Marshall McLuhan is famous for his dictum the medium is the message. He meant that the form of any given medium has a more powerful effect on us than its content. In fact, he said that the actual content of any medium is really just another medium. The content of writing is the spoken word, the content of television is the movie, and so on. When I was in high school, I was tremendously excited by McLuhan’s book Understanding Media. It was the first intellectual-type book that I ever grasped. Before that I’d only read novels. Now I think McLuhan is wrong, and in a way that we don’t really get. He’s right in that people who live unconsciously don’t pay much attention to the ideas presented in any given medium. But we’re not obliged to live unconsciously. I’m indifferent toward the media that people use. I want to understand what they’re saying.

It’s become a given that human beings are influenced almost exclusively by our genes and our environment, that this is our natural way of being and cannot be overcome. You see this all the time in scientific studies that supposedly explain people’s preferences. Studies that read like, “Researchers at the University of Missoula have discovered that men prefer women with green hair because it gives them a biological advantage in the color wars.” I see this kind of nonsense in the newspaper all the time. But we can live consciously and deliberately. It takes an effort, but we can do it. We can pick our loves based on affection rather than on some physical characteristic. And we’re much better off when we do so. What scientists are really discovering in all these behavioral studies are the nuances of neuroses. If we want a healthy world and healthy minds, content is what matters. Where form becomes something more than the outcome of content, it is delusory. It means that the artist or thinker or lover or whatever has nothing real to say.

It is nice to learn from Graham Harman that his Bournemouth talk last year on Heidegger’s “origin of the work of art” essay has directly inspired this interesting forthcoming paper by Robert Jackson: “Heidegger, Harman and Algorithmic Allure.” That event was actually organised by Tammy Lu at the Arts Institute at Bournemouth (since then  renamed as the Arts University College at Bournemouth), although I was the one who took this crazy photo of Graham:

Three days later Graham gave another talk on “The Greatness of McLuhan” at the Media School at Bournemouth University. We posted the recordings of both talks on this blog and they both became quite popular, however the Heidegger talk has the edge: it has been downloaded 1,027 times since 8 February 2008, as opposed to the 884 downloads of the McLuhan talk.

Strangely, both of these talks are more popular than Harman’s first lecture at the LSE  “On Actors, Networks, and Plasma: Heidegger vs. Latour vs. Heidegger” on 29 November 2007, which has been downloaded 778 times, even though that was the event that launched the Heideggero-Latourian project most explicitly. I would have thought that the juxtaposition of Heidegger and Latour and the invocation of Latour’s concept of the plasma would be provocatively alluring (or alluringly provocative) enough to attract more attention. But the most popular Harman download (besides the respectable 1,688 downloads of the Harman Review itself) seems to be his “Assemblages According to Manuel DeLanda” from November 2008, with 1,385 downloads since then.

[Although I should hasten to add that these figures are somewhat misleading, as both the plasma talk and the Harman Review are also available on the LSE website, so probably just as many people if not more would have downloaded them from there. As for the DeLanda talk, it received a boost after being listed on Speculative Heresy.]

Jackson’s paper sounds very interesting though, so I’ll reproduce his abstract here:

Abstract for “Heidegger and the Work of Art History”

Session at Association of Art Historians (AAH) Annual Conference, April 15-17, 2010,

Glasgow, UK.

“Heidegger, Harman and Algorithmic Allure”

Robert Jackson BA (Hons)

School of Computing, Communications and Electronics

Art and Social Technologies

Faculty of Technology, University of Plymouth.

In recent years the contemporary philosopher Graham Harman has surfaced with a “realist” re-reading of Martin Heidegger‟s Tool-analysis, pushing it to its logical limits (Tool-Being – 2002). Dismissing Dasein as the root of truth for human beings, Harman instead argues that “Readiness-to-hand” and “Present-at-hand” are qualities available to all entities in the cosmos even if humans created such objects.

In January 2008 Harman‟s paper “On the Origin of the Work of Art (atonal remix)” attempts to perform an “object-oriented-philosophy” reading of Heidegger‟s influential essay on aesthetics, identifying Heidegger’s “strife” as a philosophical idea which escapes into the qualities of all objects and not just privileged artworks. But the extension of Heidegger’s strife hints to the idea of aesthetic “allure,” which Harman describes as “a special and intermittent experience in which the intimate bond between a thing’s unity and its plurality of notes somehow partly disintegrates.” “Allure” occurs when objects are split from their qualities, exhibiting tensions between its essence of “Being” and the way it has been described. Artworks, metaphors and jokes turn out not to be affecting features of human literary culture, but primordial constructions of the universe itself.

The paper will argue that these rich conceptualisations offer insightful commentary on technological artworks which utilise computational algorithms. I claim that artists such as John F Simon and Antoine Schmitt create generative and emergent aesthetic objects which display “allure” in all of their partial opacity, leading to the idea that technological artworks can propel vigorous independence, worlds away from superficial artificiality.

O que Marshall McLuhan, que cunhou termos como “Global Village” e “The medium is the message,” pensaria do YouTube? Acredita que ele previu que isso aconteceria mais de quarenta anos atrás?

Our official culture is striving to force the new media to do the work of the old. These are difficult times because we are witnessing a clash of cataclysmic proportions between two great technologies.

Abaixo uma série divida em seis conversas que o pensador visionário teve com Edwin Newman em 1971, porém muito atuais para os dias de hoje.

Hey 2010! We are excited about this new design from Julian Bittiner. Keep an eye out for it at PART OF IT!

I have observed many things in business.

The consequences of franchising are profound.

On the individual, group.

There are, however, Rules of Franchising.

No Place for Truth by David Wells

These books represent the best analysis on the present status and recent history of evangelicalism.  This list is meant to be informative and not to be alarmist or disconcerting.  I think the classic Dicken’s line, ‘it was the best of times, it was the worst of times‘ will apply the Christ’s church til He return.  It is implicit also in this list that works commending a Christian worldview, like Nancy Pearcey’s Total Truth, are must reads.  I have also omitted more esoteric debates including books on open theism, federal vision, new perspectives on paul… etc.  The purpose of this list is zoomed out than those specific issues.

1.  No Place for Truth by David Wells  [e, p, s]

How modernity crept in and screwed up evangelicalism.  Absolute classic.

2.  The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Mark Noll  [y, l, e, p, s]

The scandal of the evangelical mind is that it is so scarce and scant.  You may also want to read Os Guinness’ Fit Bodies Fat Minds, addressing evangelicalism’s intellectual laziness and preoccupation with the temporary.

3.  The Democritization of American Christianity by Nathan Hatch  [e, p, s]

Fascinating analysis of the democritization of Christianity in America.  His historical analysis is keen and well-researched.

4.  Christianity and Liberalism by J. Greshem Machen  [e, p, s]

This classic work delineates the liberalism of the early 20th century as being a completely other faith than the historic orthodox Christian faith.  86 years later it is still relevant.

5.  God in the Wasteland by David Wells  [e, p, s]

Wells continues where he left off in No Place for Truth, by challenging evidenced consumerism in evangelicalism.

6.  The Courage to Be Protestant by David Wells  [e, p, s]

The title is a play on Paul Tillich’s The Courage to Be.  Tillich’s work was a classic in early 20th century Protestant liberalism.  Wells draws connections between the emergent movement as really being a form of rehashed 20th century era liberalism.  Wells is also scathing on the level and abuse of marketing in modern evangelicalism.  As far as Wells goes, his Above All Earthly Pow’rs s also a worthwhile read:  in terms of analysis Pow’rs is to post-modernity what No Place for Truth was to modernity.

7.  The New Shape of World Christianity:  How American Experience Reflects Global Faith by Mark Noll  [e, p, s]

I am surprised by the lack of press for this book.  Noll examines the history of Christianity in America and draws parallels in key growth areas (Southern hemisphere and the East).  Noll is actually rather positive amid the torrent of bad press on what American Christians are exporting.  This is an important work because we are good to be reminded that American evangelicalism is not the height of church history.  Further, the church is Christ’s and she will prevail.  I think Noll has his fingers on the pulse of what is going on and what is next, we would be wise to listen to what he has to say.

8.  Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism by George Marsden  [e, p, s]

This is a must read if you seek to understand our history.  Also an important work is Revival and Revivalism by Iain Murray.

9.  Reclaiming the Center:  Confronting Evangelical Accomodation to Postmodern Times by Various Authors  [y, l, e, p, s]

Various heavyweights chime in on the necessity of remaining faithful to the preaching of the Word and to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  If you like this work, I suggest also Os Guinness’, Prophetic Untimeliness:  Challenging the Idol of Relevance.

10.  Christless Christianity by Michael Horton  [y, l, e, p, s]

This books has caused a bit of a stir.  You can read John Frame’s book review here.  I have yet to read the book, but I thought it a worthwhile mention to engage in present dialogue over the status of the Gospel in evangelicalism.  From what I gather, Horton has guys like Joel Osteen in view when he speaks of a Christianity without Christ.

11.  Young, Restless, and Reformed by Colin Hansen  [y, l, e, p, s]

This book is an important first look at the growing demographic of young Reformed folk.  This is an area that needs further analysis and hopefully a good work will come soon.

12.  Respectable Sins:  Confronting the Sins We Tolerate by Jerry Bridges  [y, l, e, p, s]

Bridges is 100% right when he highlights several sins that evangelicals strangely tolerate:  gossip, anger, pride, jealousy, anxiety, and selfishness to name a few.

13.  Why Johnny Can’t Preach:  The Media Have Shaped the Messengers by T. David Gordon  [e, p, s]

Gordon applies Marshall McLuhan’s keen insights to shed light on the dearth of serious bible teaching in evangelicalism.

14.  Confessions of a Reformission Rev by Mark Driscoll  [y, l, e, p, s]

I think Mark Driscoll is a very important voice in evangelicalism, moreso than many of my fellow Reformed brethren.  This book is a humorous yet insightful look into the story of the planting of Mars Hill Church in Seattle.  There are many lessons weaved into the narrative that are wise and memorable.

15.  Why We’re Not Emergent:  From Two Guys That Should Be and Why We Love the Church:  In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck  [y, l, e, p, s]

The first book is a solid book on the emergent church.  I also wanted to end this list with on a positive note with Why We Love the Church.  Many times we can get so bogged down in self-criticism that we forget to praise God for all the truly good things he is doing in and through the church in America.

What we need is always adherence to the same three things:  orthodoxy, orthopathos, and orthopraxis.

(c=children; y=young adult; l=lay leader; e=elder; p=pastor; s=scholar)

The New York Times spends “36 Hours” in select cities while the economy dwindles: 
A case study on the inclement economic climate’s effect on travel agenda setting

Hannah Williams, Elon University

     The New York Times has a weekly series in its travel section highlighting tentative itineraries for spending “36 Hours” in various locations around the world. The destination selections might seem arbitrary, but they may also be somewhat systematic. In 1972, Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw suggested media have an agenda-setting function, showing the news media played a role in shaping political reality during the 1968 presidential campaign in what is now known as the Chapel Hill study (McCombs & Shaw, 1972; Zhu & Blood, 1996). In his review of agenda-setting research more than three decades later, McCombs (2005) reiterates the agenda-setting argument: the media set the public agenda and can be successful in telling the public not only what to think about but also how to think about it (emphasis his own, p. 546). The media’s agenda-setting function extends well beyond the contexts of news and politics, according to McCombs (2005), encompassing all media. The recent economic instability seems to have crept into every aspect of American life – ‘spend less, save more’ has become a national motto, propagated by media attention. Has it also impacted the travel writers at The New York Times? Looking at the destinations highlighted in the “36 Hours” series in comparison with the economy over the past year is there any correlation that will provide insight into the editorial selection process of travel writing destination profiles? 

     Many have studied the media’s impact on the public agenda. Agenda setting has been a critical subject of media studies since McCombs and Shaw’s aforementioned landmark Chapel Hill study and even prior to that study under other names (Zhu & Blood, 1996). Zhu and Blood (1996) argue: “It is likely that no other theoretical hypothesis in human communication research has received as much empirical attention by so many scholars and with such diverse methods as has agenda-setting” (p. 113). As of 2004, more than 400 scholarly articles concerning media agenda stetting had been published (McCombs 2005).  Most agenda-setting research focuses on agenda-setting effects, as the Chapel Hill study did (Zhu & Blood, 1996). The psychology of agenda-setting effects indicates the mindset in which people seek out information directly relates to how formative the media’s influence is. McCombs (2005) writes, “Need for orientation is defined theoretically by two concepts, relevance and uncertainty. Low relevance defines a low need for orientation; high relevance and low uncertainty, a moderate need for orientation; and high relevance and uncertainty, a high need for orientation” (p. 547). The psychological profile of someone who encounters and interacts with media will determine the degree of the media’s effectiveness in transmitting their agenda. Regardless of the readers’ preparedness, the series may manifest its agenda-setting effects. Media theorist McLuhan (1964) states, “The medium is the message,” in this the medium through which communication happens is itself part of the meaning transmitted. McLuhan (1964) argues that any medium can impose its biases on the unwary and thus must be critically evaluated. McCombs (2005) highlights, “persons with less knowledge tended to show greater agenda-setting effects” (p. 548). In this, being informed is a way to prevent susceptibleness to mass conformity. McCombs (2005) suggests a two-step flow of agenda-setting effects in which the general public may not always pay attention to the media, but opinion leaders do, and people pay attention to those opinion leaders, shaping their personal agenda’s accordingly. The ability of the media to set the public agenda has been widely researched, but McCombs (2005) also poses a question in regard to sources of the media agenda: “If the press sets the public agenda, who sets the media agenda?” (p. 548). Addressing this, McCombs (2005) argues the norms and traditions of the journalistic profession accompanied by intermedia interaction, each organization’s agenda and interaction between news organizations and sources all set the media agenda.

     Haven, Lotz and Tinic (2009) introduce a new research approach, “critical media industry studies,” to fill the gap they see between critical political economy and critical cultural studies. Their research model aims to study the macro- and micro-level elements in greater depth than previous research methods – enlisting a quantitative political-economic model combined with the critical media studies approach of using specific case studies (Haven et al., 2009). Zooming in on the big picture gives a better, more detailed snapshot into the editorial process driving media production, claim Haven et al. (2009). They write:

Following the arguments of de Certeau (1984), we envision and propose critical media industry studies through grounded institutional case studies that examine the relationships between strategies (here read as the larger economic goals and logics of large-scale cultural industries) and tactics (the ways in which cultural workers seek to negotiate, and at times perhaps subvert, the constraints imposed by institutional interests to their own purposes. (Haven et al., 2009, p. 248)

Arguing that critical media industry studies will divert attention from focusing solely on the political-economic models, they aim to explore the implications of media on everyday life and culture (Haven et al., 2009, p. 248).

     Others have studied the economy’s impact on travel. “The US is the second largest domestic tourism market in the world after China,” according to Euromonitor International (2008). Americans were also third in the list of countries for outbound international travel in 2007, following Germans and Brits (Euromonitor International, 2008). Regardless, travel is still subject to outside forces, which enable and disable travel, the availability of disposal income being one such factor (Euromonitor International, 2009a). Euromonitor International (2008) indicates, “A weak dollar and economic turmoil is expected to have a negative impact on US departures” (p. 8).  According to the study, “Domestic tourism flows are expected to increase as consumers choose to spend their holidays at home due to lack of time, growing purchasing power and concerns regarding an unstable world economy” (Euromonitor International, 2008, p. 13). Euromonitor International’s (2009b) “Global Travel and Tourism: Learning Lessons – The Impact of Economic Instability” report which found through examining past crises that “domestic and regional tourism were the main beneficiaries in periods of economic uncertainty” (p. 55). Euromonitor International (2009b) proposed, “One way tourists reduce costs during periods of economic downturn is by staying closer to home” (p. 56). Travel patterns, such as cutting costs by staying closer to home during financial crises, could also manifest themselves in the media agenda, as well as tourist behavior.

     This study proposes to examine the economy’s impact on the media’s agenda. The media’s agenda-setting role and the factors that influence the media’s agenda have been subject to critical research in the past three decades (McCombs, 2005), as have the economic factors that influence the travel (Euromonitor International, 2008; Euromonitor International, 2009a; Euromonitor International, 2009b); however, travel writing has escaped agenda-setting research. Zhu and Blood (1996) recommend using a “time series analysis” to incorporate “real world” factors like the economy into agenda-setting research, suggesting that this method is a more appropriate means to study agenda setting as a process (p. 112-113). This study proposes to analyze whether the status of the economy also influences the media agenda, combining the methodologies of agenda-setting research, specifically time series analysis, and critical media industry studies to do analyze the relationship between the economy and the travel destination selection process for The New York Times’ “36 Hours” series.

Os anos eram de chumbo e nas ruas uma revolução acontecia. Ela foi pichada, gritada, cantada e vestida.

Durante os anos de chumbo, a revolução saiu dos livros, atingiu as ruas e os guarda roupas. Com o movimento tropicalista em voga, era preciso um visual que combinasse com discurso nacionalista dos jovens militantes da época. “Além de uma revolução na música popular brasileira, o tropicalismo foi uma ampla revolução cultural no Brasil dos anos sessenta. Ao lado da experimentação musical, seus participantes apresentaram ao público um forte apelo visual em suas propostas. Influenciados por leituras de Marshall McLuhan, cujos escritos diziam que “o meio é a mensagem” e a roupa “é um prolongamento do corpo”, a imagem passava a ser tão importante quanto as idéias presentes em letras de música e declarações públicas.”(Tropicalia)

Foi a estilista mineira Regina Boni quem teve a brilhante idéia de casar musica, política e roupa lançando a marca Ao Dromedário Elegante. “Rejeitava-se a ditadura da moda rompendo-se as costuras e as pences. Era uma ruptura de comportamento: ruptura moral, política, sexual e social. Propunha-se liberdade de expressão, a busca de uma nova estética: da estética do amor. A roupa é uma linguagem”, enfatiza Regina. “Minha minissaia era quase na calcinha; usava veludo de seda, que era muito sensual, e muita coisa que encontrava em bazar e em brechós: plumas, bordados e lantejoulas. Não era uma moda cara.” (Regina Boni)

Inspirada pelas músicas do movimento tropicalista, Regina Boni vestiu artistas, militantes com alma de artístas e também os caras bonzinhos da jovem-guarda, como Roberto Carlos e Wanderléa e os nem tão bonzinhos assim, como o tremendão Erasmo Carlos.

“Tudo começou por acaso, quando ela fez o desenho das roupas de plástico para Caetano, “É proibido proibir” e para Os mutantes, “200I”, no festival da Record. A partir daí, integrada com o grupo, passou a fazer da moda seu instrumento de criação. Ela diz que faz antimoda, sem a preocupação do bonito e sem o menor compromisso com o chamado bom gosto. A roupa na sua concepção passa a ser uma linguagem importante porque se tornou “um prolongamento do corpo” (Mac Luhan).” (Tropicália).

[imagem: o globo]

[imagem: o globo]

Gal Costa.      Caetano e Gil no programa Divino Maravilhoso

Caetano, Gil e os Mutantes em 1968: É proibido proibir

Mais:

• tropicalia
• universo70

“The medium is the message,” Marshall McLuhan.

Check out what happened when “Sarah Barracuda” decided to dip early on over one hundred of her faithful who had been waiting around all day in the cold snowy rain for her to autograph a book that she didn’t write:

The problem with populism, obviously, is that there’s too many people involved!

Proofreaders’ Marks

Unless you’re e. e. cummings or k.d. lang, you’re probably fond of using capital letters from time to time.* But what if you happen to miss one of them now and again? Well, you can easily turn a lowercase letter to a capital with a triple underline.

Now, on occasion you may also want a small capital. Say you’re making a list of authors and Marshall McLuhan is among them. Oh, and did I mention that your list was in all caps? In that case you can use a double underline to indicate that the c in his name ought to be in small caps like the ac in MacDonald. (Edit: the small caps I’m referring to here are shown in the list below and not the sentence that precedes this edit.)

And, truly, that’s all there is to turning your lowercase letters into majuscules!

Want to know how to make capital letters into lowercase ones? You can find that entry here.

_________

*Caveat: For all I know, cummings and lang may delight in capital letters. I didn’t call them up to ask them—cummings’ number wasn’t listed for some reason anyway—and just made up this bit of libel to be witty. (I hope it worked.)

_________

That red pencil still burning a hole in your pocket protector? You can find a full listing of all the Word Blog’s Proofreaders’ Marks entries here.

by pj.rey

The New School held a conference last week that may be of interest to many Sociology Lens readers, so I have decided to devote this week’s entry to sharing some notes from the conference.

The implosion of work and play was the most recurrent theme in the panels that I attended.  The term “playbor” was frequently used to describe the product of this implosion.  Panelists generally seemed to assume that playbor was a relatively new and increasingly prevalent phenomenon.  However, one dissenter, an artist named Stephanie Rothenberg, argued that play and productivity have coincided from the earliest days of capitalism.  She explained that hobbies (e.g., collecting, handicraft, parlor room singsong, gardening, and animal raising) are voluntary forms of play that produce objects with no intent to exchange them on the market.  These activities often have significant social aspects and some hobbies, like music or quilting, are even done collaboratively.  Given the resemblance to hobbies, Rothenberg urges that we view playbor as the latest instantiation of a historical trend, rather than newly emerging paradigm.  In fact she claims that online environments like Second Life mimic the world so hyperbolically that they offer an unprecedented opportunity for us to turn a critical eye on ourselves.  In our distanced view of these “simulacrums,” we find our own distanced reflections.

This emphasis on the supposed distance between our online and offline presence in the world strikes at the heart of my major criticism of the conference:  Panelists again and again betrayed the assumption that the online world was somehow distinct from the “real” world.  However, this assumption was never substantiated—and I am dubious as to whether it can be.  We know, for example, that most online interactions occur between people who know one another from “real-life” contexts.  Moreover, I believe users often perceive their online interactions in a different manner than we do as sociologists.

Sociologists tend to view the variable which distinguishes online and offline interaction (i.e., technology) as salient.  In contrast, I think it is likely that users focus on the areas of continuity (i.e., the interactions themselves).  This difference in emphasis, I think, is behind the tendency to over-exaggerate the dichotomy between “virtual” and “real.” Clearly, the Internet facilitates new forms of communication that are instantaneous, spatially-compressed, asyncratic, and highly reproducible. These communications may be different, but they are no less real.  It is no less absurd to say that online interactions constitute and occur in a separate world than it is to say that telephone calls do.  Internet theorists appear to be making the same conflation between form and properties that Aristotle worked to dispel over two millenia ago.

Returning to playbor, Martin Roberts argued that fun occupies a seemingly unassailable position in our culture, whereby criticism meets almost immediate dismissal and is largely non-existent.  He extends the theory of the Frankfurt School by arguing that the capitalist system not only profits from a cultural obsession with fun that is a driving force in the sphere of consumption but now increasingly benefits from the notion that “productivity is fun” (and it’s implicit inversion: being unproductive is not fun).  A culture driven to seek productivity in its leisure time presents greater opportunity for exploitation.

Interestingly, the cultural identification of fun with productivity perfectly contradicts the technical definition of play in Johan Huzinga’s Homo Ludens. Huzinga was one of several theorists including Tiziana Terranova and Marshall McLuhan, who were repeatedly cited at the conference but receive limited attention in sociology.

Discussion of the topics covered in the conference is ongoing.  Interviews, panels, and other video are also available.

“Common Threads and Stephanie Rothenberg Present ‘Retailing 14th Street’, An Artistic Exploration Into the Experiences of Retail Workers,” by Reuters

“Ma Bell Minus the Nantucket Gam: Or the Impact of High-speed Data Transmission,” Marshall McLuhan and Bruce Powers

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Readers will know Etsy, the successful online “market for handmade things,” where the mission is “to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers.”

Now, thanks to reader PL, readers can discover Regretsy– a site that focuses on a sub-set of the postings on Etsy; as Regretsy’s motto explains:  “Handmade? It looks like you made it with your feet.”

For example:

or…

Regretsy is quick to be clear about where it stands:

Don’t get us wrong. We like crafts.

We just don’t like these crafts.

Yes, we know these people put their hearts into it. We know it took hours and hours. We know how mean it is to laugh at their creations. And we regret being the only web site on the internet that makes fun of things.

But what can we do? We’re immature.

Besides, art is totally subjective. Who cares what we think? I barely care and I’m writing this.

Listen, if you like something you see here, don’t argue with us, go and buy it. Seriously. Click on any photo and you’ll be taken to the seller’s store (if a photo is not linked, the store is closed, or we are unable to find the seller). We’re only too glad to have made the introduction.

Otherwise, we’re just going to sit here and look at the amputee kitten paintings and vulva earrings and laugh so hard that we pee in our reusable Pokemon pads.

Etsy, for its part, has been very gracious: “If it brings in more traffic to the shop and helps make sales, then all the better.”  And in fact, many of the items featured on Regretsy have found new owners.

For our parts, lest we rush too quickly to any judgments, we might recall the thoughts of several close observers of beauty and the arts:

Good taste is the first refuge of the non-creative. It is the last ditch stand of the artist.
- Marshall McLuhan

It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.
- Salvador Dali

Taste is the enemy of creativity.
- Pablo Picasso

As we reach for those knitting needles, we might ponder bobbing our hair in commemoration of the incomparable Louise Brooks, fabled actress (Pandora’s Box and other Pabst greats) and author of Lulu in Hollywood; she was born this day in 1906.

in Pandora’s Box

If you’ve never read Marshall McLuhan, it is essential reading. The man was something of a prophet (or, if you prefer, guru) of modern media. Though his works are thoroughly disjointed and disconnected, if you can get on his wavelength you will find yourself with many a “wow” moment.

His primary work is Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man and it is a top ten book on my shelf. Can’t always get on his wavelength but there enough “soundbytes” in his work that help to frame an understanding of modern media. My copy is highlighted throughout.

This album is based on a follow-up book, The Medium Is The Massage, that capitalized on, and perhaps poked fun at, his success. I post it here because it foreshadows sampling, the emergence of hip-hop and the debate on copyright. It’s definitely got a trippy 60s kind of feel to it but it’s well worth checking out, especially within its historical context.

“An audio recording version based on this book was made by Columbia Records in the late 60s and produced by John Simon, but otherwise keeping the same credits as the book.

The recording consists of a pastiche of statements made by McLuhan interrupted by other speakers, including people speaking in various phonations and falsettos, discordant sounds and 1960s incidental music in what could be considered a deliberate attempt to translate the disconnected images seen on TV into an audio format, resulting in the prevention of a connected stream of conscious thought.

Various audio recording techniques and statements are used to illustrate the relationship between spoken, literary speech and the characteristics of electronic audio media. McLuhan biographer Philip Marchand called the recording “the 1967 equivalent of a McLuhan video.” (Source)

Enjoy

Info

There’s this great scene in Annie Hall.  Alvy (Woody Allen) overhears this arrogant teacher comment about Marshall McLuhan.  Here’s a condensed version of the scene from the script:

ALVY
you don’t know anything about Marshall McLuhan’s work!

MAN IN LINE
Really?  Really?  I happen to teach a class at Columbia called “TV Media and Culture”!  So I think that my insights into Mr. McLuhan-well, have a great deal of
validity.

ALVY
Oh, do yuh?

MAN IN LINE
Yes.

ALVY
Well, that’s funny, because I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here.

ALVY (To McLuhan)
Tell him.

MCLUHAN (To the man in line)
I heard what you were saying.
You know nothing of my work.
How you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing.

ALVY  (To the camera)
Boy, if life were only like this!

I thought of this as I read some recent criticism of Malcolm Galdwell.  We now know, from the book Too Big too Fail, that Joe Gregory, former Lehman President, swore by Malcolm Gladwell.  He loved Blink, and “even hired the author to lecture employees on trusting their instincts when making difficult decisions.  In an industry based on analyzing raw data, Gregory was defiantly a gut man.”  (I got this from here).

Here’s the problem – do we really understand the point of Gladwell’s Blink? Do we understand the point of any writer clearly enough to take some action and say, in essence, “it was his/her (the writer’s) idea.  I have permission from this expert writer to take this step.?”

There is no pure exegesis and interpretation of any writer.  All interpretation is colored and filtered by our own understanding, our own preferences, our own hopes and ideas.  We find a sentence, a paragraph, an idea, and say “Aha.  I knew I was right.”

We seek confirmation of our own thinking.  But, do we really learn anything?

My opinion is that Blink does not give permission to make instant blink decisions out of ignorance.  It is not a “gut decisions are ok” book.  It is that the “gut” that is trained well makes a very wise decision – in an instant.  It depends on the situation, the decision to be made – and the preparation (the life preparation, the intellectual preparation, the life experience preparation)  of the decision maker.

Here’s a quote from Blink:

Our world requires that decisions be sourced and footnoted, and if we say how we feel, we must also be prepared to elaborate on why we feel that way.  …if we are to learn to improve the quality of the decisions we make, we need to accept the mysterious nature of our snap judgments.  We need to respect the fact that it is possible to know without knowing why we know and accept that – sometimes – we’re better off that way.

But this blog post is not about Gladwell.  It is this: do we read honestly, or do we allow our own prejudices to so color our thinking that we seldom actually let the words of a writer sink in and change the way we truly think and act?

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To purchase my synopses of the three Gladwell best-sellers, The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers, with audio + handout, visit our companion web site, 15minutebusinessbooks.com.

The website proposal was completed by myself Robert Valela, for my group BMKRr which includes:

• Brian
• Michael
• Kristine
• Raul

Click here to download the website proposal in order to view it!

Bellow are all the pieces of work retaining to The Marshall McLuhan Web Design Proposal project completed by the members of BMKRr.

Our Project Team BMKRr.’s logo.

The grid for our website. One with the colour scheme, the other without.

The Visual Proposal Parts for the Marshall Mcluhan Website Proposal(A total of 3 parts).

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The front page(home page) of the proposed Marshall McLuhan website.

All Material/Images above belong and were created by the members of BMKRr; Neil Brian Guzman, Micheal Mijares, Kristine Tamayo, Raul Delgado, Robert Valela. Please request confirmation by a group member listed before using any images/materials shown above. Thank you.

Once upon a time we all lived together,

and then lived separate lives;

Now we’re connected more than ever,

but miles and minds apart.

It’s the irony of technology, the grand price of the grand prix: how we live some more yet die a little; or come together yet make no more than a superficial connection.

Find it in the themes of recent doomsday and futuristic movies. Even in tearjerkers set in the oh-so-familiar present, with their many-angled takes on the classic carpe diem (Latin, “seize the day”).

They all warn: the price of our progress is the pending harm not only of our planet, but more tragically, of ourselves.

This warning unfolds in the Bruce Willis action film “Surrogates”. In its very-near-future setting, society looks, acts, and feels like our own. But no one’s really there. Instead, it’s virtual reality come alive.

The catch? Almost everyone you see is a physically perfect robotic stand-in (read: surrogate) controlled by the real person lying at home. A situation that can deceive.

Like old Bruce Willis (right) controls younger Bruce Willis (center). Or even female partner (left).

In that age, the practice is accepted for its benefits. If your surrogate turns road-kill, relax. You’re unscathed. Just remove the headset and buy a new robot. By that time, getting one is a must and even affordable.

But you lose touch with reality, because everything is a fantasy come true with few consequences. While you can do and be anything you want, you enjoy it all in isolation. Touch is merely an electric s(t)imulation. And tears are only shed at home.

Social interaction changes. When conversation turns sour, just “freeze” and log off. Get the hang of it, and no one will know the real you.

If you’re thinking what I’m thinking, yes, it does sound familiar. Think chat rooms, PEX, and Friendster. Or comments-slash-flames on YouTube and PEP.ph.

Only when it all shuts down do you blink and realize what you’ve missed all along.

In the utra-futuristic animated movie WALL-E, people in a space colony had grown fat and stagnant through centuries of zero gravity, movement, and genuine human contact.

It had to take robots to disrupt and reanimate life too relied on the artificial.

The contrast was too apparent: a love story centered on robots Wall-E and EVE. None more emotional scene than the janitorial robot who mixed concern and curiosity with his mechanical work. All in talkless scenes nearly half the film.

"What really interested me was the idea of the most human thing in the universe being a machine because it has more interest in finding out what the point of living is than actual people." --Wall-E director Andrew Stanton

Some do say the Internet–and the routine, monotonous life it feeds–is mainly making us lose it. In fact, the original graphic novel “Surrogates” stems from that premise: People detaching from life as they’re absorbed into the alternative, more accepting world of cyberspace.

Undeniably, the change comes with new forms of media. Take it from media patron saint Marshall McLuhan.

To him, media are extensions of ourselves. But even as we use them to experience our world, they too change us. With each new medium, we people either come together or move apart.

And he thought that decades before Web 1.0.

This also has shades in late postmodernist Jean Baudrillard. He sees our society as “hyperreal,” where technology and entertainment give us experiences that seem more real than what’s real.

Since media, amusement parks, and malls simulate more ideal, more exciting realms, people “flee” everyday life for those experiences.

Any solution? Maybe a reconnection to what’s real and important. Like relationships, love, and experiencing life with others.

None can escape the pull of the virtual. It is, after all, human nature to aim for and experience what seems impossible.

But so is it to stick together.

Let WALL-E’s Stanton have the final word:

“The greatest commandment Christ gives us is to love, but that’s not always our priority…[In the movie] irrational love defeats the world’s programming. You’ve got these two robots that are trying to go above their basest directives, literally their programming, to experience love.

“…Our programming is the routines and habits that distract us to the point that we’re not really making connections to the people next to us. We’re not engaging in relationships, which are the point of living—relationship with God and relationship with other people.”

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*With apologies to this band I know of the same name.

In my previous post I experimented with a tetrad-fourfold hybrid analysis of media and discovered that the tetrad could be used to look at non-human specific media. Laws of Media (LOM) was a fascinating read that has encouraged me to seek out some more McLuhan. This post brings together insights from The Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media, of which I can report that there is a lot more to  them than this simple tetrad. This article aims to outline many of the arguments from LOM towards a questioning consideration of Heidegger and technology.

One of the many surprises from reading the McLuhan’s LOM, is their reading of Heidegger and the phenomenological tradition. Firstly, they are aware of the importance of the ground/figure relationship for Heidegger and the limitations of his approach. The McLuhan’s want to not only recognize the ground/figure dif-ference, but the figure is the ground and visa versa: ‘[Heidegger] has not noted that the ground is formed as a mosaic, structured acoustically, nor that its structure is entirely due to its interface with figures’ (LOM, p.63). Essentially, the McLuhan’s critique the notion of thinking being beyond beings. For the McLuhan’s, Graham Harman and Levinas, this is impossible.

LOM is not the only place the McLuhan (senior) has commented on Heidegger. In The Gutemberg Galaxy (TGG), he makes the claim that “Heidegger surf-boards along on the electronic wave as triumphantly as Descartes rode the mechanical wave” (TGG, p.248). Heidegger claims that technology is a mode of enframing, which as the McLuhan’s explain “is not a batch of concepts, but a special technique of perception that reveals the ground” (LOM, p.63). Heidegger understands this in the negative as ‘fleeing from the question of being’. It is in the notion of ‘question’ that we must question. If we no longer question being, then we no longer respond to the absent gods as they beacon us to wonder at being. Put simply, if there is no longer an absence that brings us to question the relation with beings, we have lost the RTH and have become PAH automatons. Thus, Heidegger’s favourite philosophical demon (not daimon), Descartes, whose mechanical and mathematical metaphysics of presence, is the main culprit for our modern ontologically degenerate forgetting of the question. Or so he thinks.

Descartes championed the mechanical which was then repeated by Newton. McLuhan comments with wonderfully dry whit in Understanding Media that Newton “in an age of clocks, managed to present the physical universe in the image of a clock”. Whilst “Blake spoke of the need to be delivered “from single vision and Newton’s sleep,” knowing very well that Newton’s response to the challenge of the new mechanism was itself merely a mechanical repetition of the challenge”. Concurrent to Blake, it would be an understatement to say that Heidegger was not fond of mechanization. However, McLuhan notes that Heidegger champions the electrical. McLuhan makes the claim that Heidegger has a non-literate bias in his philosophy and language. Heidegger wants to ‘turn’ the being of Dasein towards the ground of being, the RTH withdrawn essence in contradistinction to the PAH revealed relations of scientific and mathematical representation. In LOM we learn that media which focus to the figures of visual space are conceptual, while acoustic space brings focus to the ground. It is in this acoustic space that Heidegger sees the no-thing which characterizes Eastern oral traditions of the non-literate. This turning towards the acoustic is hampered by the medium Heidegger’s work circulates within: the phonetic [orthographic] alphabet.

‘The interiorization of the technology of the phonetic alphabet translates man from the magical world of the ear to the neutral visual world.’ (TGG, p.21). The manner of his work is abstract and visual, even though he is trying to ‘explore the occult (hidden) area’ of beings (LOM, p.63). In McLuhan’s terms, Heidegger’s concern for the essence and saving power of technology is a response to the ‘left brained’ visual/conceptual logos interpreted as logic which characterized western philosophy since the instantiation of metaphysics with Plato amplified by Descartes and culminating with Nietzsche. Graphocentricism followed in the 17th century, which is why Heidegger re-enacts the pre-Socratic logos of Heraclitus, a logos of the oral tradition of beings gathered by speech. Heidegger’s turn towards poetry exemplifies the ‘right brained’ acoustic/perceptual spiritual line of flight away from the PAH, towards a ‘hearkening’, a hearing beyond sound and tone, that indicates a deeper dense of perception of an openness to the simultaneous withdrawing and the taking place (On the Essence of Language, p.88).It is this ‘hearkening’ to acoustic space that Heidegger’s ideas can ‘’surf’ along the electronic technological revolution commanded by the mosaic image of the television and visual display unit, while simultaneously, his message is replicated through the medium of the printed page, the flat visual space Heidegger despises. To compromise, he turns to poetry.

The poetry of Trakl, Holderlin and Rilke (and Heidegger himself) is a ‘cool’ medium that requires participation. Like Nietzschian aphorisms, which signal an incomplete reasoning, poetry presents a gap which forces the reader to think instead of swallowing a complete package or method of thought. This is in contrast to Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’ (B&T), which is hot in it’s attempt at an exhaustive deconstruction of the meaning of being. The fact that B&T was never finished, party shows the movement from hot prose to cool poetry that would characterize his later work. Although, in essence, his tool analysis fourfold was present as early as 1919, B&T was a product of the hot medium of phenomenological analysis, whose practice of the epoché created mountains of paper analysis in the name of phenomenological ’seeing’. Thus the momentum and style of Husserlian phenomenology was still in top gear as Heidegger was writing B&T, only later to ease off the accelerator and take the fourfold’s cool structure seriously.

There is no essence of Dasein that needs protecting and saving through the poetic return of the gods: McLuhan stresses that “the acoustic power available to the poetic establishment that Plato warned against was puny by comparison to the sensory stress exerted by any one of our technologies and its grounds” (LOM, p64). The human essence is always already a fluctuating media-being through the facticity of worldly equipmentality. There is no ‘clearing’ (lichtung) which sets the horizon of meaning, as human Dasein’s worlded horizon changes according to newly acquired media practices. Heidegger fails to notice that new media all always demonized before they are normalized. As McLuhan observes in TGG, there was ‘considerable alarm and revulsion’ at the mounting use of of books in the late 17th century which contrasts with the modern concern for the ‘end of the book’. Technology itself does not have a moral dimension, but provokes a moral response because of its transformative powers: technology is not itself a disaster, only the myopia of being unprepared for the fundamental changes to human perceptions, habits, values they could bring.

NB – Heidegger’s logocentricism was deconstructed by Derrida, who, through McLuhan’s eyes, was responding the hypocrisy of Heidegger surfing the electric (i.e. the visual space of writing) while promoting the acoustic space of speaking. Heidegger was in neglect of the arch-writing that makes speech possible and thus Heidegger remains committed to a metaphysics of presence: as writing involves the absence of the speaker, whereas the speaker is always present to the listener. Derrida’s archi-writing seems to not only recognize speech and writing as modes of signification, but that neither is subordinate to the other when seeking being qua being. McLuhan knowingly  deconstructs himself when he notes that contained in the fourfold structure of the self proclaimed amazing revolutionary thought of the tetrad itself is its reversal into ‘the external logical method’: hardware (the physical stuff of the world) becomes software (word), “thereby losing their murky, non-linguistic materiality” as Harman writes in his article ‘Phenomenology and the tetrad’. He wants to make us aware of the acute workings and transformations of media, just as Derrida wants to engage in inter-textual deconstruction while making us aware of the impossibility of the end of his task.

This is a particularly interesting clip of Heidegger’s. Most people use TV’s and Radio’s yet have no idea how they work, except for a few technically minded people,  in the same way, most people think they are thinking, yet only a few people actually know what it means to think. For Heidegger. what we think is thought is the message which hides a medium which enframes how we think. This analytic visual space prioritizes being expressed through its presence in visual space. Thus, beings forget the acoustic space of being.