Help on McLuhan

Introducing McLuhan
Initial thoughts

In the 1960s, Marshall McLuhan predicted that education would be transformed as society embraced what he called variously “electric technologies”, electronic technologies, or media. His arguments were both provocative and controversial. He became a celebrity. Some thought him a genius; others a charlatan. His most famous statement was the provocative “the medium is the message.”

After his death in 1980, his ideas seemed to vanish quickly. But somewhere around the beginning of the 21st century, people began to look back and to realize that his predictions and theories were coming true. Contemporary technologies were indeed having a critical impact on contemporary schooling and contemporary education.

Sir Ken Robinson said that we have no idea what we are teaching kids for. The future, he says, is just too unknown. His answer: We need to encourage creativity. McLuhan’s answer: Teaching about technology is the only way we can avoid being pulled down by the vortex of commercialism, hype, globalization.

McLuhan and his Canadian colleagues argued that the growing information technologies would transform formal education.

The basic idea behind media theory is that communication media are not simply conduits for transmitting information. Instead the media themselves influence the meaning of a message and therefore the media shape our society. Therefore, the media ultimately shape our educational system. The medium is the message. We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.

McLuhan argued that all media do four things: They enhance a human function; they extend our senses. They make obsolete something that we used to use. They retrieve a function that we previously had lost. When pushed to the extreme they reverse into unintended functions.

We live in spaces. If our vision is highlighted, then we live in a visual space.
When audio is highlighted, we are in an acoustic space. Spaces were assumed to be based on our senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch.
Today, there seems to be a new electronic space. Or, digital space. Being thoughtful about digital space is sometimes dubbed digital citizenship.

McLuhan’s Wake is a 90 minute documentary film that explores McLuhan structured loosely through his “four laws”.

See an excellent review at http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/mcluhanswake.php

The resource guide for the film is available at
http://www.nfb.ca/webextension/mcluhanswake/resource.html