Cisco Parisi - The extensions of man Marshall mc luhan @ NTU - Clifton Campus

1. Marshall McLuhan
The extensions of man
Francesco Parisi - University of Messina - fparisi@unime.it
NTU - Clifton Campus

2. Who is Marshall McLuhan?
Edmonton 1911 - Toronto 1980
Media theorist (and pop icon)

3. Key concepts,
influence, and
historic
framework
Media Ecology
Media aesthetics
Gutenberg Galaxy (1962)
Understanding Media (1964)
Media as extensions of man
The Medium is the Message (and the
Massage, 1967)
Technological determinism
Global Village
Hot and Cool Media

5. Media Ecology
“Once you see the
boundaries of your
environment, they are
no longer the
boundaries of your
environment.” M.M.

6. Media
aesthetics
the sensorial commitment

7. The Gutenberg Galaxy
The making of typographic man
“Schizophrenia may be a necessary consequence
of literacy.” M.M.

8. Understanding
Media
The extensions of
man

9. Table of content
The Medium is the Message
Media Hot and Cold
Reversal of the Overheated Medium
The Gadget Lover: Narcissus as Narcosis
Hybrid Energy: Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Media as Translators
Challenge and Collapse: the Nemesis of Creativity

10. The Medium is
the Message
(and the
Massage, 1967)

11. Global Village

12. Hot and Cool Media
the distinction between
HD - High definition
and
LD - Low definition

13. Technological
determinism
2001: A space odyssey
by Stanley Kubrick

14. 1
According to the Canadian philosopher of technology Marshall
McLuhan ‘we are what we behold’. What he means by this is
that we ‘see ourselves as ourselves’ reflected back at us in the
tools and technologies that we use; and so in general terms it is
our tools - and not thoughts and actions - that define us as
human beings. However, we forget this in our everyday lives
where we generally live the lives of ‘psychic amputees’ devoid
of our technological supplements that provide us with a sense
of who we are.
How might we recognise ourselves in and through our
machines? Consider alternative perspectives to this point of
view. What other factors might determine our senses of who we
are both personally and collectively?

15. 2
McLuhan’s way of assessing the significance of technology
became important for the cybernetic theorist Seymour Papert
(1980). For him, the computer offers children a new material
resource where ‘teaching the computer how to think enables
children to embark on an exploration of how they themselves
think’. Do you agree? Should we use computers to make
children more aware of how they think? Do we see our minds
reflected back at us in the workings of computers? Or might we
misrecognise ourselves in this way?

16. 3-4
According to McCluhan, electronic technologies (TV, Internet
and so on) function as ‘tribal drums’. What did he mean by this?
Is this an aspect of modern technology that we should criticise
or extol?
How might contemporary electronic media create new sense of
tribal identity, one where we identify ourselves in terms of
groups and collectivities rather than as individuals? In what
ways does this suggest that the new era of electronic media will
pose a significant challenge the forms of liberal individualism
that have been so central to the development of the modern
world? More generally how do new technologies change
traditional notions of identity (“me-ness”)?

17. 5-6
Consider the phenomenon of ‘wearable technology’: do you
think that this kind of technology points the way towards a post-
human future? Might the future of technology be such that it
increasingly becomes an ‘extension of ourselves’ (as our
clothes are today)?
Write down five ideas for new wearable devices. How might
each problematise the traditional conception of the human as
embodied and skin-bound?

18. 7
According to philosophers such as Arthur Kroker in the future
the human skin will be in such close proximity to digital devices
of various kinds that we will need to reconceive of the body as
‘digital flesh’. This is an idea that has also been explored in
numerous science fiction films, especially David Kronenberg’s
classic sci-fi horror movie Videodrome. What do you make of
this idea – is it simply a piece of science fantasy or might it be a
useful philosophical notion that helps us to make sense of the
leading trajectory of contemporary technological change?

19. 8
According to contemporary transhumanist philosophers
technology is an evolutionary process through which the human
agent extends itself into the world. Here, hammers are
extension of hands, wheels extensions of the feet, an
information technologies extension of human cognitive abilities.
These philosophers argue that we will soon reach the point
when collective humanity will have externalised all of its abilities
into a single machine – a point that they refer to as ‘the
singularity’. How plausible do you find this account? How might
it be criticised?

20. 9
Are humans still evolving? What role, if any, might technological
change be playing in this process? If so, where might
contemporary technological change be currently taking us?