Marshall Mcluhan Today, a Large

Marshall McLuhan

Today, a large majority of people in the Western industrialized world take electronic media for granted. Stores such as Circuit City or Best Buy, where huge flat-screen TVs, cell phones, laptop computers, PalmPilots, etc., etc., etc. fill the aisles, have become as much a part of the culture as hamburgers and french-fries. Seniors receive e-mail photographs of their grandchildren, and children as young as ten years of age carry cell phones. A family who tried to live like the pioneers on a reality show was devastated because they did not have their entertainment and telecommunication vehicles. It is amazing to think of what has occurred in technology in such a short time. Just a few decades ago, the "media guru" Marshall McLuhan talked about the influence of the media on humans and their society. He cautioned that humans are being manipulated by technology and that the world is full of people who worship their own inventions. One can imagine what his reaction would be to the present electronic world.

McLuhan argued that all media, whatever they are and whatever the messages they communicate, exert a compelling influence on man and society. Early humanity existed in a harmonious balance, perceiving the world equally through the five senses of hearing, smell, touch, sight and taste. However, present-day technological innovations are extensions of human abilities and senses that skew this sensory balance and society itself.

It is abundantly clear that the sophistication of society has changed significantly since WWII. Much of this change is due to the arrival of the computer and telecommunication. In 1964, when McLuhan mentioned new technology, he was basically referring to the dramatic increase of telephones and televisions. He wrote in Understanding Media, the Extensions of Man about telephones:.".. The telephone is an irresistible intruder in time and space" (p. 271). Although cell phones did not exist at that time, his words make even more sense today. The cell phone has indeed become an "intruder" that alters time and space for people worldwide.

McLuhan was concerned that phones made it possible for people to talk with one another without actually being together. What would be his reaction when learning that 182 million people own a wireless device, which allows them to communicate across the globe? This more than underscores his comments. The phone is not just located on a nebulous table, but on the individual called. The telephone is "...the extension of ear and voice that is a kind of extra sensory perception" (McLuhan 1964, p. 265). It lets people communicate with one other without being in the same building, state, or even continent. It is like receiving another sense because one can hear other individuals, without touching, seeing, or smelling them firsthand. Cell phones have become such a part of people's everyday existence that this wireless goes with them down the supermarket aisles. They cannot even decide what soup to buy.

Surveys indicate that 85% of workers take their laptops, PDAs, or mobile phones on holidays; 54% feel overwhelmed by pervasive communications; and 93% of feel a negative effect on the quality of life (Kapica 2004). The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) states that 85% of all cell phone users talk over their mobiles while driving. It has been estimated that 6% of auto accidents each year are caused by this combination of activities. This means 2,600 people may be killed and 330,000 injured in cell-phone related car accidents this year (Sundeen 2003).

McLuhan, in the Medium is the Massage (2005), his most well-known book, noted that people consume both medium and message as a total experience. As he once said, "People don't actually read newspapers -- they get into them every morning like a hot bath" (Miller 1971, p. 121.) thus combing the satisfaction of page-turning with an interest in news as entertainment.

McLuhan's worries continue or even are heightened today. "Everything in America is about technology," says Donald Norman, author of the Design of Everyday Things and the Invisible Computer. "That's been a symptom of the United States since its foundation. We invented all sorts of crucial technologies: mass production, standardized parts, time zones, you name it" (Guterman 2002). Although technology has greatly improved the standard of living and truly developed what McLuhan called "the global village," people are addicted: Tell someone he/she cannot watch the 350th episode of "The Simpsons," take away a teenagers AOL Instant Messaging or, heaven forbid, a male's X-Box Live, or tell people they can no longer use e-mail, but have to go back to phone calling or snail mail?!

Of more concern, technology continues to expand the gap between the haves and have-nots. According to the International Telecommunication Union (1998), 90% of Internet users come from industrialized countries and only 25% of people in developing countries have Internet access. A computer in Bangladesh costs eight years the country's annual salary.

Similarly, in the United States, for example, technology, especially the Internet, is a class issue. Compare the number of the technology budget and wired PCs and laptops in the suburbs to that of the inner-cities and other poorer areas of the country. Information is power, and the power is located in similar pockets as the money.

The media, especially television and (PC/video games), is also making viewers numb to the negative happenings in the world. In 1975, McLuhan said, "Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America -- not on the battlefields of Vietnam" (Marchand 1989, p. 209) Things have greatly changed here, as well. The TV was a relatively new piece of equipment during the 1960s Vietnam War, and it was the first time that people actually saw unedited images of a bloody, mindless battles. In WWII, people instead were being shown only news that detailed victories. Now, every morning, noon and night there are horrible scenes of the wars around the world. How real are they, however? When 9/11 occurred, how many people at first thought it was the latest disaster movie?

In an interview with Playboy Magazine in 1961, McLuhan was asked

Despite your personal distaste for the upheavals induced by the new electric technology, you seem to feel that if we understand and influence its effects on us, a less alienated and fragmented society may emerge from it. Is it thus accurate to say that you are essentially optimistic about the future?

He replied in all honesty:

There are grounds for both optimism and pessimism. The extensions of man's consciousness induced by the electric media could conceivably usher in the millennium, but it also holds the potential for realizing the Anti-Christ -- Yeats' rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouching toward Bethlehem to be born. Cataclysmic environmental changes such as these are, in and of themselves, morally neutral; it is how we perceive them and react to them that will determine their ultimate psychic and social consequences. If we refuse to see them at all, we will become their servants. it's inevitable that the world-pool of electronic information movement will toss us all about like corks on a stormy sea, but if we keep our cool during the descent into the maelstrom, studying the process as it happens to us and what we can do about it, we can come through.

In the introduction to his Understanding Media McLuhan wrote: "Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned" (1964, p. 3). Looking back at this statement, compared how to the arrival of the Internet, it becomes truly prophetic. The Web can indeed be compared to a huge nervous system, where all the veins and arteries stretch around the world. In some cases, it does make the world a connected whole and global village. An e-mail goes from Europe to Africa in seconds, a girl in South America plays a PC game with a boy in Australia, a man in California talks over the computer to a friend in Japan. In some ways, this must be improving international communication.