part of getting older. I’ve been obsessed with spending as much time outside as possible, I was always into,hibernating over winter, but this past winter I bundled up went on long walks and hiked trails nearby. If it was 25 or up I was outside.
The second thing that helped was I took up tap dancing. Our Jewish Community Center offers classes. I tapped as a child for 3 years and I’m back at it having fun.
Old is a relative term, Joanne. You can be young (again, relative) and still feel very uncomfortable in where we’re going as a society. I myself feel in sync with the 70’s and ‘80’s, even the ‘90’s - slower in retrospect than now, with far more time to ‘decode.’ There is far too much chaff out there now and not enough time to find the wheat. So we end up believing the chaff. Fiction abounds, disguising itself as fact.
As McLuhan stated, we are not designed to live at the speed of light. It will prove, in the end, to be our undoing.
I would love to know where you saw small school children creating things This is not common in most places. The L. A. Times just published an article Re: what kids were learning at a local public school. The teachers were using colored paper and crayons to write scathing things abt. Jews!
That sounds like stuff the BLM is distributing across the country. It was a joy to see children enjoying themselves being creative using their hands and imagination in a small town in Michigan.
This article was a fascinating read. What jumped out to me was his point that everything is an image, not a real person. In his day, it was a voice on the radio, a person on TV, or an author in print. Today, we have our phones, but the algorithms that feed us what we want. This, blended with the most potent natural human drug, the feeling of being right, the digital world, has created so many online narcissists.
The thought of how brave a person can be behind a keyboard rather than talking to a real person made me think of my youth; if you said the wrong thing, to put things plainly, you would get your ass beat. There is no fear of that today, as you can be a keyboard hashtag warrior. The other consequence is when these people get together, think of the mobs we read about earlier in the week on college campuses.
I love Steven Covey's insight of first seeking to understand. Marshall McLuhan presciently gives us the fundamentals of human nature to interpret what is happening around us. What to do about that is a topic for another day. Thanks for creating this fantastic idea. Pop culture is okay, but like donuts, it's not good if eaten regularly, but stimulating the brain always is. Great work, Benjamin.
That insight made me think of a point Scott Adams makes in his recent book that memories aren’t real. He means this in the context of us being negatively impacted by bad memories. It’s an interesting mind hack. Your bad memories can’t be seen or touched and don’t mean anything more than what you allow them to mean.
As McLuhan says it, our innermost selves can never appear in media, just an image that is manufactured (by us or someone else) for a desired effect. In many cases the most beloved celebrities are those who present the most authentic seeming image, but it’s an image nonetheless. This manufactured image seems similar to a memory as Adams describes memory: it can’t be touched or seen and only carries the power we give it.
Yea sometimes, and other times we just remember how we felt when it happened. The Adams book helped me. When I begin to dwell on bad experiences, usually when I should be falling asleep, I instead try to think of happy memories of my kids, even things that happened that day. I found the idea that memories don’t exist to be very liberating. Simple thing but it has helped me.
Great observation about “being right” as a drug. A wonderful pastor once gave a sermon on fundamentalism, this at a time when the religious right was coming into its own. To paraphrase: “The most powerful human desire is not for food, or shelter, or sex. It is the need to know for certain that you are always right.” And that’s the power of fundamentalism, whether a religious fundamentalist, a secular human fundamentalist, or, today, an identity politics fundamentalist.
I read "The Medium is the Massage" many years ago, and can't say I understood it. With McCluhan I at least often has the sense that he seemed to be saying something very percipient, but I could not quite tease out what it was.
What I will suggest this morning--and I had a hard week and my brain is not operating too well, nor will I ask it to today, since I actually like Saturday as a Day of Rest--is that all understandings have a visceral, corporeal component. We think with our bodies. But we think differently speaking directly to people, by the phone, and by text and even letter. The very physical acts of writing with a pen and typing on a keyboard interact differently with the physical components of our body, with our brains, and brain regions, in differing ways.
I think the two dimensionality of screens reduces the gut element of our conscious perception, our intuitive knowings, and that makes us collectively dumber. And dumb begets dumb. It's a feedback loop that is hard to disrupt.
I see all around me glib superficiality. I see people who, even when physically present with other people, tend to see them with much the same spirit with which they interact with the images on screens that actually occupy most of their time. And of course it's not uncommon to see couples and groups of people all sitting together, all on their phones. The phones come to seem more real than the people they are with.
Socrates, famously, refused to write anything. Plato made Socrates his primary character in his dialogues, but we have no way of knowing if anything in any of those dialogues was said by Socrates. Socrates himself viewed every dialogue in effect as a unique work of performance art that could never be repeated, and which would become sick and die if recorded then reenacted by others, in other than that moment.
And of course he died saying that the only thing he was sure of was that he could be sure of nothing. He knew nothing. This is actually a benign spirit, and one which, if it were carried out sincerely in our own time, would do much to mediate and eliminate the conflicts we see. So many people learn easily and early to see what simply isn't there.
One last point. My best friend in high school went on to lead, or co-lead, the team at Apple that developed the iPhone. He was quoted in one interview that the iPhone represented the next stage in human evolution. On one hand you can see his point: we became cyborgs when we attached our phones permanently to our bodies, and as cyborgs we had instantaneous access to, in principle, the sum total of human knowledge, literally at our fingertips.
But in counter-point, we entered a world of hyperreality, in which a fake world became more real for many of us than the trees, dogs, rain and clouds of our own.
Our bodies have knowledge that is real. Most of us fail to listen to our bodies enough. We have become purely visual and auditory creatures, and that is an enormous loss, because there is no intuition in sight and sound. It's in the gut, and the gut is in the body.
That will do for today. After a day I'm sure I would have something more and different to say, but I wasn't going to respond at all.
I would like a piece on Jacques Ellul. He should be better known.
….And of course it's not uncommon to see couples and groups of people all sitting together, all on their phones….
This part for me is the most difficult change to accept. Recently, we were seated next to a young family in a restaurant. Dad and Mom were separately scrolling, while each of the two kids were watching animation on separate Ipads, one in a high chair. All around the place were tables full of diners scrolling or talking on their phones.
I don’t want to be judgmental, but dining out lately just leaves me sad. The need or desire to be distracted from those directly in our presence seems rude and offensive. What could be more important than Grandma or one’s young toddler? If this is public behavior, I can only imagine the interaction at home.
Yes, I try to consciously leave my phone alone when in public and just watch people. Yogi Berra said something close to "you can learn a lot just by looking." Doris Lessing has a really interesting page or two in her book Mara and Dann where she talked about an alternative educational system in which kids were taken out somewhere--to nature, to a market, to a stock market exchange, etc. (those other additions are mine)--and asked 1) what do you see; and 2) what can you learn from what you see, i.e. what inferences can you make about what you can't see from what you can see?
It's a fascinating idea, and one I to this day try and work into my everyday life, not least when in public spaces waiting on food.
Most of us don't do ANY looking. If a plane crashed outside our door we would look it up on our phones. In such a world it's not hard to tell large lies and get away with them indefinitely. Manifestly, that IS the world we live in.
It’s sad to see what you describe at restaurant tables, and absolutely life threatening to see their eyes glued to their screens as they walk across the street.
[You say regarding the iphone] “But in counter-point, we entered a world of hyperreality, in which a fake world became more real for many of us than the trees, dogs, rain and clouds of our own.“
I think one reason McLuhan is/was so prescient is that he was experiencing the dissonance of being on the cusp of these two different worlds - natural and fake. The natural one - when literature reflected on nature’s metaphors to explain universally shared, complex human experience. The fake one is a personal surreal utopia where we can escape the complexities of human experience and nature. The former gave people a sense of how equally small each individual is in the grand scheme of things. The latter deludes individuals into thinking they are much bigger and more significant relative to who they really are.
I think that his statement that humans are not built to operate at the speed of light is the point I'm taking most to heart.
I think humanity devolves as we encounter and react to one another in an instant. I think that we are meant to be more deliberative in our encounters and in our daily tasks. This instant gratification has cheapened our lives, interactions and expectations. It has lessened our ability to truly know things or be educated.
Yes to your takeaway from this article. When I wrote my essay for the FP senior essay contest The Inconvenience of it All, and referenced the simple joy of hanging out laundry, I was trying to remind or evoke in my readers that moving backward deliberately in this space we call our existence is calming and reassuring. This article nailed that “reality.”
I wonder sometimes if on my deathbed I will be remembering scenes from movies I've watched. My greatest fear has long been getting to my death bed and realizing I've lived someone else's life.
All of these things are complicated, and we live inside this Matrix. Some of us were alive before it formed, but in my own case I honestly think I've forgotten what it was like, and it is hard to see what we would be seeing if we were seeing, when we are not seeing.
That last bit was vaguely Yogi Berra-ish, but I am going to leave it.
But that it is worth turning the damn computer off and leaving the phone alone at least one day a week and getting some mud on your shoes somewhere is really indisputable. That's what I'm going to do now.
I am glad you mentioned the Matix. Because reading the article and comments I was thinking of the films and books that revolve around the concept of The One (Star Wars, Dune, even Hunger Games) who all are outside the power structure to varying degrees. But the Matrix is my favorite because The One was outside the power structure while being part of it.
I am a fan of literature and print. I still buy books and write notes.
But the development of the printing press was a technological advancement too. I think the oral traditionalists it replaced would tell us that literature was fake and not of the real world.
I will cheat and add 20 more votes for Ayn Rand. Her short work “Anthem” woke me up in 1962 at the age of 15. And the world seems somewhat like “Atlas Shrugged” and “Fountainhead” today.
No one better captured the essence of rugged individualism and capitalism. She did it by pitting the heros of her stories against the most loathsome, smarmy wastes of human flesh an imagination could ever conjur up. She makes it so easy to hate collectivists and statists. Her villains live, work, and govern all around us, and they’re sucking the life out of our country.
Wow! What a perfect insert between TGIF and Douglas Murray on Sundays. I had never heard of Marshall McLuhan but I am glad I now have. I don't think I know of anyone who was more prescient regarding the digital age, and from an Elizabethan scholar to boot! FP, you've outdone yourself again!
"When you don’t have a physical body you’re a discarnate being. "
As a Christian, this hit me right between the eyes. We've forgotten that Creation is good, and that bodies matter. It explains a great deal of the current transhumanism.
Thanks for this. Great article, and I look forward to the series. Suggestions for future prophets - C.S. Lewis & The Abolition of Man (fictionalized in That Hideous Strength) and Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death.
“The medium is the message” is proven by the Nixon/Kennedy debate. Most of those who saw it on TV insisted that Kennedy won the debate. Most of those who listened to it on the radio said that Nixon won the debate. Probably because people were highly influenced by the handsome Kennedy so much so that his looks overrode the content of his statements. A classic case of appearances trumping the message.
Prior to the age of television, presidential candidates didn’t have to be telegenic and often weren’t. Most voters never “saw” a presidential candidate other than perhaps a grainy newspaper photo. Substance superseded superficialities. Most of today’s national candidates look like ageing movie stars, usually with brains to match.
At Wired, we made Marshall McLuhan our patron saint from the day we launched in 1993. Every issue had one of his typically disruptive quotes on the masthead. And then in 1996, we published an "interview" with Marshall commenting on developments that happened after his death (https://www.wired.com/1996/01/channeling/). Still pretty amusing, even insightful. And if you think Marshall was prescient, you should check out the guy who influenced him, the renegade Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin, whose mimeographed work Marshall read as a young professor, and inspired his Gutenberg Galaxy. Wired wrote about him too. (https://www.wired.com/1995/06/teilhard/)
My husband John, was a student at St. Michael’s. He was fascinated by McLuhan. Another person he was fascinated by was Wittgenstein . I could never quite get either, nor could I get de Chardin. But I want to! It strikes me that McLuhan and de Chardin were Catholic. What is the spiritual side of all these insights? Will we be still individuals after death or just swept up in some “global” village “ . I think I prefer the dust to dust ending individually. When you look at demographic trends the most frightening ending is a human race propagated by machines. Maybe science fiction is the truest predictor of all.
I had originally wanted to call it Millennium. Creative Director John Plunkett thought it should be Digit (get it?). Nicholas Negroponte suggested Wireless. Jane came up with Wired. Right name.
I was fortunate enough to study McLuhan in college in the mid-late 70s, which means I was fortunate enough to have then some of the jaw-dropping reactions that other commenters are having now.
Would be difficult to overemphasize how much it has helped to navigate the past 45 years, including in my career. Had a very good career going in journalism, yet when the internet came along, one could apply McLuhan's teachings to understand how pre-internet journalism/media would be upended, for the simple reason that anyone and everyone was suddenly equipped to be a publisher, and could publish to millions (now billions) instantly.
Thanks, Bari and Benjamin, for this marvelous piece. Definitely encourage everyone to spend time enjoying McLuhan's writings!
High praise to you, a fine article. So good in fact my coffee got cold as I could not stop reading and reflecting upon my own “ McLuhan moments”. He brought much clarity to a young man’s mind.
I cheated with 20 votes for Ayn Rand, and will cheat more with 50 votes for Thomas Sowell. I have first editions of everything he has written and financially supported his work at The Hoover Institute for many years. For all matters having to do with race and culture, Thomas Sowell has the explanation and answer, and the footnotes to back it up.
Educated, intelligent conservitives have a hard time being heard through all the Democrat noise. Especially when most of the press and news sources ignore them.
Best article yet in The Free Press (and not one mention of political sides!!!!). Fascinating piece and I'm super excited to dig into this man's books and info.
I lost count of how many times my jaw dropped reading this. Particularly his description of the "global village." And that "man is not designed to live at the speed of light." This man understood humanity and human nature better than most. Absolutely fascinating.
To 'thinking'-type people of my (boomer) generation McLuhan's "the medium IS the message" was a favorite one of our little bag of epigrams - and yes it WAS prescient. Implicit in it were so many aspects of our mass-media industrial complex and more latterly our Digitopia. I'd like to flag just two:
1) in our mass media age, people began to suddenly acquire proxy-opinions on everything beyond their real life experience....off the shelf without any need to make the effort to really know what they were talking about.
2) it snowballed the essentially fake concept of 'The News'. Fake because it could only ever be biased.... given its inevitable editorial selectivity. (Some murders warrant weeks of agonising and outrage while others never get a mention – some stories ‘trend’ and others fail to ‘capture the public imagination’ etc etc.) https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/non-binary-sibling-is-entertaining
From ancient times to today, new technologies provided an extended reach of human capabilities, both good and evil. Taming horses enhanced human ability to travel greater distances. It also enabled the armed calvary and broad conquest and subjugation of other peoples. Mathematics produced great cities as well as the catapults to destroy them. The computer extended human capability to process and manage massive amounts of data. The first practical use of the computer was to keep track of the Jews in Europe and enable their more efficient destruction. Splitting the atom created nuclear power plants able to light and warm astonishing numbers of homes. It also produced Nagasaki and Hiroshima. AI is just the latest new technology. While technology keeps changing, human nature remains constant. We are, on one level, no different than the early cave dwellers. We just have a larger reach and capability for both good and evil. We should expect both.
I bet within 20 or 30 years all humans will be chipped and the government will know where you are at all times and what you are doing. It has already happened. Almost ever body has a cell phone and it can be tracked.
I am a Luddite. I have a cell phone but I rarely use it and it is turned off. I keep if for when Itravel and if I am not traveling it is at home and off.
I'm the original phone phobe. I think humanity took a wrong turn when it decided it was okay for anyone in the world, at any hour of the day, to be able to reach inside your home and ring a bell in it... a bell that shrieks, "Deal with me, right now! Right now! Right now!" This convention has always seemed completely crazy to me, and I refuse to conform to its expectations. Sorry, but if you're trying to reach me by phone you're going to be disappointed; my thoughts and attention follow their own idiosyncratic paths, of interest and importance only to me, and simply aren't available for others to hijack at a moment's notice.
Like you, I own an almost never-used cell phone--but only because my well-intentioned daughters forced it on me as a birthday present. Since it does have the advantage of being compact, I was able to benefit from their gift by using its camera feature when my wife and I were in New Zealand.
I hate phones so much I have considered changing my name to "Spam Likely".
Get a Faraday bag.
🎯
Never heard of that until now!
I have them for all of my portable devices. They are also good for vehicle with remote start keys. That is actually a safety measure.
Wow! I want to be like you, but I feel like everyone is dependent on/ expecting me to be reachable at all times. And I also am dependent on my cell phone to constantly check my ever-changing schedule so I can adjust accordingly. I wonder if it really is possible for me to put the cell phone down and live daily life without it.
Cs25, you can do it. Let "everyone" know when you are available and when you won't be. They will grumble at first, but when you manage (and stick to) the expectations, people will adapt. How did you manage your schedule before the cell phone? I don't know what you do, but if others are the reason that your schedule is ever-changing, manage their expectations. It is disrespectful to you, if people are expecting you to make last minute changes. I have had this conversation with my husband many time over the years, and he just recently took the advice to heart. He wishes he had made the changes years ago. Good luck and put away your phone (at a couple of days per week)
Cs25 I agree with M Palmer's advice. But the first thing I thought when I read your post was by everybody you meant family. I tried to be one of those mom's who was available 24/7. I hindsight it was not a good decision. Not for me. Not for my kids. And I got to do the first few years without the cell phone leash. This article made me sad because I think digitizing our existence is also dehumanizing us. Stop and smell the roses while there are still roses to smell.
Being a Luddite does not stop your phone from being tracked even when it's turned off. It's just not actively broadcasting its location.
I don't keep my phone off to protect me from being tracked. It's off because I don't use it.
There will be a few of us Morlocks living in the wilds….
I thought most of them lived in the NYC Subway system….
😂
I actually know who you are talking about but most of us are the Eloi.
As a kid, I read most if not all of Wells.
I’m heading out West to be a full time vagabond in my tricked out Jeep and tiny off road trailer in a month. Having done multiple month+ overlanding ( that’s what the kids call it these days ) I have a pretty good idea of what I’m getting into - of course the unknown and Murphy’s Law will be waiting…
Was supposed to leave last June but my 76 year old mother broke her ankle TWICE in a week and that initiated my having to move her in to a small apartment and clean up her house of hoarding and life for 8 months.
😳🤦♂️😇
Looking forward to being a mountain/desert Morlock!
Seems Elon has already implanted a chip that can detect thoughts. O'Brien would be in heaven.
Who's O'Brien?
The Inner Party member in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four who tortures Winston Smith.
Just as important, Who is Emmanuel Goldstein?
Dear Bill, Nuclear weapons didn't produce Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The hubris and miscalculation of a handful of shortsighted Japanese militarists produced the need to deploy the technology to curb their stupidity. Sort of like the whirlwind the leftists are fervently sowing here in the US.
You've seen 'Oppenheimer' of course? Not sure how that meeting with Truman really went down, but I liked the movie version -- Truman basically tells Oppenheimer to stop feeling sorry for himself over the blood on his hands. 'I dropped the bomb' he says. That was Truman: 'The buck stops here'.
Dear Ray, I haven't watched the film.
It was pretty good. Not worth it for that single scene tho. But Truman was the opposite of your basic politician, he didn't try to deflect blame for his own decisions.
Seizure and the weaponization of tech for control and manipulation by people, who though they call themselves Globalists, in fact see mankind living in surveilled CCP style 15 Minute Cities exploited for the personal benefit of their fascist narcissism. It is exactly the "juggernaut" McLuhan foresaw "rolling" over culture and civilization. This brief illumination of McLuhan's work may be the opportunity we day-to-day "somnambulists" need to realize we're riding a runaway horse we have no idea how to control.
Living with one foot in and one foot outside time certainly creates a split in the human psyche. Traveling at light speed through the ether it's easy to believe that there is no such thing as a man or woman. No history. No such thing as human reality at all. Hacking off ones sexual organs as a means of streamlining the body for the promised salvation of cyberspace and the metaverse is, after six decades of marxist/capitalist drugs and cultural iconoclasm, an easy rationalization to make. Why? Because there is no "ground control" for Major Tom. It's an altered state of consciousness that has intentionally been distorted and turned into a real bad trip. Indeed, the stars do "look very different today."
"Houston we have a problem!! This is an entirely new age and its vision and promise is being stolen because we, like our dystopian antagonists, have lost contact with the bloody nose moral reason that defines what it is to be a HUMAN BEING. If McLuhan was visionary so were the men and women who chartered the moral gravity necessary to keep human dignity alive and serve as ground control for space travelers of every age: The American Republic, the Constitution and the free citizen.
It's time to get clean.
(Thank you TFP!! -- Articles like this make my subscription worthwhile.)
We SHOULD expect both, but we are historically bad at predicting the negative effects as the “juggernaut roll[s] over [us].”
All of which illustrates I think that is the heart, soul, and mind of man that has built the modern reality. Will we ever evolve to not harm one another? Is it even possible?
Great comments, GC. I am particularly fascinated by people who believe strongly about a subject of which they have spent little to no time seeking to understand. Climate change is a particularly good example of this. Without digital and mass media, this would be far more rare. Where we thought the media fire hose of information would raise overall awareness and understanding, the complexity seems to be too much for humans, who often retreat into the comfortable jacuzzi of their community’s agreed-upon truths.
I agree with Socrates, “all I know is that I know nothing”.
Sea Sentry-- I like that "comfortable Jacuzzi of their community's agreed-upon truths." Is it of your coinage?
Yes, but if you find it useful, have at it. :)
SS- I LOVE- thank you! Very good!!!
An excellent coinage, indeed!
Yes climate change is a prime example. I try to keep an open mind because I haven't the time to dig deep into the massive amount of research findings. But what I do know is that this also applies to at least 95% of the tens of millions of people who grant themselves license to hold strong, even fanatical, climate alarmist opinions. Great reply by the way.
Regarding Climate. Change is inherent to the planet. Just off of the Florida coast caves can be found under water which have evidence of human habitation. Go inland fifteen miles and an ancient reef was quarried one hundred years ago to provide building materials for the development of Miami.
Man made climate change is a leftist scam.
Your #1 is how and why the news media get away with #2.
Did you recognize it as prescient then, Graham?
Sounds like bragging but..... Yes I did. I never read much of his work (if anything...can't remember). But the idea took root in me as a young man that mass media was making people too opinionated without the necessary intellectual curiosity to actually check the provenance of what they were picking up on 'the news'.
Damn good straight-to-the-point question by the way.
I appreciate that- no brag, just fact! Many seem all too willing to jump to insult & the unimaginative ad hominem instead of engaging in true dialogue, making gross assumptions.
The “proctologist and ventriloquist” comment is as pertinent as it is funny. How many would discount the ventriloquist but engage the proctologist based on credentials alone.? I’ve encountered the most wise and insightful HS graduates and the most foolish and shallow non-degreed individuals alike.
One can only determine the difference by carefully listening or reading what they offer.
Cheers! I look forward to reading your Substack!
Yes, the curiosity to actually understand the causes of political/social developments they don't like is not everyone's thing....many just jump straight to the anger and the finger-pointing.
Look forward to reading any comments you might have on my various essays (I only post one per month....don't like to deluge my readers!)
In March, 2020, as Covid took hold and no one knew what to do, I discovered that nearly all of my neighbors and work colleagues had been secretly studying epidemiology, many of them so brilliantly that they were able to tell the rest of us what to do, whom to listen to, and how science really works. Thank god for Covid; it let these virus-savvy autodidacts finally get their day in the sun. Many of them still try to convince me the pangolins did it.
Yes!!
The global village discussion caught my attention too. Western intellectuals seem to think that notions of global villages ( it takes a village) and global citizenry mean their utipia is just around the corner. But when you examine all that is happening in other parts of the world where hate and violence and political control limiting freedom are flourishing , it seems clear that the global notion may not lead to nirvana because of little things like the quest for freedom and good old human nature. The technological advancements have made control much easier to obtain and expand throughout the world and begs the question where will we be in 5, 10 or 20 years when AI has been further developed and EXPLOITED by those seeking ever more power over our information and thoughts.
Dear Seeker, Other parts of the world? Have you considered the effects of the full court press by bringing the vast power of the federal juggernaut and their complicit media against seventy odd million citizens of the US by the insane leftists because they dislike their candidate of choice?
Also, Canada right now is one-step ahead of the US and western Europe is a lost cause
We are moving in Canada's direction.
Clarity Seeker
Here’s some clarity. Fortunately, you are wrong. Our next Prime Minister will be Pierre Poliviere. The only difficult things about him are the pronunciation and spelling of his name.
And, thank goodness, unlike America, we do not have the illusory protection of its 2nd Amendment or its lawlessness.
And while we are facing threats from a Conquest Ideology, unlike America, we are not undergoing a wholesale invasion promoted by the regime in power.
Pardon? Justin has a target of one million immigrants this year. Per capita, that makes the US southern border look like a minor problem.
Trudeau can postpone elections until 2025 or 2026, meanwhile doing everything he can to advance his woke leftism.
I hope Pierre succeeds as I have been saddened to see what has become of Canada under the son of another Pierre ( I am taking the high road on that one Terence:-))
Love him. When do you guys vote again? Cannot wait to see Trudeau gone. Canada used to be such a great place.
Hy, apologies for not being more clear on that. I view that as self evident but in the future I shall be more direct
Not at all. I'm somewhat good at the uptake but not always.
The more you comment on FP the more evident it becomes that “self-evident” is far from universal.
Not sure if that is an insult or a compliment but regardless very clever. If a compliment thank you. If an insult, looking forward to debating facts, issues and analysis woth you in the future. I am happy to be educated when I am wrong and in fact have reversed or modified my views on many issues over the years. But never on the basis of name calling. Cheers.
A compliment, to be sure.
Yes. Including the importance of periodically disconnecting to regain ones humanity.
Good reminder.
His ability to see the downsides of being in everyone’s personal business was understated in many ways. His soliloquies (the short clips made them feel this way) are perfectly in-tune to a society more than half a century removed from when they were made. Impressive.
McLuhan was, indeed, prophetic. In the clip discussing “global village”, when he talks about how everyone is in everyone else’s business, it’s hard not to think of the wave of recent protest/riots over issues including racism, environmentalism, Israel/Hamas, etc.
I taught McLuhan’s “Understanding Media” as a TA in grad school (for an intro to communications course). The FP piece doesn’t explain much about his concept of “hot” and “cold” media, which is also quite significant for our times. Essentially, printed matter requires a lot of input from the reader, in order to process the information (which makes it hot); whereas video allows the viewer to sit back, and let the information wash over them without the same amount of engagement (which makes it cool). The hot vs cool concept, fundamentally addresses how our brain processes the information contained on those media. Now that the past couple of generations of young people have garnered most of their information via video (TV, YouTube, now TikTok) means that they are affected by the neurologically passive way that we process cool media. Maybe that accounts for some of the ideological conformity that we’re seeing?
You raise a key insight related to making meaning: the passive and active methods very much affect the extraction of meaning which, in the 'global' body, yields the conflation of feeling with meaningful value. For example, passively learning narratives that makes one feel able to 'do better' by promoting them produces virtue signalling... an empty gesture void of active meaning but full of emotional support from the passive audience for whom it is performed and, in turn, then feel good about 'doing better' by going along and sharing that 'virtue'. Well, golly gee whiz, I wonder why life seems so meaningless to so many? Where can such people go to buy something to 'fix' this emptiness problem? Drugs? But if not drugs then activate the 'smart' phones first to document and then share (monetize) this journey (for likes). Yeah, that'll produce meaning for the global body passively watching this modern Grail quest unfold by such 'influencers'. Blame for failure must be somewhere out there, of course, so maybe it's meaningful to tear everything down first. I'm almost sure following that impulse will reveal a way to 'do better' to find meaning. Rinse and repeat. Is there any wonder how it is turning out?
This is an excellent point that I hope will get much more discussion.
I really love his hot/cold idea overall, but I think he limited its reach when he assigned the temperature names opposite to the sort of “intuitive” feel of those words.
Cool is generally associated with being slower, measured, undisturbed and hot with being more fiery, fast, and explosive.
The concept is great, but I think would be much more widely known and discussed if the monikers had been reversed.
If you like McLuhan, you should check out Neil Postman and read Amusing ourselves to Death and Technopoly. Both are great.
Thought this might be worth 10 minutes of our time today:
http://youtu.be/hl2OkMfmH-0?si=eljTGiH2u6FZz4f8
YouBoob is telling me the link I posted is no longer available. It is. I just watched it. It's a short (no ads when I saw it) 10 minutes of Terrance McKenna on McLuhan.
Yeah, the link doesn't work but I'll look for it.
yes, human nature, he understood
Well said
Enjoying this read but I had to stop to share how funny I find this phrase: “…a proctologist and amateur ventriloquist...”
It’s the most obvious hobby for a proctologist, isn’t it?
I read some of what the proctologist wrote and it all stunk.
Lololol yes it is!
Vocational skill shades into avocational pleasure.
Oh, yes. Le Pétomane (Joseph Pujol, the professional farter) comes to mind.
Translates to “The Farting Maniac” IIANM…
Caught my eye as well. Whether the author intended it, it conjures a hilarious image.
“This is my friend, Dave, he’s an electrician. And here’s Gerald, a proctologist and amateur ventriloquist.”
My sick mind conjured up the image of someone talking out his a** and it'll take awhile to "unsee" it...
Before I read you post, I said the same thing.
Great minds!
Obviously!
Same here!!!!
LOL! Thank you!
😂😂😂classic
LoL
Laughing as well as I scramble and struggle to find a way to keep these 2 words separate in my mind but am failing miserably as a picture of his first dummy resembling some weird looking sideways derrière talking to an audience. Oh mind be still
They seem like complementary skills! One day he was doing a probing exam and realized he could make people say things if he applied the right pressure in certain spots.
At any rate, it’s a far better title than the similar-sounding “ventriloquist and amateur proctologist.” The placement of the word “amateur” makes all the difference.
LoL. Brilliant.
Do you the book, Le Petomane? It's the biography of a Frenchman who could imitate musical instruments and play songs through his anus.
Penetrating insight
To the bottom knuckle!
“They seem like complementary skills!”
Ohhhh my, that was gooooood…
Reads like a line out of a Tom Robbins novel.
Of all the disciplines in medicine, being an asshole check would not be my choice of work.
I know someone has to do it but it wouldn't be me.
I had a college friend who became a urologist. She did have a lot of prior experience with the male reproductive system. Not sure if she became an amateur ventriloquist.
I bet he had a shitty outlook on life.
Especially every time he absent-mindedly picked his nose at work!
Does that mean he was talking out of his ass?
Right?!
Didn't Howard Stern perfect that persona?
I kept rereading that line because I was convinced I was reading it wrong!
Imagine if these two identities were reversed…a ventriloquist and amateur proctologist. Probably would be rather crappy at both.
For literally years I have been crafting a joke about the difference between a meteorologist and a mediocre urologist. The former makes piss poor predictions about the weather. I just can’t get the urology part. He definitely looks at urine or something. It’s missing an ingredient. I hope to finish it before I die.
Did he have the personalized license plate "Ass Man"?
Slightly incongruous, right?!
There might be a deep connection between the two disciplines.
Hopefully not too deep! 😉
He could really talk out of his ass!!
Good catch - it slipped right by me. And boy (is that word allowed now?) could I use a laugh.
This is why I subscribe to FP. Where else do you find the reach, the substance and the reality of their writing and reporting. Excellent just excellent
This is an example of my suggestion to Bari: scour for great contributors to TheFP.
Yes- I agree! I was concerned over the last month or so thinking TFP was morphing into MSM but this article is fantastic. Much to think about - what does it mean to be human?
I was thinking to be able to interact with others face to face. All these human factors that get us closer to exploring the truth.
I’m old, and the common thread I find in my age group is that we no longer recognize this world. My greatest comfort is watching old movies, browsing antique stores, and relishing beautiful lovingly made real wood furniture, made in the USA. I take comfort in nostalgia, when my world made sense. The other day I visited my library, and peeked into a room set aside for small children. They were busy creating things at small tables, far from phones, and other electronic devices. I thought to myself if only this would last, but I’m a realist and I too see a future where electronics more and more will rule and take over our lives. I say once again that I’m glad that I’m old, and will not live to see this future.
Although not as mind-blowing as his other insights, this one struck me too:
“As a result, people would be plunged into nostalgia, and yearn for their old, solid identities.”
I am 40-something and work in tech, spending hours daily immersed in the world he describes. Yet I also, almost daily, fantasize about life in the 80’s and early 90’s. Seeing packs of kids riding bikes, boredom, unstructured time, swimming pools, etc. I figured this nostalgia is just a part of growing older but maybe there is more to it…
At 85, I rarely think about the past until someone asks about it or I read something that triggers a memory. I have no desire to return to anything or anywhere. I am where I am. Most of the people I know, are like Joanne Fox and are constantly referencing the past. Memory is a funny thing; one never knows if the memory actually happened the way we remember it. We can make the past and the future into anything we want it to be, neither of which is real. Living in the present is an endless amazement. No, I don't have a smart phone. I had one for a month and got rid of it, it felt like an intrusion into my life.
Amen. I have a "smartphone." I use it to make phone calls, send text messages, and take pictures. Only two dozen people have my number. My friends have finally quit giving me crap for never using it to go on the internet.
I find life and joy in my husband, in my roses, in my dogs, in my children, and in tea table chats with my few friends. In my house, my shelves have a few items I've kept through the years that, when I see them, spark joy in my heart even more than they bring memory to mind.
When my daughter was a child, she would say, "Let's do something special today." I would respond by telling her there is nothing more special than spending an ordinary day together--planting a rose, cooking a meal, and talking about our thoughts and dreams. That is what technology robs us of if we let it.
I love your priorities!
Ha! Fascinating that you (Mr. Forkenspoon) are able to live in the present, unlike so many other people. It’s because you successfully did resist the present- by throwing out the smart phone- and enabling true presence. True presence- which most of us only get to experience, when we remember the past :-).
You’ve got a couple of years on me, and I’m happy for you that you have found your place in the present. The goal for my remaining years is in trying to make a difference in people’s lives, and giving back to the community. However, since I have given up my computer, I’m not yet able to give up my smartphone!
That's admirable. I don't live in a community so that's not doable for me. I did that 11 yrs. ago and it was satisfying. I'll keep my computer and never own another "smart" phone. If I need to talk to someone, I can call on my dumbphone.
Kids still do these things, though I think unstructured time is completely lost!
There's a theory that the rise of instant information retrieval in the 2000s spelled the end of linearly progressing culture. You're not nostalgic for the recent past so much as yearning for that sense of being on progressing, forward-moving river, instead of being trapped on an ocean with no current or wind and the shore out of sight.
I think it’s the need to touch something familiar and something that gave pleasure, that seems so foreign in this world.
I recently retired from an IT Director position and often wondered what staring at a computer screen for hours was doing to me physically and to my psyche. I would always go for a one mile walk at lunch time to clear my head. Yet now that I am retired I find myself watching electronic images on TV and staring at computer screens albeit not as long.
This makes me sad for you. I wish you, and the "touch grass" folks, well.
I’m 53 and feel the same often. I assumed it’s a part of getting older. I’ve been obsessed with spending as much time outside as possible, I was always into,hibernating over winter, but this past winter I bundled up went on long walks and hiked trails nearby. If it was 25 or up I was outside.
The second thing that helped was I took up tap dancing. Our Jewish Community Center offers classes. I tapped as a child for 3 years and I’m back at it having fun.
I basically wish I could be 10 again.
I’m definitely happier being out and about. Finding peace and joy away from the maddening world helps me after recently losing my husband
I’m so sorry for your loss. I definitely wake up everyday realizing more than ever how precious every moment is.
Old is a relative term, Joanne. You can be young (again, relative) and still feel very uncomfortable in where we’re going as a society. I myself feel in sync with the 70’s and ‘80’s, even the ‘90’s - slower in retrospect than now, with far more time to ‘decode.’ There is far too much chaff out there now and not enough time to find the wheat. So we end up believing the chaff. Fiction abounds, disguising itself as fact.
As McLuhan stated, we are not designed to live at the speed of light. It will prove, in the end, to be our undoing.
I would love to know where you saw small school children creating things This is not common in most places. The L. A. Times just published an article Re: what kids were learning at a local public school. The teachers were using colored paper and crayons to write scathing things abt. Jews!
That sounds like stuff the BLM is distributing across the country. It was a joy to see children enjoying themselves being creative using their hands and imagination in a small town in Michigan.
This article was a fascinating read. What jumped out to me was his point that everything is an image, not a real person. In his day, it was a voice on the radio, a person on TV, or an author in print. Today, we have our phones, but the algorithms that feed us what we want. This, blended with the most potent natural human drug, the feeling of being right, the digital world, has created so many online narcissists.
The thought of how brave a person can be behind a keyboard rather than talking to a real person made me think of my youth; if you said the wrong thing, to put things plainly, you would get your ass beat. There is no fear of that today, as you can be a keyboard hashtag warrior. The other consequence is when these people get together, think of the mobs we read about earlier in the week on college campuses.
I love Steven Covey's insight of first seeking to understand. Marshall McLuhan presciently gives us the fundamentals of human nature to interpret what is happening around us. What to do about that is a topic for another day. Thanks for creating this fantastic idea. Pop culture is okay, but like donuts, it's not good if eaten regularly, but stimulating the brain always is. Great work, Benjamin.
That insight made me think of a point Scott Adams makes in his recent book that memories aren’t real. He means this in the context of us being negatively impacted by bad memories. It’s an interesting mind hack. Your bad memories can’t be seen or touched and don’t mean anything more than what you allow them to mean.
As McLuhan says it, our innermost selves can never appear in media, just an image that is manufactured (by us or someone else) for a desired effect. In many cases the most beloved celebrities are those who present the most authentic seeming image, but it’s an image nonetheless. This manufactured image seems similar to a memory as Adams describes memory: it can’t be touched or seen and only carries the power we give it.
For better or for worse, we don't remember how it was -- we remember how we wanted it to be.
Yea sometimes, and other times we just remember how we felt when it happened. The Adams book helped me. When I begin to dwell on bad experiences, usually when I should be falling asleep, I instead try to think of happy memories of my kids, even things that happened that day. I found the idea that memories don’t exist to be very liberating. Simple thing but it has helped me.
I agree. What I use to get asleep is playing in my mind my last round of golf. It's so boring, I am fast asleep by the 2nd shot on the second hole.
That is a good idea! Next time I can’t sleep, I am going to think about your last round of golf. 😝
Smart ass. But I love it.
Great observation about “being right” as a drug. A wonderful pastor once gave a sermon on fundamentalism, this at a time when the religious right was coming into its own. To paraphrase: “The most powerful human desire is not for food, or shelter, or sex. It is the need to know for certain that you are always right.” And that’s the power of fundamentalism, whether a religious fundamentalist, a secular human fundamentalist, or, today, an identity politics fundamentalist.
II’m a Stephen Covey fan as well, and I first saw “seek first to understand” in the Prayer Attributed to St. Francis, which I have next to my computer.https://www.missionstclare.com/english/prayers/62.html.
O Master grant that I may never seek
So much to be consoled as to console
To be understood as to understand
To be loved and to love with all my soul
-“Prayer of St Francis” hymn aka “Make me a channel of your peace,” such a beautiful tune and when sung makes the message even more powerful.
Thank you for sharing
I read "The Medium is the Massage" many years ago, and can't say I understood it. With McCluhan I at least often has the sense that he seemed to be saying something very percipient, but I could not quite tease out what it was.
What I will suggest this morning--and I had a hard week and my brain is not operating too well, nor will I ask it to today, since I actually like Saturday as a Day of Rest--is that all understandings have a visceral, corporeal component. We think with our bodies. But we think differently speaking directly to people, by the phone, and by text and even letter. The very physical acts of writing with a pen and typing on a keyboard interact differently with the physical components of our body, with our brains, and brain regions, in differing ways.
I think the two dimensionality of screens reduces the gut element of our conscious perception, our intuitive knowings, and that makes us collectively dumber. And dumb begets dumb. It's a feedback loop that is hard to disrupt.
I see all around me glib superficiality. I see people who, even when physically present with other people, tend to see them with much the same spirit with which they interact with the images on screens that actually occupy most of their time. And of course it's not uncommon to see couples and groups of people all sitting together, all on their phones. The phones come to seem more real than the people they are with.
Socrates, famously, refused to write anything. Plato made Socrates his primary character in his dialogues, but we have no way of knowing if anything in any of those dialogues was said by Socrates. Socrates himself viewed every dialogue in effect as a unique work of performance art that could never be repeated, and which would become sick and die if recorded then reenacted by others, in other than that moment.
And of course he died saying that the only thing he was sure of was that he could be sure of nothing. He knew nothing. This is actually a benign spirit, and one which, if it were carried out sincerely in our own time, would do much to mediate and eliminate the conflicts we see. So many people learn easily and early to see what simply isn't there.
One last point. My best friend in high school went on to lead, or co-lead, the team at Apple that developed the iPhone. He was quoted in one interview that the iPhone represented the next stage in human evolution. On one hand you can see his point: we became cyborgs when we attached our phones permanently to our bodies, and as cyborgs we had instantaneous access to, in principle, the sum total of human knowledge, literally at our fingertips.
But in counter-point, we entered a world of hyperreality, in which a fake world became more real for many of us than the trees, dogs, rain and clouds of our own.
Our bodies have knowledge that is real. Most of us fail to listen to our bodies enough. We have become purely visual and auditory creatures, and that is an enormous loss, because there is no intuition in sight and sound. It's in the gut, and the gut is in the body.
That will do for today. After a day I'm sure I would have something more and different to say, but I wasn't going to respond at all.
I would like a piece on Jacques Ellul. He should be better known.
….And of course it's not uncommon to see couples and groups of people all sitting together, all on their phones….
This part for me is the most difficult change to accept. Recently, we were seated next to a young family in a restaurant. Dad and Mom were separately scrolling, while each of the two kids were watching animation on separate Ipads, one in a high chair. All around the place were tables full of diners scrolling or talking on their phones.
I don’t want to be judgmental, but dining out lately just leaves me sad. The need or desire to be distracted from those directly in our presence seems rude and offensive. What could be more important than Grandma or one’s young toddler? If this is public behavior, I can only imagine the interaction at home.
Yes, I try to consciously leave my phone alone when in public and just watch people. Yogi Berra said something close to "you can learn a lot just by looking." Doris Lessing has a really interesting page or two in her book Mara and Dann where she talked about an alternative educational system in which kids were taken out somewhere--to nature, to a market, to a stock market exchange, etc. (those other additions are mine)--and asked 1) what do you see; and 2) what can you learn from what you see, i.e. what inferences can you make about what you can't see from what you can see?
It's a fascinating idea, and one I to this day try and work into my everyday life, not least when in public spaces waiting on food.
Most of us don't do ANY looking. If a plane crashed outside our door we would look it up on our phones. In such a world it's not hard to tell large lies and get away with them indefinitely. Manifestly, that IS the world we live in.
It is long past time to be judge mental on this issue. It is not only rude it is harmful to children.
It’s sad to see what you describe at restaurant tables, and absolutely life threatening to see their eyes glued to their screens as they walk across the street.
Eliz, if you're not judgmental, how do you live?
[You say regarding the iphone] “But in counter-point, we entered a world of hyperreality, in which a fake world became more real for many of us than the trees, dogs, rain and clouds of our own.“
I think one reason McLuhan is/was so prescient is that he was experiencing the dissonance of being on the cusp of these two different worlds - natural and fake. The natural one - when literature reflected on nature’s metaphors to explain universally shared, complex human experience. The fake one is a personal surreal utopia where we can escape the complexities of human experience and nature. The former gave people a sense of how equally small each individual is in the grand scheme of things. The latter deludes individuals into thinking they are much bigger and more significant relative to who they really are.
I think that his statement that humans are not built to operate at the speed of light is the point I'm taking most to heart.
I think humanity devolves as we encounter and react to one another in an instant. I think that we are meant to be more deliberative in our encounters and in our daily tasks. This instant gratification has cheapened our lives, interactions and expectations. It has lessened our ability to truly know things or be educated.
Yes to your takeaway from this article. When I wrote my essay for the FP senior essay contest The Inconvenience of it All, and referenced the simple joy of hanging out laundry, I was trying to remind or evoke in my readers that moving backward deliberately in this space we call our existence is calming and reassuring. This article nailed that “reality.”
You mean you have a solar dryer???? 😉
“Don’t be afraid to take time to think.”
Me too. The hippies used to talk about the rat race. At the time I understood the definition of the words. Now I understand the meaning.
I wonder sometimes if on my deathbed I will be remembering scenes from movies I've watched. My greatest fear has long been getting to my death bed and realizing I've lived someone else's life.
All of these things are complicated, and we live inside this Matrix. Some of us were alive before it formed, but in my own case I honestly think I've forgotten what it was like, and it is hard to see what we would be seeing if we were seeing, when we are not seeing.
That last bit was vaguely Yogi Berra-ish, but I am going to leave it.
But that it is worth turning the damn computer off and leaving the phone alone at least one day a week and getting some mud on your shoes somewhere is really indisputable. That's what I'm going to do now.
I appreciate all your comments at TFP. I completely agree that getting out in nature is very curative. Enjoy your day getting in the mud.
I like to get mud on my hands and throw pots! And I'm not alone, the waitlist is long for classes recently. Maybe the tide is turning.
I am glad you mentioned the Matix. Because reading the article and comments I was thinking of the films and books that revolve around the concept of The One (Star Wars, Dune, even Hunger Games) who all are outside the power structure to varying degrees. But the Matrix is my favorite because The One was outside the power structure while being part of it.
I am a fan of literature and print. I still buy books and write notes.
But the development of the printing press was a technological advancement too. I think the oral traditionalists it replaced would tell us that literature was fake and not of the real world.
Boy, I would love to meet you! Your comments always enlighten. Thank you!
Very eloquent.
Nicely done, Unsaint.
Absolutely: Jacques Ellul!
The Prophets series promises to be a fun read. Thanks! Here are a few suggestions to consider.
C.S. Lewis, specifically his frightening prescience in The Abolition of Man. (Consult Michael Ward at Hillsdale College.)
Ray Bradbury, specifically Fahrenheit 451.
Ayn Rand. I reject her prescriptions, and her writing is long and overwrought, but she certainly nailed the modern economy.
Shakespeare, hardly modern, but he understood the human psyche better than any mere mortal.
Shakespeare understood the human in the here and now. He also understood that it is ALWAYS here and now.
I will cheat and add 20 more votes for Ayn Rand. Her short work “Anthem” woke me up in 1962 at the age of 15. And the world seems somewhat like “Atlas Shrugged” and “Fountainhead” today.
I second Ayn Rand.
I put in a third vote for Ayn Rand.
The abolition of Man by Lewis was the first book that came to mind. I don’t know Ayn Rand but would love to learn.
No one better captured the essence of rugged individualism and capitalism. She did it by pitting the heros of her stories against the most loathsome, smarmy wastes of human flesh an imagination could ever conjur up. She makes it so easy to hate collectivists and statists. Her villains live, work, and govern all around us, and they’re sucking the life out of our country.
Bradbury has a number of prophetic tales. Let’s hope The Veldt isn’t one of them. I ain’t betting on that though😳
Wow! What a perfect insert between TGIF and Douglas Murray on Sundays. I had never heard of Marshall McLuhan but I am glad I now have. I don't think I know of anyone who was more prescient regarding the digital age, and from an Elizabethan scholar to boot! FP, you've outdone yourself again!
"When you don’t have a physical body you’re a discarnate being. "
As a Christian, this hit me right between the eyes. We've forgotten that Creation is good, and that bodies matter. It explains a great deal of the current transhumanism.
Thanks for this. Great article, and I look forward to the series. Suggestions for future prophets - C.S. Lewis & The Abolition of Man (fictionalized in That Hideous Strength) and Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death.
“The medium is the message” is proven by the Nixon/Kennedy debate. Most of those who saw it on TV insisted that Kennedy won the debate. Most of those who listened to it on the radio said that Nixon won the debate. Probably because people were highly influenced by the handsome Kennedy so much so that his looks overrode the content of his statements. A classic case of appearances trumping the message.
Prior to the age of television, presidential candidates didn’t have to be telegenic and often weren’t. Most voters never “saw” a presidential candidate other than perhaps a grainy newspaper photo. Substance superseded superficialities. Most of today’s national candidates look like ageing movie stars, usually with brains to match.
True. But I just keep thinking Max Headroom. Maybe it is time the shoot the messenger.
😂
At Wired, we made Marshall McLuhan our patron saint from the day we launched in 1993. Every issue had one of his typically disruptive quotes on the masthead. And then in 1996, we published an "interview" with Marshall commenting on developments that happened after his death (https://www.wired.com/1996/01/channeling/). Still pretty amusing, even insightful. And if you think Marshall was prescient, you should check out the guy who influenced him, the renegade Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin, whose mimeographed work Marshall read as a young professor, and inspired his Gutenberg Galaxy. Wired wrote about him too. (https://www.wired.com/1995/06/teilhard/)
My husband John, was a student at St. Michael’s. He was fascinated by McLuhan. Another person he was fascinated by was Wittgenstein . I could never quite get either, nor could I get de Chardin. But I want to! It strikes me that McLuhan and de Chardin were Catholic. What is the spiritual side of all these insights? Will we be still individuals after death or just swept up in some “global” village “ . I think I prefer the dust to dust ending individually. When you look at demographic trends the most frightening ending is a human race propagated by machines. Maybe science fiction is the truest predictor of all.
My thoughts too. What is the role of the soul in the digital no body world?
Louis Rossetto
Given the common meaning of WIRED it’s unfortunate that you didn’t choose a better word such as GROUNDED.
I had originally wanted to call it Millennium. Creative Director John Plunkett thought it should be Digit (get it?). Nicholas Negroponte suggested Wireless. Jane came up with Wired. Right name.
I was fortunate enough to study McLuhan in college in the mid-late 70s, which means I was fortunate enough to have then some of the jaw-dropping reactions that other commenters are having now.
Would be difficult to overemphasize how much it has helped to navigate the past 45 years, including in my career. Had a very good career going in journalism, yet when the internet came along, one could apply McLuhan's teachings to understand how pre-internet journalism/media would be upended, for the simple reason that anyone and everyone was suddenly equipped to be a publisher, and could publish to millions (now billions) instantly.
Thanks, Bari and Benjamin, for this marvelous piece. Definitely encourage everyone to spend time enjoying McLuhan's writings!
Marvelous piece, sir, and marvelous series, to which I look forward with great anticipation and enthusiasm!
May reading about McLuhan help us to recognize the prescient living among us, no matter where we may encounter them!
Thank you for reminding me why I pay for The Free Press!!!
High praise to you, a fine article. So good in fact my coffee got cold as I could not stop reading and reflecting upon my own “ McLuhan moments”. He brought much clarity to a young man’s mind.
This is an excellent idea for a column! Please do Thomas Sowell or Pope Pius X next!
Thomas Sowell PLEASE!!
I cheated with 20 votes for Ayn Rand, and will cheat more with 50 votes for Thomas Sowell. I have first editions of everything he has written and financially supported his work at The Hoover Institute for many years. For all matters having to do with race and culture, Thomas Sowell has the explanation and answer, and the footnotes to back it up.
Second for Ayn.
Seriously! Interview him now! He has recently released another book and he’s surely not getting any younger.
Do it now, TFP should have done it ages ago!
And I assume George Orwell is already on the list.
Another good candidate!
You can still read and see on youtube, hours of Thomas Sowell. He hasn't entered obscurity.
Yep. But he’s still prophetic and it’d be great to see that summed up nicely in an article.
However he doesn’t have the widespread reach that so many fools like Krugman for example have.
Educated, intelligent conservitives have a hard time being heard through all the Democrat noise. Especially when most of the press and news sources ignore them.
I hope you write one article about Douglas Murray. Who is proving to be rather prophetic.
Best article yet in The Free Press (and not one mention of political sides!!!!). Fascinating piece and I'm super excited to dig into this man's books and info.
Reminds me of two other excellent books:
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
The Shallows by Nicholas Carr