Class!
As we enter the domain of Marshall McLuhan — the hot and cool media — the terms might seem a little whacky and hard to follow. It’s important to know that his arguments were relatively shocking for scholars of the 60s AND they were extremely popular (in the sense that he was a household name — not just in academic circles).
In fact, he was famous enough to warrant this cameo in Woody Allen’s film Annie Hall (1977).
His major works include The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), Understanding Media (1964), and The Medium is the Massage (1967), an collage book which illustrates his ideas through experimental design.
McLuhan_The_Medium_is_The_Massage (here’s a pdf!)
Like many media theorists, McLuhan states ideas boldly and sometimes polemically — argumentative in order to stir up a “new” way of thinking.
For tomorrow, we are going to think about how this notion of media evolution may or may not continue the colonial advance. McLuhan addresses a notion of a global village in his writing, and also responds to generalizations about gender. While one might argue that he would be the first to say that cultural understanding is context specific, might our contemporary ways of knowing undo some of his claims? Do you think we currently pattern match or define categories?
In class we will be doing an activity to consider how our ideas get to us and how we change ideas.
-Jojo
