Analyzing Marshall McLuhan - Essay Example

Marshall McLuhan The ‘medium is the message’ is considered one of the best publications from Marshall McLuhan. This famous aphorism highlighted the importance that the communication medium has in making the process of communication more effective. Born on July 21, 1911 in Edmonton, Alberta, Marshall McLuhan gave the concept of a ‘global village’ to the world community. Born to a real-estate and insurance salesman father and an actress mother, McLuhan seemed to have picked up the media skills from his mother. His mother used to an elocutionist giving dramatic monologues in theatres and church basements. McLuhan therefore, acquired the skills of memorization and spontaneous speech. It won’t be an exaggeration if we could say that the concept of globalization and liberalization prevalent around us today, finds its echoes in the writings of Marshall McLuhan as well. In fact, when the phrases ‘global village’ and ‘the medium is the message’ were coined in early 1960s by Marshall McLuhan, very few people might have ever thought about the information age that we are currently experiencing today. That is why Marshall McLuhan is considered a visionary. He authored about a dozen books mostly related to media and communication. Some of the important titles written by Marshall McLuhan include; i. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man ii. Explorations in Communication: An Anthology iii. The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects iv. War and Peace in the Global Village v. The mechanical bride: folklore of industrial man vi. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man With his deep interest in media and communication, he was considered a guru of the media culture by the contemporary writers. Apart from some of the fictional writings, the concept of global village was made a topic of discussion and debate by Marshall McLuhan when he put forth his views on the ability of electronic media towards unifying the global community. He claimed that the human development takes place in four stages. Each stage is directly related to1 ‘significant changes in the means of human communication’. McLuhan studied at Cambridge during the 1930s and completed his doctoral thesis on the subject, "The Place of Thomas Nashe in the Learning of his Time". This focused mainly on interpreting and comparison of the meanings of ancient and modern (Nevitt, 1981). McLuhan’s keen interest in the literary world can be gauged from the fact that he went to acquire six degrees2 in Doctor of Letters (D. Litt.) in different subjects and topics. These studied helped him in widening his scope. His book, ‘Understanding Media’ (1964) suggested, ‘The artist is the man in any field, scientific or humanistic who grasps the implications of his actions and of new knowledge in his own times. He is the man of integral awareness’. The developments in the second half of 20th century are an indication that the role of media grew stronger during this half of the century. In order to reach out to the target customers companies now come out with innovative ideas in the form of advertising campaigns. Advertising therefore is a method of communicating the message from company to the customer using a variety of media in such a manner that the customer feels attracted towards the product. The ‘medium’ as envisaged by McLuhan undergoes many variations in communicating the message to the intended user. Nevitt (1981) states that, McLuhan was in fact an artist engaged in sharpening percepts, instead of concepts beyond the categories of scientists and humanists alike. While undertaking the task of teaching at reputed universities, McLuhan used to emphasize that the principal aim of faculty is the ‘training of perception’, which he took as an ambition for his life. While teaching students younger to him by about 5-8 years, McLuhan used to feel as if there is a generation gap amongst them, which he suspected to be due to the differences in learning methods3. This further led him to investigation his ideas about perception. While arguing that technology is an extension of the human nervous system, he used to say that media is the technological extension of the body and that is why media affects the society and culture. It is worth mentioning here that when he came out with the concept of ‘global village’, the PC was in its nascent stages while the Internet was nowhere visible. With the help of Ford Foundation and in association with anthropologist Edmund S. Carpenter, McLuhan started coming out with a periodical called, ‘Explorations’ in the year 1953. This association successfully continued till 1959. Some of the essays from these periodicals were later published in the form of a book titled, Explorations in Communication in 1960. In 1959, McLuhan also took over the responsibility of the media project of the collaboration between the National Association of Educational Broadcasters and the United States Office of Education. This project also helped him in collecting material for his next title. With growing reputation as a visionary, many organizations around the world took pride in recognizing the pioneering work done by McLuhan and conferred on him many awards. The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), for example won him the prestigious Governor Generals Award for critical prose. This title was subsequently translated into many languages. Some other awards received by McLuhan include; i. Molson Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Social Sciences: 1967 ii. Gold Medal Award from President of the Italian Republic, in recognition of the original work as philosopher of the mass media: 1971. iii. President’s Cabinet Award, University of Detroit: 1972 iv. Civic Award of Merit, given by Mayor David Crombie at Toronto City Hall: 1974 The views of McLuhan appeared in direct contrast with those of Marx. The emphasis on technology by McLuhan remained the key difference between these two thinkers. It is the technology which provided the message faster and safest media for transmission from one end to another. This was the underlying belief behind the theory ‘media is the message’ propagated by McLuhan. In his book ‘Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man’, he portrayed the life itself as his laboratory. Thereafter he went on to describe how the technological extension of human being keeps changing his natural environment and subsequently the human nature. But his journey was not without criticism from some of his peers, who used to term his approach as negative. His book, ‘The Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media’ had to face such criticism. It was said by critics that McLuhan often attempts to duplicate the ways in which electronic medium convey messages, using repetition and generalization4. Doubts were also raised about the accuracy of his facts and the precision of the definitions of analytical terms proposed by him. In response to such criticism, in later years McLuhan came out with the concept of ‘tetrad’, a scientific basis for his expressions5. The tetrad was a set of four laws used to frame questions with the help of endeavors of the mankind. In the later years of his life, Marshall McLuhan started suffering from blackouts, which was found to be because of a huge tumor in his brain. After successfully taking out the ‘tennis ball’ size tumor, the gifted author appeared to recover rapidly, but the health condition won’t be the same again. He started forgetting some of the past readings. In 1979 he suffered a massive stroke, which limited his ability to read and write and the legend died on December 31, 1980. References: 1. E-Notes (n.d.). Marshall McLuhan 1911–1980. Available online at http://www.enotes.com/contemporary-literary-criticism/mcluhan-marshall (Feb 24, 2009) 2. Kappelman, Todd (2001). Probe Ministries - Marshall McLuhan: "The Medium is the Message". Available online at http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/mcluhan.html (Feb 24, 2009) 3. Marshall McLuhan, 1911-1980, The Official Site of Marshal McLuhan. Available online at http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/ (Feb 23, 2009) 4. Marchand, Philip (1989). ‘Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger’. Random House of Canada Limited Revised, 1998, with a Foreword by Neil Postman. 5. McLuhan, Marshall (1964). ‘Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man’. McGraw-Hill. (Critical edition published by Gingko Press in 2003) 6. Nevitt, Barrington (1981). ‘Via Media with Marshall Mcluhan’. Kybernetes, Thales Publications (W.O.) Ltd. Read More