MARSHALL McLUHAN

UNDERSTANDING MEDIA, THE EXTENSIONS OF MAN

ROUTLEDGE,LONDON 1964
--Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
This is the first leg of a longer study that is in the process of being written.
After the review and its illustration I added the 2006 review I posted on
Amazon.co.uk, and its comments, for the sake of perspective.
This review is the prolongation of a long study that dealt with, among other topics but
essentially, Ray Kurzweils popular-science-fiction wrapped up as MIT expertise. Marshall McLuhan1
is essential here because he deals with the media and not the machines, or rather with all inventions,
mechanical or not, starting with oral language, considered as media all of them extending mans body,
body parts, central nervous system and even consciousness as he calls the mind. We will concentrate
on his 1964 book Understanding Media, The extensions of Man.2 We have to get some detail on his
theory and, to remain in our own logic, consider it in a phylogenic perspective though Marshall
McLuhan does not envisage any other human phase before the invention of writing systems (even his
short chapter on The Spoken Word is entirely oriented towards writing systems). Hence he starts
considering humanity around 5,000 years ago in a sequential presentation of various inventions one
after another in chronological order. Whats more he centers his interest on what he calls the electric
age that starts with the discovery of electricity and the invention of means to produce, store and
transport it. His electric age is based on the stage of universal (though even today it is still not fully
achieved) networked distribution (the electrical grid) of this electricity characterized as continuous and
instantaneous, meaning we can use it at any time and in any place we want at the commanding tip of
one finger pressing a button on or off. In other words his discourse is centered on the last one hundred
years when he wrote this essential book in the 1960s and today for us on the last 150 years.
I will consider his approach in both phylogenic and psychogenetic perspective.
The first thing we have to do to penetrate his meaning is to list the various inventions he
considers in the book and try to find out what extensions of mans body or body parts he refers them to.
We will present this list in the form of a table. He considers 26 inventions in 26 separate chapters. We
have to keep in mind this conclusion of chapter 21:
The owners of media always endeavor to give the public what it wants, because they sense
that their power is in the medium and not in the message or the program.3
Herbert Marshall McLuhan(19111980), a Canadianphilosopherincommunication theory and he became one of the cornerstones
media theory with practical applications in the advertising and television industries. McLuhan coined phrases likethe medium is the
messageand theglobal village and for his prediction of the Internet medium he could not know in his life time though the invention of
the transportation of date from a computer to another cia a telephone line was invented in the Fall 1969 between Stanford, Californias
military laboratory and Oakland, Californias US Armed Forces Headquarters for the Pacific (and at the time the Vietnam war).I would
refer you to the Official Site of the Estate of Marshall McLuhan at http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/ if you want to know more about him.
Accessed October 8, 2013.
2 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, The extensions of Man, Routledge, London, 1964.
3 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, The extensions of Man, Routledge, London, 1964, p. 216.
1

Monday, October 14, 2013

McLuhan was a genius but the future gas overtaken him.

MARSHALL McLUHAN UNDERSTANDING MEDIA, THE EXTENSIONS OF MAN ROUTLEDGE,LONDON 1964
This book is essential if we want to understand what is happening in todays world in the field of
the media and communication. McLuhan considers the vast history of human communication media from
language invented by Homo Sapiens, i.e. us, some at least 300,000 years ago inAfrica, to alphabetical
writing invented by Homo Sapiens some 5,000 years ago all over the world in a great number of
civilizations along with non-alphabetical writing systems. Then he jumps to printing that turns the printed
book into a consumer commodity which will enable the development of modern science and the
mechanical industry of the first industrial revolution. The next stage is identified by him as the electric
age when communication became the transfer of information via some material device that transferred
the information in a virtual form: electric impulses (telegraph and telephone); waves of all types (radio,
television, and now Internet with the development of computers, smart phones and tablets). The book
stops before the Internet (the first internet connection was successful only in September 1969 between
Stanford andOakland, both inCalifornia.
Let me consider some of the 26 means of communication he studies, targeting in my review those
that have to do with what he calls the extensions of the central nervous system.

The spoken word:Extension of all senses but centered on the ear seen as the capturing sense of
the sacred universe and the sacred. Plus connection to the mind, the intellect seen as one way only by
McLuhan; the intellect precedes and is non-verbal, which is of course at least debatable.
Language:Extension of intelligence, the intellect within McLuhans limited vision of
language/mind. Note he never uses the concept mind.
The written word:The eye is dominant over the ear. Can the alphabet also be an extension of our
teeth as McLuhan suggests with his reference to Cadmus sowing dragons teeth in the myth of the
Phoenician who brought the alphabet toGreece.

Roads:Extension of cities, extension of housing, extension of the skin. In the form of streets they
are the central nervous system of cities, which makes roads the extension of this urban central nervous
system which is the extension of mans central nervous system within the wall or skin of the city and
beyond it.
Housing:Extension of our bodily heat-control mechanisms a collective skin or garment. Extended
to the city, and the city wall becoming an extension of our skin.
Money:He starts with the psychoanalytical identification of money as odorless, dehydrated filth,
hence filthy lucre to be attached to our anal eroticism and character. Then comes a long series of
identification of money with the total involvement of man in his work, in association with writing and
clocks.

Clocks:Visual extension of the experience of duration and social organization, seen as the
desacralizing of everything sacred, the capture of the profane in association with the alphabet. He does
not explain how Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, and many other religions or spiritual faiths are
based on sacred books or canonical writings that most of the time were codified in their canonical forms
several centuries after the actual preaching took place. The written word was used to reinforce the oral
word.
The Print:Extension of mans eye creating a uniform, continuous and rational space containing
all objects, thus all-inclusive.
The printed word:The extension of the eye. It brought to human society continuity, uniformity,

and repeatability; the basis of calculus and of marketing (industrial production, entertainment and
science); uniformly priced commodity; portability and accessibility.

The photograph:Automated extension of our vision, of the eye. A statement without syntax. The
photograph is a museum without walls.
Press:An extension of the eye and mans analytical and synthetic competence. Mosaic visual form
that requires a high level of critical participation and group-awareness. The mosaic is the mode of the
corporate or collective image and commands deep participation. Different from columns that represent
points of view, a mosaic brings together unrelated scraps in a field unified by a dateline.
Telegraph:Electricity has externalized the central nervous system itself, including the brain.
Electric light is space without walls. It is the extension of the nervous system and the intellect as linguistic
messages following the road or railroad systems. It creates the mosaic press with no opinions and requiring
the personal implication of the reader. It developed direct communication between one person and
another. It started recreating the village at the level of the world. The telegraph translated writing into
electrically produced sound.

The telephone:Extension of the sense of hearing but also of all mental faculties, except the
visual dimension; Today we have smart phones and webcams. The old telephone was the beginning of the
use of personae, extensions, meaning change and variation, of a real personality. Complex participation,
total attention, of our senses and faculties through the only auditory and vocal apparatuses. The
telephone is speech without walls.
The phonograph:An extension and amplification of the voice. Stereo is sound in depth . . . in

inter-relation, not in isolation. Depth means insight, not point of view; and insight is a kind of mental
involvement in process that makes the content of the item seem quite secondary. Tape recorder and LP
made a full musical spectrum available to all. The phonograph is a music hall without walls.
Movies:He nearly only considers the movie, the silent film. The wedding of the old mechanical
technology and the new electric world. Comparison with writer but he only sees the writer or film maker
making the reader or viewer enter the imaginary world they have produced. He never considers the
viewer in front of the film technique, not the technology but the story telling. So de does not consider the
ellipse (a form that is difficult in print but is common in the cinema and TV), flashbacks and flashforwards that are also common in the cinema and have become common today in HD TV: what was not
easy inBonanzas time, has become common place inLosts time. He misses the voyeuristic approaches of
film and TV they are not the same because he is absolutely centered and centering on the sole filmdirector. He does not even capture the film-editor. Film is not really a single medium like song or the
written word, but a collective art form with different individualsdirecting[My emphasis] color, lighting,
sound, acting, speaking. (292) This is an extremely reduced vision of film making. Lets keep in mind the
cinema is minimally two-fold viewers voyeurism applied to minimally four-fold director-cum-cameramancum-editors voyeurism. The movies are classroom without walls, in which the student is also the teacher,
in which the student is the gold digger, the gold nugget and the mine, all in one and freely projected into
a universe of information, emotions, impressions, etc. that he/she freely explores in his/her own
haphazard and/or systematic ways. To reduce the electric revolution in the field of the media to wire
services (telegraph, telephone, telex, etc.), radio and TV, is at least VERY reductive: he does not consider
the cinema as such, only movies. He hardly considers recorded products: a tremendous field of
development from vinyl records, tapes of all types, to CDs and DVDs and of course virtual recordings that
are not carried by any real material medium though conveyed, transported and circulated by the virtual
material medium of the Internet. Most of that was of course still to come in McLuhans days.

Radio:He starts with a reference to Paul Lazarsfeld (The monopolistic effects of radio . . .
totalitarian countries. . . The monopolistic effects have probably less social importance than is generally
assumed, 297-98) and a comment: Professor Lazarsfelds helpless unawareness of the nature and effects
of radio is not a personal defect, but a universally shared ineptitude. (298) Radio, its tribal magic. The
tribal drum of radio extended mans central nervous system to create depth involvement for everybody.
He shifts radio from an entertainment medium (that he hardly considers) to a kind of nervous information
system. Radio affects most people intimately, person-to-person, offering a world of unspoken
communication between writer-speaker and the listener. . . a private experience. The subliminal depths
of radio. . . the resonating echoes of tribal horns and antique drums. . . a single echo chamber. . .
Extension of the central nervous system that is matched only by human speech itself. . . First massive
experience of electronic implosion. . . The ear is hyperesthetic, compared to the neutral eye. The ear is
intolerant, closed, and exclusive, whereas the eye is open, neutral, and associative. . . The commercial
entertainment strategy automatically ensures maximum speed and force of impact for any medium. . .
Education will become recognized as civil defense against media fallout. . . Radio certainly contracts the
world to a village size but it hasnt the effect of homogenizing the village quarters. . . Radio is not only a
mighty awakener of archaic memories, forces and animosities, but a decentralizing, pluralistic force, as is
really the case with all electric power and media. . . The radio is a classroom without walls.

Television:The tactile mosaic mesh of the TV image compels so much active participation on the
part of the viewer that he develops a nostalgia for pre-consumer ways and days. That was definitely
before 1968, and even so in theUSAthat was definitely an idealized vision before 1968: television became
the first communicational manipulator with Kennedys campaign, just the same way the radio became the
first communicational manipulator in its days withRoosevelts campaigns and Fireside Chats. The
extension of the sense of touch or sense interplay that even more intimately involves the entire
sensorium. Television is an all-sensorial medium because the viewer can take no distance in the reception
of the message. Television is a classroom without walls. It is a cool medium that requires in depth
involvement. It is producer-oriented. The viewer is the screen. The TV image is low in data ceaselessly
forming contours of things limned by the scanting finger.
The TV image requires at each instant for us to close the spaces in the mesh by a convulsive
sensuous participation that is profoundly kinetic and tactile because tactility is the interplay of the senses
rather than the isolated contact of skin and object. Synesthesia, unified sense and imaginative life. The
homogenization brought by printing was blown into pieces by the arrival of the electric age: all
technologies based on the use of electricity. Electric age technologies negate space and time, bring an
instantaneous and universal flow of news and information, and reversal to aural communication. TV
images require the involvement and participation of the viewer because of their low definition. They are
centered on the process more than the product, on the reactions of actors to actions with close-up shots
of faces and facial expressions. The electric age had so far caused the implosion and contraction of
reality inter-personally and inter-nationally leading to the fragmentation of society and the world. The TV
image furthered this implosion by developing it intra-personally and intra-sensuously bringing to life all
the senses simultaneously inside the viewer.
TV image is a mosaic of dots bombarding our sensorial screen. This mosaic is NOT uniform,
continuous and repetitive, BUT it is discontinuous, skew, non lineal and tactual (total synesthesia, all
senses implied and activated).

ELECTRONIC MAN IN ELECTRIC AGE

Man the food-gatherer reappears incongruously as information-gatherer. In this role,
electronic man is no less a nomad than his Paleolithic ancestors (283)
But this nomad walks, runs, stampedes even in an infinite and timeless virtual space at the tips of
his own fingers on a keyboard that works linguistically and iconically, or at the tip of both his hand and his
fingers on a mouse, touchpad or tactile screen in kinesthetic contact with menus and icons, the food of
these menus being information and various processors that can deal with this information to produce new
knowledge that can be then brought to the common table of ou knowledge society.
Radio was released from . . . centralist network pressures by TV. TV then took up the burden
of centralism, from which it may be released by Telstar. . . (306)
He obviously missed the future. The Internet based on computers, smart phones, tablets, etc. is
turning the whole world into a global village for sure BUT with the help of personae a person can become
a member of global networks that will not cross, if so the person wants. That person can be a member of
social network A as Mr. Wilson, of social network B as Mrs Adams, of social network C as the teenager Bill
or Sarah, of social network D as the famous Brad Pitt, etc, and at the same time he can be himself on a
gay network, whether he is gay or not does not matter: on an academic network, whether he is an
academic or not is not that important since he can invent and independent academic profile; on a music
(which music?) network, as a musician, a music lover, a composer or whatever he is, craves to become or
simply whatever he likes as for music; on a political network of his choice and he does not matter he
agrees or not with the ideas of this network. Only the networks on which he has the same identity may
eventually cross, but not necessarily, and that identity might only be a persona. The practice of pen
names, pseudonyms, avatars, etc. makes it at times difficult to know who is who.

In other words McLuhan had the right idea but he did not know how it was going to be done. As for
what he says about the political use of radio by people like Hitler, he missed an essential point: what
changed the whole 1930s was not only the radio, but the invention and development of the microphone
and of amplification with loudspeakers in the 1920s without which there is no radio. That enabled mass
meetings and all political forces used this new possibility, though those who used it best got the upper
hand: the nazis and the fascists, the stalinists and the communists, at least for a while. In the USA
Roosevelt was the great beneficiary of that new technology with his Fireside Chats.
But McLuhan missed another point: in those days collective listening to the radio was essential, up
to TV that took over that function in the family. But radios in bars, cafs, restaurants, and other public
places were an essential tool for music and it made jazz, for one example, into a popular music, and not
only en entertainment. Radio is still a media that often identifies itself by the music they broadcast. And
that has become global with Internet radios.
He also missed the complete failure of radio as a pedagogical tool in schools, just like TV later on.
But that has changed or is in the process of changing with the Internet which meets with great success
within schools, around schools, outside schools, and on this virtual medium, radios and TV stations have
become extremely important for education. I am thinking of UCTV (UniversityofCalifornia TV) and that is
only one example.

In fact he has a point but did not know yet: radio, TV and Internet are perfect for education but
personal, individualized, self-education, for a school/university project or not. Didactic virtual products
are more and more commercially profitable. Amazon is buying businesses in that field to diversity its offer
because there is a demand. The main point he could not know is that such pedagogical tools are effective
and attractive if there is a follow-up possibility by some teacher for the students. But one thing is
absolutely sure today: the computer necessarily with the Internet and all its potential is here to stay and
develop within the class, around the class and outside the class. Teaching at any level without that tool is
just unimaginable. The village has become even smaller today but he was wrong education is not civil
defense against the media fallout. Education has become a direct and intense field of media application.
Only reactionary dull minds can today dream of education without a computer-cum-Internet.
Meditate the following public release concerning that very point.
SEATTLE(BUSINESS WIRE)Oct. 10, 2013 Amazon.com, Inc. today announced
that it has reached an agreement to acquire TenMarks, a company that is helping teachers
and parents deliver innovative mathematics curriculum to students across the country.
Amazon and TenMarks share the same passion for student learning. TenMarkss
award-winning math programs have been used by tens of thousands of schools and
Amazon engages with millions of students around the world through our Kindle ecosystem,
said Dave Limp, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. Together, Amazon and TenMarks intend
to develop rich educational content and applications, across multiple platforms, that we think
teachers, parents and students will love.
Amazon and TenMarks share a commitment to developing easy-to-implement
solutions for schools and families, said Rohit Agarwal, TenMarks co-founder. We currently
offer teachers, students and parents access to effective resources to foster the vision of the
Common Core curriculum in math, including scalable professional development and tools for
connecting with parents. We back this belief with our business model, where teachers can
register and access our product for free, while being able to opt in for premium features, if
needed. Going forward, we believe Amazon and TenMarks will create significant innovations
in the K-12 arena.
Ive used TenMarks for the past two years at Grand View with fourth and fifth grade
students to help a diverse group of students achieve in math and take ownership of their
own learning, said Sujata Bhatt, founder of the Incubator School and a National Board
Certified teacher who spent 11 years at Grand View Boulevard Elementary in Los Angeles
Unified School District. As we launch theIncubatorSchoolthis year, we focus on
technology that truly activates learning and self-starting. TenMarkss products are designed
to enable both students and teachers to be in the drivers seat by seeing where theyre
successful and where they need to revisit. TenMarks is an important part of our math plan
this year.
TenMarks offers personalized online math instruction and practice in a clear,
manageable format for K-12 students complete with helpful hints, video lessons, and realtime results. TenMarkss products are designed to help students be individually motivated,
engaged and nurtured.

We can see that McLuhan is right about Professor Paul Lazarsfelds misunderstanding of the radio,
but he is not right when he does not see that TV and what he calls Telstar and will be the Internet
twenty years later, are NOT a danger, tribal or not, but an essential tool for the development of education
and individual responsibility and initiative in that field with a multiplication of networked references and
allegiances for everyone who wants, and how can anyone refuse that new existence that makes all
archaic memories, forces and animosities obsolete. All electronic media bring to the world the first
chance it has to manage its problems without the use of warfare. But there is no diplomacy if the
differences between the participants are not recognized and accepted. Electronic media are thus not
doomed to homogenize the world into violence (radio) or anesthesia (television) but are making the world
finally tolerant and not nonchalant, and the road is still long ahead of us to come close to a full
realization of this objective. Marshall McLuhan did not live long enough to know that the Cold War was to
end.
The TV child cannot see ahead because he wants involvement and he cannot accept a
fragmentary and merely visualized goal or destiny in learning or in life. (335)
At this moment we know the book was written before the next stage of the electric age, the
Internet today reaching the 4G smart phone and tablet stage. Space and time have not been destroyed
and TV images today are closer and closer to cinema images in definition. The DVD revolution and the
Internet are enabling all films to be watched on a TV screen and plasma screens can reach High Definition
while Bluray discs go the same way, on screens that are bigger and bigger with always better sound
coming close to the cinema under the pompous name of Home Cinema. We will have to question the
future and see if the sense of passing time, hence past and future have really disappeared from the minds
of new generations. Have we returned to a simple feeling of duration? But why are young people always
checking the time on their smart phones?

But the main shortcoming is very clear here. He does not wonder what human needs and mental
development brought this electric age and within this electric age these particular inventions. They could
not be avoided. The discovery and mastery of electricity brought a completely new energy that could be
produced, stored, transported and distributed artificially and not recuperated from the universe, though it

all started like that with Benjamin Franklin. Actually this electricity can be produced with all kinds of
fuel via turbines that can be activated by water (hydraulic power), or the wind (wind mills) or steam
(produced from heat), or via some chemical electric or nuclear reaction that produces heat to generate
steam and electricity with a turbine, or photovoltaic electricity.
McLuhan thus does not answer the phylogenic question about what produced these inventions,
where this human inventiveness comes from, what the meaning of this need to invent is, and many other
questions of that sort. That is why the resistance of teachers and schools against radio, television, then
computers and calculators, and now the Internet and smart phones or tablets, is vain: these inventions
satisfy a deep need in humanity as a whole and each human individual in particular. If we want to educate
the new generations we have to wonder how we can make them literate as users of these inventions with
the objective of training them into collecting knowledge that is useful for them, as fast as possible and as
sustainably (which include durability) as possible, knowledge that would make them responsible members
of the knowledge society and economy that are emerging from our present.
Just as we taught people how to read and reckon we have today to teach people how to navigate
on the Internet, search for, collect and process knowledge in order to share it with others with the
purpose of producing added value that could bring some wealth to our society endowed with fully
recognized and guaranteed diversity.

For caste and class are techniques of social slow-down that tend to create the stasis of tribal
societies. Today we appear to be poised between two ages one of detribalization and one of
retribalization. (344)
He seems to reduce these social historical categories that caste and class are to a single reading
that becomes mechanical. Caste was and is also a way to promote a certain social productivity and
welfare just the same way slavery was also that in the Roman empire or inGreece, even if it was barbaric
in many ways, but Julius Caesars main advisor was a slave. The point is these castes, like slavery, at one
point in history, get in contradiction with the economic and historical development of human society.
Then it becomes a slow-down obstacle. Class is in a way the same kind of social historical element that
enabled society to slowly evolve and progress after slavery, under feudalism and then industrialism. In
fact these classes have gotten today in contradiction with the economic and historical development of
society and it will be replaced by a different hierarchy that will reflect and enable human and social
progress, till that new social hierarchy becomes obsolete and blocking and has to be replaced by another.
There cannot be any social, human, cultural progress if there is not a dynamic that comes from such a
hierarchy. Marshall McLuhan here represents the way progressive intellectuals thought during the Cold
War, when mythical ends of history were still pregnant, like the Marxist vision of a classless society, the
Christian vision of a messianic Jerusalem, and still to come, though more sophisticated because after the
end of the Cold War, Fukuyamas vision of the end of history in the finally achieved liberation of all
individuals in a society based on the rule of Law, and of course the Singularity popular-science-fiction of
Ray Kurzweil, a sort of robotized messianic Jerusalem.

Men are suddenly nomadic gatherers of knowledge, nomadic as never before, informed as
never before, free from fragmentary specialism as never before but also involved in the total social
process as never before, since with electricity we extend our central nervous system globally,
instantly, interrelating every human experience. (358)
He only misses one element to reach knowledge society and knowledge economy: the virtuality of
this knowledge gathering that has to be both giving and receiving, that has to be an exchange and a
cooperation, collaboration, sharing. Thats where his approach falters: the future will have to be built on
both individualistic knowledge gathering and personal progress on one hand, and collective sharing and
cooperation both locally and globally on the other hand, which means the absolute necessity to search for
and bring together the widest diversity possible on any issue, in any place and at any time. It is that
knowledge society that will enable everyone to progress and history to go on along lines of contradictions
and even conflicts that will no longer be at the social or economic level of castes, classes and other
categories of that type, but more and more different approaches of different knowledge that will have to
be brought together in some kind of collaboration and exchange. Not to speak of possible conflicts within
the conquest of space or with other intelligent civilizations that we have not met yet.

To conclude we could say that Marshall McLuhan has to be studied in depth because all other
schools that have approached the media, particularly todays mass media, have only considered the direct
effects of the content of the media on the minds of people particularly in the form of political
campaigning, and its effectiveness, and propaganda, naturally condemned as anti-democratic.
McLuhan considers the media itself first, not the message, may shape and format our minds and
thoughts and he has an important point there.
But we have to consider this field of research from a phylogenic point of view because if we do
not understand the phylogeny of communication, and todays mass communication, we cannot in anyway
have the slightest influence on the psychogenesis of the same in the individual from his/her conception to

his/her death. There is a lot to do in that perspective. How can we make our younger generations literate
with our virtual mass-communications and how can we make our older generations catch up and alleviate
their handicap?
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

AMAZON.CO.UK 18 MAY 2006

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Not simple to remain critical at times,18 May 2006
By Jacques COULARDEAU "A soul doctor, so to say"
This review is from:Understanding Media (Routledge Classics) (Paperback)

This book is the Bible of the mediatic electric age and it has to be read as
such, that is to say with a grain of salt from time to time. Marshall McLuhan
shows first of all that all inventions, all activities of man are extensions of
something in his body: the hand, the arm, the foot, the eye, the nose, the ear,
and of course the skin and the central nervous system. He then moves to
showing that the mechanical age started with the wheel as the extension of
man's feet and legs, when this wheel was plugged onto some mechanical
source of energy, be it natural like stream-water, or be it man-made and
artificial like the steam-engine or the internal-combustion-engine. But this very
mechanical revolution produces the next stage since stream-water or steam
are used to make a turbine turn, like a wheel, but this time to produce
electricity. And we enter the electrical age, a revolution based on the
virtualization of this energy that is no longer attached to a particular action or
place: it can be used in hundreds of different tasks and everywhere due to its
transportation. This leads to the next revolution: the birth of communication
media, hot or cool, but all of them being the message itself. Radio, cinema, TV,
camera, sound-recorder, etc..., and McLuhan could not know in 1964 the
Internet revolution and virtual reality, the virtualization of all human activities.
However, he feels and predicts the changes that were to come. Information
can be transformed and transported by machines and the possession and use
of knowledge become the real working power of a man. It means clearly that
social projects are no longer collective but based on individual potential,
competence and activity. We thus can shift from collective nationalism (the
explosion of humanity into opposed and distinct fundamentally irrational
though logical-looking groups corresponding to the mechanical revolution) to
universal globalization that makes all human beings equal, necessary, useful in
the knowledge they possess and can move or use. This vision of globalization
has little to do with Marx's dream of communism and Marshall McLuhan is
perfectly aware that this globalization is a process containing - and finding its
inner energy from - contradictions, such as the two trends towards
detribilization and retribilization. But Marshall McLuhan is best-known for his
approach of radio-cinema-TV. He sees very well the differences between them.
Radio, the hot extension of one sense, hearing. Cinema, the hot extension of
two senses, hearing and sight. TV, the cool extension of all senses
(synesthesia) that requires total and tactile contact. But here he is led astray
by his natural optimism. He considers TV leads to participation, which is true,
but he does not qualify it properly because he does not see the participation
radio and cinema require. With TV the individual projects himself into the
medium with which he merges in total osmosis. It is purely sensual or
sensuous, hence entirely passive mentally. With radio and cinema the
projection is that of the show onto the mental black and blank screen of the
mind for this mind to compensate all the missing elements (all but sound with
radio, quite a lot with cinema, and in both cases the necessary mind as the

Buddhist sixth sense to provide all the connections necessary for full
understanding). Here the participation is first of all mental and even
intellectual. A hot media thus mobilizes the mind. A cool media mobilizes the
sensual and sensuous senses, if not only sensations. This leads to the
unanswered question about the Internet and Virtual Reality. A new synesthetic
medium that is hot because it requires the user to take in his own hands all the
parameters including his own definition: and sure enough he can assume one
chosen persona or several chosen personae, just as much as he may have to
pare off or negotiate the persona or personae that the personae he may meet
there may project onto him. That's the hot medium of today already and
tomorrow. The next stage is still pure science-fiction.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris I
Pantheon Sorbonne.

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Initial post: 14 Feb 2011 23:07:15 GMT

Mr.J. Kellysays:
hmm... one would wonder the next stage, a heightened collective concioussness, for all who chooose to
be aware of such state, or a state of no state, open your self as the whole, in to a world if you so choose,
and of course the choice is yours, to decide for chaos and confusion, transcendence of all, of our thinking,
our fairy tales, our definition. ode der a possibility a new hot media a guise a veil as now they keep truth
well hidden deep, down in the cellar, dusting, the doors smyle, save us our TV's, send us un to virtual
realities, (dust away). as repetition, this negative talk, a nother hot media to guise to hide the
heightened concioussness or whatever may be a second summer of love, a second, o' to my fantasy(of
one) and none, what a waste, ever a collection, a mistaken correction's relief. there was more but have
not the words for my thoughts, and shame, ever explanation(s). heightened concioussness i mean can be
substitute for many things, of course there are many theories for the next stage i just use that among
many other things that would like to be said.. a timide attempt to transcribe a few thoughts not very well
to my shame if they are not very well ha. I liked the lines from 'Information' to 'contradictions, such as
the two trends towards detribilization and retribilization' ever explanation i apologise if my words are like
manure from a track to be tossed aside the road, for clearing a path.

Your post, in reply toan earlier poston 15 Feb 2011 08:25:09 GMT

JacquesCOULARDEAUsays:
In my mountains manure is what makes a field rich and our present thoughts are nothing but the manure
of tomorrow's world.
The next stage, the one McLuhan had not thought about, is social networks and that new medium, in fact
a compact merger of all other media, is producing tomorrow's world for sure. Can you imagine the
upheabals in Tunisia, Egypt, and some other countries still to come without these social networks?
That's what McLuhan probably meant when he spoke of the "global village" that did not imply uniformity
because a village is an assemblage of all types of people. It takes all types to build a village.
Detribilization from the old feudal world and retribilization to the new global world that counts as many
tribes as the leopards counts dots as the South Africans would say.
The world of tomorrow is emerging today and the upheavals I was speaking of do not mean a certain
type of society is going to emerge automatically: feudalism can resist and produce a new form of
exploitation, just like capitalism came out of feudalism.
One thing is sure the time of socialist revolutions is finished.
We have to enter a time of expanding free yet regulated markets, expanding yet sustainable economy
and fully free yet responsible communication, even if social network communication is based on personae
more than on real people.

You can kiss people on a social network as much as you like: it won't give you herpes.
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In reply toyour poston 15 Feb 2011 22:51:51 GMT

Mr.J. Kellysays:
i replied to this post many many many many wordsssss but i clicked post and it all dissapeared you can
imagine my frustrationnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn and now it is never, o and what do i do now, is it
retirevable retrievable?

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In reply toyour poston 15 Feb 2011 23:02:43 GMT

Mr.J. Kellysays:
oh my profane and obsceneities thrown at this contraptual mechenistic evilll rampant vileistic
catchesticistic machiness,,, what can i suffice my frustration with type of words, yes will words and
machine suffice my frustration .. at them intentionally what words i had for them.. the double bind i came
to write of them critically (in slight abuse of them in parts) and now i come to use them as my vice
(stupidlly, of course) strenuous truth to replenish of a hagard word, ooh. o' what an unnecessery shame
an inconvienience at my interest to reply to your post, i promise you i had a many perhaps debauched
word but tooth to let fruit to and of ideas, o what a shame. i apologise for no replacement just a lament, i
apologise.

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Your post, in reply toan earlier poston 16 Feb 2011 08:14:09 GMT

JacquesCOULARDEAUsays:
That's the secret of Amazon. Sometimes, for no really visible reason the post is censored. I have
experienced two cases. Either there is a word they have banned from their pages and the post is deleted
before publication (like the word N****r in the title of Agatha Christie's novel Ten Little N****rs,
translated in American into Ten Little Indians). Or there is a technical problem that did not permit the
post to be posted, please start again later. I defy you to find out what that technical problem is: a coffee
pause at the wrong moment probably.
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Your post, in reply toan earlier poston 16 Feb 2011 08:14:40 GMT
Last edited by you on 16 Feb 2011 08:26:23 GMT

JacquesCOULARDEAUsays:
A lament builds a Wall of Lamentations and there is only one in the world and it must net be duplicated.
Not to lament too much it is wise to select the whole post before posting and to copy it so that you can
paste it later on and it is not lost. But concentrate on the event as a sign of fate, fate telling you you
have to re-write pr re-think all over again.
It is like in the crime series on TV when the police officer or the special agent of the FBI makes you
repeat the whole story all over again. It is not to pester you nor to save time on his schedule to do less
work in his standard hours and maybe get extra hour payment. It is to whittle your discourse down and
distillate it to some details in the wording that uncover the truth.
Fate is a big conjurer and manipulator. Think of C.S. Lewis writing the prequel of his Narnia Chronicles in
1955, five years after the "first" volume which is no longer the first in the chronology of the story. It is all
a tale of revelation and when it becomes a book then we can expect an apocalypse.
Have a good day and do not grieve too much. Words come, Words go, but Words are fliers.
Jacques
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In reply toyour poston 16 Feb 2011 22:54:53 GMT

Mr.J. Kellysays:
well thank you. i will add a quote "...the story of the universe is that information, which I call novelty, is
struggling to free itself from habit, which I call entropy... and that this process... is accelerating... It
seems as if... the whole cosmos wants to change into information... All points want to become
connected... The path of complexity to its goals is through connecting things together... You can imagine

that there is an ultimate end-state of that process-it's the moment when every point in the universe is
connected to every other point in the universe." do you support this i mean more could be said by words
by me to transcribe any and all
(i mean regard to the 'global village' not that i would wish for although it is certainly happening now, but
historically it seems that not without chaos can new ways, changes can happen, you know we as the
beginners if so (i mean are) not going to settle easily into it, a virtual reality a social network
communication, taking our reall our 'real' reality away from us i mean they already have to some degree,
of phenemenon, natural or deliberate, herding the sheep, herding us toward.. make it shiney, new things
we MUST have a fashion a trend, that we have to have.. but i mean if used responsibley and sensibly
utilize all our tools in our tool box effectively responsiobly sensibly, rummaging around finding lost ones
that got buried at the bottem, or forgetten, and utilizing in a good way. craeting newer higher ones etc
etc.. i may conjecture here but as gandhi says as his or some of his last words "we are not ready" (and
was proven by the seperation pakistan, violence) . i would like for truth to confront us wholly we cannot
hide from it, it is there it is this choice, if we so choose, i mean we can take a step up or a step down on
the stair case, i mean arent we trying to solve other than what actually is.. e.g. the fishbowl reality we
look at a fishbowl and the curved reflection of the proposition at that moment we are in there is the
reality of us standing there observing the fishbowl and all around, and then the curved reflection reality,
and this curved reflection is what we are living in now...! i mean we recognise as we are living as other
than what we are we are tryin to solve all the problems as other than what they are,, and is the result
only nessecery as to where we are now, have been leading for the last 100 years and of course
thousands of years, and exampled to chaos (of what i was saying of chaos and entering new paradigms,
the 'global village' the riots that are happening now in Egypt, syria, tunisia and more, and more who
knowss what we dont know. we need to get back to symbiosis of what we are and moree and more. but
yes: "We have to enter a time of expanding free yet regulated markets, expanding yet sustainable
economy and fully free yet responsible communication, even if social network communication is based on
personae more than on real people." would you say we have to be or are going to be pushed in to this, or
focred in a good way, of course. i agree with that would be a responsible and sensible way foward so to
say and especially social networking communication, we have to be careful. and obviously there is more
to this (i laugh) all other areas, subjects and domains, this is not just the sole reaper to the diagnosed
prism, the eight shades, (an adequeste metaphor, barely satisfactory, but will do for that creation as
time) a car for instance has many parts a engine, a steering wheel, brakes, a boot, etc. we are just
looking at one of the wheels, you know what i mean there was no need for many of these. a new form of
communication..higher. language has created our domain our whirly (airy)extension, our spiral
sublimates. we need not this regression, would you say that wholly has been? i mean i mean ever more
and explanation, but how i regress but i will write more. Mcluhan the messiah trying to make people
aware, making the truth to us . to become aware, our choice. and are we the beginners of this new way
(to say) our choice to become aware, the light or be ignorant (be weak as chhoice) and why so many
prefer this latter, and i find utterly manically distressing to say the least, why do we (to steal terms that
are only fresh in my memory) prefer S hit from Shinola, so for truth to confront us no holds barred to say
and just our choice, i mean would we all not want the truth, the light extension extension i tire from
these words only these save for many many more, and i will write more.
well i ready on the copy..
'lets not loot our future'

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Your post, in reply toan earlier poston 17 Feb 2011 08:55:04 GMT

JacquesCOULARDEAUsays:
Time is a human invention. Duration is cosmic, hence natural. We can't even measure the year properly
with our time units. We have to correct it very four years and every century.
Space is not better. There is only distance in the cosmos and these distances create some kind of fragile
equilibrium between the planets and stars, and when we start measuring distances we run into the
problem that as soon as we get on the way to any place duration is cut off from distance and we can
travel millions of kilometers in space and age only one week.
History is a human vision imposed onto the cosmos. In nature there is only change and change and
change. Theses changes are cyclical and the end of something is the beginning of something else. There
is no permanence in nature or the cosmos, only impermanence, as the Buddhists would say. It is the
human mind, that invented time and space, that also invented history, the memory of the past and the
vision of the future, the past itself and the future at the same time. In nature there is no past and no
future, there are only cyclical processes that develop in distance and duration.

No one controls that cosmic change and transformation. Human history is only a little piece in this jigsaw
puzzle and it only exists because we decided to invent it. We are one particular species cast in distance
and duration and our minds decided to conceptualize what other species just enjoy and accept. We are
not making history. We pretend we are.
The upheaval in Tunisia or Egypt, no one thought of it before it happened. Why did it happen? Is it the
result of the decisions of some opposition leaders who were in exile or in prison? Of course not. It is the
result of a myriad of elements (the price of bread for one among thousands of others) that we cannot
even control.
The price of wheat is the result of the weather and the greed of some wheat producers and dealers but
who can control these things? The weather? No one of course. The greed of some wheat producers and
dealers? Ah Ah Ah!!! A Dell computer is produced in China at the Chinese price of 150 dollars and sold by
Dell in Europe 600 dollars or 500 euros. Greedy Dell.
We are losing the African market because of that greed. The Chinese are selling these goods there at
Chinese price and with a reasonable profit. We are trying to sell the same goods at European prices. In
two weeks' time I will be teaching in a private institution in the suburbs of Paris. Each student will have a
computer on their desks and the Internet and the computers are Lenovo, the Chinese brand or make that
bought IBM PC department some ten years ago. Even in Europe Lenovo is bought at a very competitive
price though with a super huge profit margin for the Chinese.
History is not our doing. It is just the precarious balanced result at every single moment of the duration
we are soaking in of millions of paremeters, most of them out of our control like the activity at the
surface of the sun.
What can we do? Meditate on that and follow that cosmic trend. No one is forcing us to do it. The cosmos
is taking us along into doing it, like it or not, willy nilly.
I don't drive and do not enjoy the "enslaving freedom" of a car: there is no obligation to have a car in
many situations. Why use a car from one city to the next when there is a fast train that is going to take
us there in three times less time and at a cost that will be, wear and tear included, lower than the car we
would otherwise use. And we must not forget that when we drive we cannot do anything else, not even
think, whereas in a fast train we can do myriads of things.
We are the masters of our minds even if we are not the masters of anything else. So let's use our minds
not against the world but to control as much life in us that we can in the surrounding conditions in which
we cannot even dream of not living.
Jacques
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In reply toyour poston 17 Feb 2011 20:07:39 GMT

Mr.J. Kellysays:
hmm.. well China have put it self more or less into a position of spiritually, philosophically, of course
realisticly, controlling the econonomy i mean they have silently taken over the world wu wei, as it
appears.
they have not made a declaration of war, not sent their army to any nations (what of china and israel), or
cultures, to destroy life that does not obey it i.e. well im sure you can think of examples. economically
taken over the world, they have power its to them and (im sure could write more words but you well
already know and more most certainly) to save for words: (Tolstoy) "vengance is mine and i will repay"
the snake eating its own tail.
yes, if we just pull out of this, what we have created for ourselves, re-connect to Nature, symbiosis of the
plants but i mean it is such a mess we have, it is not going to be easy, we have to tread carefully, be
aware to making the right choice, it is easy to regress in this spiral, or loop, now is a good a time as any
to pull out of it but lets not go flaming out of it, lets not put our minds before our awareness. snake
eating its own tail.
but what you say "We have to enter a time of expanding free yet regulated markets, expanding yet
sustainable economy and fully free yet responsible communication" and to your last sentence, eloquent,
that is only now, hmm.. we do not need to struggle the opposite way of the current or hold on to the
bottom of the bed, let go and ride with it.
but of the next stage.. Shakespeare.. to the next stage..? shows and shows
our reality must get to a distance or a duration, where science is no longer adequete enough, we have
surpassed shifts, duration, distances too much for science do you not think, there will come that time

soon, when our reality is confronted with more than what science as the leader of reason can deal with,
handle or deny. i mean are we not, dividing just about everything that is one, are we not? is philosophy
more logical than science in relation to the cosmos, as well as our thinking of our relation to the cosmos.
hail to something that we have to enter a no-thing else, or something else. but for good/bad, beyond
good and evil. forgive my amusements i will o'er write a good word!

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Your post, in reply toan earlier poston 18 Feb 2011 05:42:30 GMT

JacquesCOULARDEAUsays:
We are only one little animal species in the cosmos and if the cosmos decides to crush us we will be
crushed and we won't be able to escape.
We have to get rid of the old complex that considers that anyway the end of the world is close and that
we must be afraid of it. If it is close we will not be able to stop it anyway. So why not accept our fate.
Happen what may, we have to keep control of our minds and clean up the mess with have in our own
house and not in the cosmos.
So I do think both we have to follow the trend the way it comes and at the same time keep our head on
our shoulders, both literally and metaphorically. We must never consider beyond what we can grasp. He
who embraces too many tasks will not perform any of these properly.
Have a good day
Jacques