WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.060
I want to start today with something that, honestly,

00:00:02.180 --> 00:00:04.919
when I first read it, it just, it gave me goosebumps.

00:00:05.200 --> 00:00:06.660
Oh, yeah. And I don't mean the fun kind. I mean

00:00:06.660 --> 00:00:09.240
the spooky, wait, what kind of goosebumps? The

00:00:09.240 --> 00:00:11.359
real glitch in the Matrix feeling. Okay, that's

00:00:11.359 --> 00:00:12.880
a strong start. I'm listening. What have you

00:00:12.880 --> 00:00:15.980
got? Okay, so picture this. It's 1962. Right.

00:00:16.440 --> 00:00:18.940
JFK is in the White House. The Beatles haven't

00:00:18.940 --> 00:00:22.019
really invaded America yet. We are living in

00:00:22.019 --> 00:00:25.980
a world of, you know, rotary phones, three television

00:00:25.980 --> 00:00:29.250
channels, if you're lucky, and... Libraries that

00:00:29.250 --> 00:00:31.829
use those little wooden card catalogs. You with

00:00:31.829 --> 00:00:34.929
me? I am absolutely with you. A completely analog

00:00:34.929 --> 00:00:37.390
world. No clicks, no swipes. None of that. Yeah.

00:00:37.450 --> 00:00:40.270
So in the middle of this very analog world, a

00:00:40.270 --> 00:00:42.590
man writes down a prediction. He's describing

00:00:42.590 --> 00:00:44.929
a future technology. Okay. And he says this technology

00:00:44.929 --> 00:00:47.509
will, and I'm quoting here, include television

00:00:47.509 --> 00:00:51.170
as its content, that it will obsolesce mass library

00:00:51.170 --> 00:00:54.189
organization. This is a specific phrase that

00:00:54.189 --> 00:00:56.630
just freaked me out. It will flip into a private

00:00:56.630 --> 00:01:00.090
line to speedily tailored data of a saleable

00:01:00.090 --> 00:01:03.090
kind. Speedily tailored data of a saleable kind.

00:01:03.270 --> 00:01:08.569
Yes. In 1962, he basically predicted the targeted

00:01:08.569 --> 00:01:12.670
Instagram ad, the algorithmic TikTok feed, the

00:01:12.670 --> 00:01:15.310
death of the encyclopedia, all of it. Almost

00:01:15.310 --> 00:01:17.810
30 years before the World Wide Web even existed.

00:01:18.090 --> 00:01:21.010
That is Herbert Marshall McLuhan for you. It's

00:01:21.010 --> 00:01:23.349
unnerving, isn't it? When you read that quote,

00:01:23.469 --> 00:01:26.430
it doesn't feel like a guess. No. It feels like

00:01:26.430 --> 00:01:29.310
he saw a blueprint. Like he was reading the user

00:01:29.310 --> 00:01:31.269
manual for a machine that hadn't been built yet.

00:01:31.310 --> 00:01:33.030
It really, really does. And that's who we're

00:01:33.030 --> 00:01:35.469
talking about today. Marshall McLuhan. Now, I

00:01:35.469 --> 00:01:37.530
know the name. I think most people, you know,

00:01:37.549 --> 00:01:40.069
they've heard the name. He's the medium is the

00:01:40.069 --> 00:01:43.390
message guy. He's the global village guy. He

00:01:43.390 --> 00:01:46.579
is the patron saint of Wired Magazine. For sure.

00:01:46.700 --> 00:01:49.159
And also probably the most misunderstood intellectual

00:01:49.159 --> 00:01:51.340
of the 20th century. Well, that's exactly what

00:01:51.340 --> 00:01:52.879
I want to get into, because I'll be honest, I've

00:01:52.879 --> 00:01:54.760
used the phrase global village a hundred times.

00:01:54.780 --> 00:01:56.500
Everyone asks. And I usually use it to mean,

00:01:56.560 --> 00:01:58.640
hey, isn't it cool that I can FaceTime my friend

00:01:58.640 --> 00:02:01.540
in Tokyo? You know, it sounds cozy. It sounds

00:02:01.540 --> 00:02:05.040
nice. And that is exactly where most people get

00:02:05.040 --> 00:02:09.099
it wrong. Profoundly wrong. McLuhan did not mean

00:02:09.099 --> 00:02:11.280
it was cozy, but we'll definitely get to that.

00:02:11.400 --> 00:02:13.719
Right. So the mission for this deep dive is to

00:02:13.719 --> 00:02:16.689
go past the bumper stickers. I really want to

00:02:16.689 --> 00:02:19.610
understand how this guy, who was writing before

00:02:19.610 --> 00:02:22.050
the internet, before smartphones, before AI,

00:02:22.370 --> 00:02:25.289
how he somehow managed to figure out exactly

00:02:25.289 --> 00:02:27.969
how these things would mess with our heads. And

00:02:27.969 --> 00:02:30.289
mess with our heads is, I think, exactly the

00:02:30.289 --> 00:02:32.430
right way to put it. We aren't just looking at

00:02:32.430 --> 00:02:34.349
McLuhan the historian. We're looking at McLuhan

00:02:34.349 --> 00:02:37.340
the detective. Right. Or... Or maybe the mechanic.

00:02:37.479 --> 00:02:39.319
The mechanic, I like that. Yeah, mechanic of

00:02:39.319 --> 00:02:41.580
the mind. Yeah. Because his whole argument, and

00:02:41.580 --> 00:02:43.360
we're going to spend a lot of time on this, is

00:02:43.360 --> 00:02:45.400
that technology doesn't just help us do things.

00:02:45.500 --> 00:02:48.319
It's not just a tool. It changes who we are.

00:02:48.460 --> 00:02:51.580
It rewires us. It fundamentally rewires us. You

00:02:51.580 --> 00:02:53.780
had this term, the sensorium. The sensorium.

00:02:53.780 --> 00:02:55.379
I saw that word in the notes. It sounds like

00:02:55.379 --> 00:02:57.699
a part of a spaceship. It does, doesn't it? Yeah.

00:02:57.759 --> 00:02:59.500
But it's actually pretty simple. It just refers

00:02:59.500 --> 00:03:02.219
to the balance of our senses. Your sight, your

00:03:02.219 --> 00:03:06.039
hearing, touch, taste, smell. McLuhan believed

00:03:06.039 --> 00:03:08.139
that every major technology in history turns

00:03:08.139 --> 00:03:11.199
the volume knob up on some senses and turns it

00:03:11.199 --> 00:03:13.699
way down on others. Okay, so like a mixing board

00:03:13.699 --> 00:03:15.759
for our senses. A mixing board for the soul,

00:03:15.960 --> 00:03:18.900
almost. And when you change that balance, that

00:03:18.900 --> 00:03:21.740
mix, you change how a human being thinks, how

00:03:21.740 --> 00:03:24.780
they feel, and ultimately how they act in the

00:03:24.780 --> 00:03:27.169
world. So just to make this concrete, if I'm

00:03:27.169 --> 00:03:29.969
spending my day staring at a screen versus, say,

00:03:30.090 --> 00:03:32.090
listening to the radio or reading a book, I'm

00:03:32.090 --> 00:03:34.330
actually a different biological entity in some

00:03:34.330 --> 00:03:37.520
fundamental way. Effectively, yes. Your cognitive

00:03:37.520 --> 00:03:39.740
patterns are different. The neural pathways you're

00:03:39.740 --> 00:03:41.699
using are different. And if you change enough

00:03:41.699 --> 00:03:43.680
individuals in the same way, you change the entire

00:03:43.680 --> 00:03:46.419
civilization. OK, that is huge. That is a massive

00:03:46.419 --> 00:03:48.180
claim. We absolutely have to unpack that. But

00:03:48.180 --> 00:03:50.719
but before we get into the heavy theory, I really

00:03:50.719 --> 00:03:52.840
need to understand who this guy was, because

00:03:52.840 --> 00:03:55.680
in my head, a media philosopher from the 60s

00:03:55.680 --> 00:03:58.300
should be this, you know, cool chain smoking

00:03:58.300 --> 00:04:00.599
New Yorker hanging out with Andy Warhol. He did

00:04:00.599 --> 00:04:02.259
eventually hang out with that crowd. You're not

00:04:02.259 --> 00:04:04.750
wrong about that. But he definitely didn't start

00:04:04.750 --> 00:04:08.430
there. His origins are actually much more, well,

00:04:08.490 --> 00:04:10.889
rustic. Yeah, I was really surprised to see he

00:04:10.889 --> 00:04:13.650
was Canadian. Not what I expected. Born in Edmonton,

00:04:13.669 --> 00:04:17.089
Alberta in 1911. Raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

00:04:17.430 --> 00:04:20.389
This is the prairies. We're talking harsh winters,

00:04:20.389 --> 00:04:23.610
vast open spaces. It's not exactly the center

00:04:23.610 --> 00:04:25.990
of the media universe. Not at all. And he wasn't

00:04:25.990 --> 00:04:28.110
even studying media at first, was he? He started

00:04:28.110 --> 00:04:30.410
out in engineering. He did. He enrolled at the

00:04:30.410 --> 00:04:32.550
University of Manitoba as an engineering student.

00:04:32.800 --> 00:04:35.279
See, that's such a weird pivot to me. How do

00:04:35.279 --> 00:04:37.980
you go from building bridges to analyzing poetry?

00:04:38.180 --> 00:04:40.459
It feels like two totally different brains. Well,

00:04:40.459 --> 00:04:42.240
he only lasted a year in engineering before he

00:04:42.240 --> 00:04:44.819
switched to English literature. But I honestly

00:04:44.819 --> 00:04:47.399
don't think he ever really lost that engineering

00:04:47.399 --> 00:04:50.720
mindset. It became his secret weapon. How so?

00:04:50.879 --> 00:04:52.740
What do you mean by that? Think about what an

00:04:52.740 --> 00:04:55.259
engineer does. They look at a structure, a bridge,

00:04:55.439 --> 00:04:58.120
an engine, a circuit board, and they ask, how

00:04:58.120 --> 00:05:00.720
does this work? What are the principles? How

00:05:00.720 --> 00:05:02.660
does the stress flow? What are the mechanics?

00:05:02.939 --> 00:05:05.620
Right. They're looking at the system, not the

00:05:05.620 --> 00:05:08.720
paint job. Precisely. And McLuhan applied that

00:05:08.720 --> 00:05:11.639
same lens to art and communication. He didn't

00:05:11.639 --> 00:05:13.920
just want to know what a poem meant. He wanted

00:05:13.920 --> 00:05:15.860
to know how it was built, what its structural

00:05:15.860 --> 00:05:18.480
effect was on the person reading it. So he was

00:05:18.480 --> 00:05:20.740
reverse engineering literature. Exactly. And

00:05:20.740 --> 00:05:23.079
that whole approach got supercharged when he

00:05:23.079 --> 00:05:26.240
went to England. He headed to Cambridge in 1934

00:05:26.240 --> 00:05:29.769
to do his Ph .D. Okay. And... This is actually

00:05:29.769 --> 00:05:32.449
a bit of a funny story. He already had a master's

00:05:32.449 --> 00:05:34.930
degree from the University of Manitoba. He's,

00:05:34.930 --> 00:05:36.730
you know, a very smart guy. But Cambridge being

00:05:36.730 --> 00:05:39.769
Cambridge. Let me guess. They looked down their

00:05:39.769 --> 00:05:41.769
noses at the colonial degree. Oh, completely.

00:05:42.089 --> 00:05:44.910
They basically said, that's nice, dear. Now,

00:05:44.990 --> 00:05:46.850
if you want to study here, you'll have to enroll

00:05:46.850 --> 00:05:48.790
as an undergraduate again and do the whole thing

00:05:48.790 --> 00:05:51.490
over. That's brutal. Imagine having a master's

00:05:51.490 --> 00:05:53.310
degree and having to sit in a lecture hall with

00:05:53.310 --> 00:05:55.389
a bunch of 18 -year -old freshmen. I would have

00:05:55.389 --> 00:05:58.750
been furious. You'd think so, wouldn't you? But

00:05:58.750 --> 00:06:01.149
McLellan actually spun it. He later said something

00:06:01.149 --> 00:06:04.250
like, the advantage of being a Westerner is that

00:06:04.250 --> 00:06:06.569
we're under no illusion that we've had an education.

00:06:07.589 --> 00:06:10.089
He was totally willing to start from the bottom.

00:06:10.290 --> 00:06:12.610
That's a great attitude. And it's a good thing

00:06:12.610 --> 00:06:15.490
he did because he met two teachers there who

00:06:15.490 --> 00:06:18.209
basically changed the entire trajectory of his

00:06:18.209 --> 00:06:21.529
life, I .A. Richards and F .R. Levis. These are

00:06:21.529 --> 00:06:24.149
the new criticism guys, right? I remember hearing

00:06:24.149 --> 00:06:27.079
that term in a... college lit class, but I think

00:06:27.079 --> 00:06:29.079
I might have fallen asleep. What actually is

00:06:29.079 --> 00:06:32.560
new criticism? So without getting too bogged

00:06:32.560 --> 00:06:35.060
down in academic jargon, the old way of reading

00:06:35.060 --> 00:06:37.879
a book was to look at the biography of the author

00:06:37.879 --> 00:06:40.639
or the history of the time period and try to

00:06:40.639 --> 00:06:42.699
guess what the author was feeling or intending.

00:06:42.839 --> 00:06:44.899
Right. Like Dickens must have been sad about

00:06:44.899 --> 00:06:47.500
poverty when he wrote this. Exactly. New criticism

00:06:47.500 --> 00:06:49.620
came along and said, forget the author. The author

00:06:49.620 --> 00:06:52.500
is dead. Look at the text itself. Look at the

00:06:52.500 --> 00:06:55.540
machine of the words on the page. Okay. So don't

00:06:55.540 --> 00:06:57.560
worry if Shakespeare is having a bad day. Just

00:06:57.560 --> 00:06:59.839
look at how the sonnet is constructed, the form.

00:07:00.019 --> 00:07:02.680
Right. And specifically, look at the effect that

00:07:02.680 --> 00:07:05.800
form has on the reader. I .A. Richards, one of

00:07:05.800 --> 00:07:08.339
his teachers, had this concept he called feedforward.

00:07:08.899 --> 00:07:11.740
Feedforward. I know feedback. What's feedforward?

00:07:12.100 --> 00:07:14.040
So feedback is when you do something and you

00:07:14.040 --> 00:07:15.740
get a signal back that tells you how it went.

00:07:16.600 --> 00:07:18.639
Feedforward is the mechanism of anticipation.

00:07:19.680 --> 00:07:23.259
It's how a complex system like a poem or an advertisement

00:07:23.259 --> 00:07:26.399
or a human brain prepares itself for what's coming

00:07:26.399 --> 00:07:29.180
next. It creates the conditions for its own reception.

00:07:29.439 --> 00:07:31.399
Can you give me a real world example of that?

00:07:31.500 --> 00:07:34.220
Sure. Think about a joke. The setup of a joke

00:07:34.220 --> 00:07:36.560
is pure feed forward. Okay. It primes your brain.

00:07:36.660 --> 00:07:40.000
It sets up an expectation, a pattern, specifically

00:07:40.000 --> 00:07:42.259
so that the punchline can break that pattern

00:07:42.259 --> 00:07:45.019
in a surprising way. If the setup doesn't work,

00:07:45.120 --> 00:07:47.680
if that feedforward mechanism fails, the punchline

00:07:47.680 --> 00:07:49.620
just falls flat. Right, you don't laugh. You

00:07:49.620 --> 00:07:52.800
don't laugh. And Richards taught McLuhan to look

00:07:52.800 --> 00:07:55.680
for that feedforward mechanism everywhere. How

00:07:55.680 --> 00:07:57.680
does communication set the stage for its own

00:07:57.680 --> 00:08:00.740
effect? I see. So McLuhan starts looking at everything

00:08:00.740 --> 00:08:03.819
this way, not just poems. Exactly. He has this

00:08:03.819 --> 00:08:06.480
huge light bulb moment where he realizes you

00:08:06.480 --> 00:08:08.980
can analyze a newspaper, a radio broadcast or

00:08:08.980 --> 00:08:11.300
a television set the same way you analyze a sonnet.

00:08:11.360 --> 00:08:13.899
You don't ask, is the news on this channel true?

00:08:14.220 --> 00:08:17.180
You ask, how does the structure of a 24 hour

00:08:17.180 --> 00:08:19.819
news channel change the way I perceive the world?

00:08:19.980 --> 00:08:22.000
That's the engineer coming back out again. He's

00:08:22.000 --> 00:08:23.500
looking at the wiring. He's always looking at

00:08:23.500 --> 00:08:25.279
the wiring. But there's one more piece of the

00:08:25.279 --> 00:08:27.759
puzzle for McLuhan's personality that we absolutely

00:08:27.759 --> 00:08:30.740
can't ignore. Yeah. And it's the spiritual piece.

00:08:31.279 --> 00:08:34.039
Right. The notes mention he converted to Catholicism.

00:08:34.059 --> 00:08:36.019
Was this just a, you know, a social thing or

00:08:36.019 --> 00:08:37.960
was he really deep into it? Oh, he was deep,

00:08:38.080 --> 00:08:41.139
deeply devout. And it wasn't how he was raised

00:08:41.139 --> 00:08:43.559
at all. I think his family was Baptist, but he

00:08:43.559 --> 00:08:45.720
became an agnostic in university. He was sort

00:08:45.720 --> 00:08:47.820
of drifting. But then he discovered the writer

00:08:47.820 --> 00:08:50.320
G .K. Chesterton. The guy who wrote The Father

00:08:50.320 --> 00:08:52.940
Brown Mysteries? The very same. Chesterton was

00:08:52.940 --> 00:08:55.600
a master of paradox, a brilliant writer and a

00:08:55.600 --> 00:08:58.059
very public Catholic intellectual. And McLuhan

00:08:58.059 --> 00:09:00.909
read him and was just hooked. There's a letter

00:09:00.909 --> 00:09:04.590
McLuhan wrote to his mother in 1935 that is just.

00:09:05.169 --> 00:09:08.350
It's heartbreakingly honest. He wrote, Had I

00:09:08.350 --> 00:09:10.450
not encountered Chesterton, I would have remained

00:09:10.450 --> 00:09:13.509
agnostic. Chesterton did not convince me of religious

00:09:13.509 --> 00:09:15.970
faith, but he prevented my despair from becoming

00:09:15.970 --> 00:09:19.169
a habit. Wow. Prevented my despair from becoming

00:09:19.169 --> 00:09:22.690
a habit. That is, that's heavy. That sounds like

00:09:22.690 --> 00:09:24.450
someone who was staring into the void. I think

00:09:24.450 --> 00:09:26.669
he really was. You have to remember the time.

00:09:26.750 --> 00:09:29.149
This is the mid -1930s. The world is sliding

00:09:29.149 --> 00:09:31.570
towards World War II. Ideologies are clashing.

00:09:31.870 --> 00:09:34.250
He was a highly sensitive, highly intellectual

00:09:34.250 --> 00:09:37.289
young man seeing a world that was becoming increasingly

00:09:37.289 --> 00:09:40.289
chaotic and meaningless. He needed an anchor.

00:09:40.470 --> 00:09:42.309
And he found it in the church. He officially

00:09:42.309 --> 00:09:44.870
joined the Catholic Church in 1937. And while

00:09:44.870 --> 00:09:46.919
he was actually a very... private about his faith.

00:09:46.980 --> 00:09:49.080
He didn't want to be pigeonholed as a Catholic

00:09:49.080 --> 00:09:51.259
thinker. It informed absolutely everything he

00:09:51.259 --> 00:09:53.139
did. It gave him what he called a super historical

00:09:53.139 --> 00:09:55.299
perspective. What does that mean, a super historical

00:09:55.299 --> 00:09:58.460
perspective? It means he felt he had a place

00:09:58.460 --> 00:10:01.559
to stand outside of history. If you're just a

00:10:01.559 --> 00:10:03.360
secular historian, you're kind of trapped in

00:10:03.360 --> 00:10:05.759
your own time. You look at the 1950s and think

00:10:05.759 --> 00:10:08.360
that's normal. Right. It's a baseline. But if

00:10:08.360 --> 00:10:10.399
you're grounded in this 2000 year old tradition,

00:10:10.659 --> 00:10:13.139
you can look at the 20th century and say, whoa.

00:10:13.820 --> 00:10:16.480
This is weird. This is a blip. This isn't normal

00:10:16.480 --> 00:10:19.860
at all. It gave him a stable point from which

00:10:19.860 --> 00:10:22.980
to judge the chaos of modern media. It's like

00:10:22.980 --> 00:10:25.360
having a satellite view of the planet instead

00:10:25.360 --> 00:10:27.039
of just a street view of your own neighborhood.

00:10:27.360 --> 00:10:30.080
That's a fantastic analogy. In fact, he privately,

00:10:30.259 --> 00:10:32.639
he didn't say this in his books, but he privately

00:10:32.639 --> 00:10:35.279
compared satellite technology to the Star of

00:10:35.279 --> 00:10:39.139
Bethlehem. No way. Yes. He saw these deep connections

00:10:39.139 --> 00:10:41.850
between the technological and the spiritual that

00:10:41.850 --> 00:10:43.950
almost nobody else was even looking for. Okay,

00:10:44.009 --> 00:10:46.350
so this is our guy. He's got the brain of an

00:10:46.350 --> 00:10:48.710
engineer, the training of a literary critic,

00:10:48.909 --> 00:10:51.750
and the soul of a Catholic mystic. What a combination.

00:10:51.990 --> 00:10:54.409
It's an incredible combination. And he takes

00:10:54.409 --> 00:10:56.649
this unique toolkit, and he moves to the University

00:10:56.649 --> 00:11:00.669
of Toronto. And then in 1964, he drops the bum,

00:11:00.870 --> 00:11:04.029
understanding media. The book that changed everything.

00:11:04.790 --> 00:11:07.330
And launched a thousand arguments. And the phrase

00:11:07.330 --> 00:11:08.950
that everyone knows, even if they don't know

00:11:08.950 --> 00:11:12.370
who said it, the medium is the message. Yes.

00:11:12.529 --> 00:11:15.149
The big one. Okay, stop. We need to really wrestle

00:11:15.149 --> 00:11:17.330
with this. Because every single time I hear this,

00:11:17.330 --> 00:11:19.029
I feel like it's a riddle that's designed to

00:11:19.029 --> 00:11:22.450
annoy me. It is a bit of a riddle. It's a probe.

00:11:22.649 --> 00:11:25.809
A medium is the message. If I watch a documentary

00:11:25.809 --> 00:11:29.529
about the Civil War on TV, the message is the

00:11:29.529 --> 00:11:33.070
Civil War. It's the facts. the history, the stories.

00:11:33.509 --> 00:11:35.309
But McLuhan seems to be saying, no, no, no, no,

00:11:35.309 --> 00:11:37.070
the message is the TV screen itself. And I'm

00:11:37.070 --> 00:11:40.029
like, what? The screen didn't fight the Battle

00:11:40.029 --> 00:11:43.129
of Gettysburg? That is the common reaction. It's

00:11:43.129 --> 00:11:45.190
the logical reaction. And it's why a lot of people

00:11:45.190 --> 00:11:47.590
dismissed him as a charlatan. But let's look

00:11:47.590 --> 00:11:50.730
at his specific definition of message. For McLuhan,

00:11:50.870 --> 00:11:53.529
the message isn't the content. It isn't what

00:11:53.529 --> 00:11:56.320
is being said. Okay. The message is the change

00:11:56.320 --> 00:11:59.580
of scale, pace, or pattern that a new innovation

00:11:59.580 --> 00:12:02.399
introduces into human affairs. Okay, that's still

00:12:02.399 --> 00:12:04.360
very abstract. Give me the light bulb. I know

00:12:04.360 --> 00:12:06.779
that's his famous example. It's the perfect clarifying

00:12:06.779 --> 00:12:09.440
example. Think about a light bulb. Does it have

00:12:09.440 --> 00:12:11.700
any content? No, it's just a light. It doesn't

00:12:11.700 --> 00:12:13.620
tell a story. It doesn't have a plot or characters.

00:12:13.700 --> 00:12:16.179
It's just on. Right. Unless you're using it to

00:12:16.179 --> 00:12:19.039
spell out words in a marquee, a light bulb is

00:12:19.039 --> 00:12:22.080
pure medium without any content. But now think

00:12:22.080 --> 00:12:23.940
about what the light bulb did to human life.

00:12:24.379 --> 00:12:27.080
Well, it let us stay up late. It did more than

00:12:27.080 --> 00:12:29.600
that. Before electric light, construction on

00:12:29.600 --> 00:12:31.759
a building stopped at sundown. Reading stopped

00:12:31.759 --> 00:12:34.600
at sundown. Most social life was dictated entirely

00:12:34.600 --> 00:12:36.639
by the rising and setting of the sun. Right.

00:12:36.840 --> 00:12:38.960
You went to bed when it got dark. The electric

00:12:38.960 --> 00:12:41.179
light bulb completely restructured human time

00:12:41.179 --> 00:12:43.759
and space. It allowed us to turn night into day.

00:12:43.919 --> 00:12:46.700
It enabled the 24 -hour factory shift, which

00:12:46.700 --> 00:12:49.179
created modern industry. It allowed for cars

00:12:49.179 --> 00:12:52.029
to drive safely at 2 a .m. It literally created

00:12:52.029 --> 00:12:54.649
the 247 society. So the message of the light

00:12:54.649 --> 00:12:57.669
bulb isn't here is light. The message is the

00:12:57.669 --> 00:13:01.549
sun is no longer your boss. Yes, exactly. The

00:13:01.549 --> 00:13:04.429
message is the total restructuring of human life.

00:13:05.149 --> 00:13:07.830
Now, whether you are using that light to read

00:13:07.830 --> 00:13:10.870
the Bible. or to read a comic book, that is the

00:13:10.870 --> 00:13:14.049
content. And McLuhan's radical claim is that

00:13:14.049 --> 00:13:15.929
the content is almost totally irrelevant to the

00:13:15.929 --> 00:13:18.529
deep structural change. The light bulb changed

00:13:18.529 --> 00:13:21.610
society the same way regardless of what you were

00:13:21.610 --> 00:13:23.710
doing under its glow. Okay, that makes perfect

00:13:23.710 --> 00:13:25.570
sense with the light bulb because it has no content.

00:13:25.769 --> 00:13:28.190
But let's apply it to TV because TV does have

00:13:28.190 --> 00:13:30.990
content. It has The Sopranos or Sesame Street.

00:13:31.269 --> 00:13:33.830
Surely it matters if I'm watching brilliant educational

00:13:33.830 --> 00:13:36.090
programming versus, you know, reality trash.

00:13:36.429 --> 00:13:38.299
To your personal education on this. specific

00:13:38.299 --> 00:13:40.580
topic. Yes, of course it matters. But to your

00:13:40.580 --> 00:13:43.139
sensorium, to the deep structures of society.

00:13:43.600 --> 00:13:45.200
McLuhan would say, no, it doesn't matter at all.

00:13:45.480 --> 00:13:47.820
He has this amazing quote. He says, the content

00:13:47.820 --> 00:13:50.120
is just the juicy piece of meat carried by the

00:13:50.120 --> 00:13:52.279
burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.

00:13:52.440 --> 00:13:54.980
I love that quote so much. We're the watchdog.

00:13:55.240 --> 00:13:58.480
You're conscious, critical thinking. Is the watchdog.

00:13:58.779 --> 00:14:00.740
You're sitting there analyzing the plot of the

00:14:00.740 --> 00:14:02.860
show. You're thinking, is this character arc

00:14:02.860 --> 00:14:05.500
realistic? Do I agree with the politics of this

00:14:05.500 --> 00:14:08.519
news anchor? You're chewing on the meat. Right.

00:14:08.639 --> 00:14:11.860
And meanwhile, the burglar, the medium of television

00:14:11.860 --> 00:14:15.700
itself, is quietly breaking into your house and

00:14:15.700 --> 00:14:17.639
rearranging all the furniture. And what is the

00:14:17.639 --> 00:14:20.379
furniture in this analogy? My brain. Your attention

00:14:20.379 --> 00:14:24.100
span. Your relationship to time. Your need for

00:14:24.100 --> 00:14:27.299
constant visual stimulation. The very fact that

00:14:27.299 --> 00:14:30.759
you're sitting passive, immobile for hours, receiving

00:14:30.759 --> 00:14:34.299
a constant stream of images, that physical and

00:14:34.299 --> 00:14:36.820
mental posture is changing you, regardless of

00:14:36.820 --> 00:14:38.419
whether the images are of saints or sinners.

00:14:38.620 --> 00:14:40.340
So while I'm busy debating the political bias

00:14:40.340 --> 00:14:43.399
of a news anchor, the TV medium itself is training

00:14:43.399 --> 00:14:45.500
me to be passive and to expect problems to be

00:14:45.500 --> 00:14:48.120
resolved in 22 minutes plus commercials. Exactly.

00:14:48.360 --> 00:14:50.259
And if we pull that forward to the smartphone

00:14:50.259 --> 00:14:52.299
today. Oh, God, let's do it. It's too perfect.

00:14:52.860 --> 00:14:55.440
We spend all our time arguing about the content

00:14:55.440 --> 00:14:58.940
on social media. Is this post misinformation?

00:14:59.600 --> 00:15:02.179
Is this person being a bully? Is this hate speech?

00:15:02.539 --> 00:15:04.100
Those are the content arguments. They're the

00:15:04.100 --> 00:15:06.899
stake. Okay. McLuhan would tell us, look at the

00:15:06.899 --> 00:15:09.059
form, look at the device, look at the infinite

00:15:09.059 --> 00:15:12.460
scroll. The fact that it never, ever ends. The

00:15:12.460 --> 00:15:14.639
message of the smartphone isn't the tweet you

00:15:14.639 --> 00:15:17.220
just read. The message is that you are now available

00:15:17.220 --> 00:15:21.120
to everyone 24 -7. The message is that your attention

00:15:21.120 --> 00:15:24.679
is now fragmented into 15 second chunks. The

00:15:24.679 --> 00:15:26.919
message is that you are never, ever truly alone

00:15:26.919 --> 00:15:29.779
or bored. That's terrifying because we're all

00:15:29.779 --> 00:15:31.659
running around trying to flex the content. You

00:15:31.659 --> 00:15:33.679
know, let's have better content moderation. But

00:15:33.679 --> 00:15:35.860
nobody is talking about banning the infinite

00:15:35.860 --> 00:15:38.620
scroll itself. Because the medium is invisible

00:15:38.620 --> 00:15:40.720
to us. We swim in it like fish swim in water.

00:15:40.919 --> 00:15:43.679
You can't ask a fish to describe water. But gluten

00:15:43.679 --> 00:15:45.460
was the guy trying to pull us out of the fishbowl

00:15:45.460 --> 00:15:47.299
for a minute and say, hey, look at the water.

00:15:47.360 --> 00:15:49.509
The water is making you grow gills. OK, I'm sold.

00:15:49.649 --> 00:15:52.769
I get it now. I really get it. The medium is

00:15:52.769 --> 00:15:55.570
the environment that changes us. But McLuhan

00:15:55.570 --> 00:15:58.169
didn't stop there. He started categorizing these

00:15:58.169 --> 00:16:00.529
media. And this is where I think he loses people

00:16:00.529 --> 00:16:03.549
again. The whole hot and cool media thing. Ah,

00:16:03.590 --> 00:16:06.850
yes. The famously confusing terminology. It's

00:16:06.850 --> 00:16:11.370
super confusing because in 2024, hot means sexy

00:16:11.370 --> 00:16:15.460
or trending or popular. And cool means... Well,

00:16:15.480 --> 00:16:18.559
it means cool. But McLuhan says radio is hot

00:16:18.559 --> 00:16:22.860
and TV is cool. That just feels completely backwards

00:16:22.860 --> 00:16:24.919
to my modern ears. You have to totally reset

00:16:24.919 --> 00:16:27.200
your vocabulary. He's not using those words the

00:16:27.200 --> 00:16:29.639
way we do. He's borrowing from jazz slang of

00:16:29.639 --> 00:16:32.279
the 40s and 50s. Jazz slang. Yeah. In the jazz

00:16:32.279 --> 00:16:35.019
world back then, if a solo was hot, it was intense,

00:16:35.159 --> 00:16:37.879
loud, fast, in your face. It left nothing to

00:16:37.879 --> 00:16:40.289
the imagination. But if a musician was cool,

00:16:40.490 --> 00:16:43.750
they were detached, laid back, minimalist. They

00:16:43.750 --> 00:16:45.450
invited you in to fill the spaces they left.

00:16:45.610 --> 00:16:48.549
OK, so hot is aggressive and cool is laid back.

00:16:48.649 --> 00:16:50.750
Let's define them technically. What makes a medium

00:16:50.750 --> 00:16:53.570
hot? A hot medium is high definition. And by

00:16:53.570 --> 00:16:55.529
that, he means it is packed with data. It's full

00:16:55.529 --> 00:16:57.330
of information. It gives you everything you need.

00:16:57.409 --> 00:17:00.470
High definition. So like a high -resolution photograph.

00:17:00.870 --> 00:17:03.110
A photograph is the perfect example of a hot

00:17:03.110 --> 00:17:05.029
medium. It shows you the wrinkles, the colors,

00:17:05.170 --> 00:17:07.630
the specific lighting. Your eye doesn't have

00:17:07.630 --> 00:17:09.430
to do any work to figure out what it's looking

00:17:09.430 --> 00:17:12.230
at. The information is spoon -fed to you. So

00:17:12.230 --> 00:17:15.849
radio is hot because the audio fills your ear.

00:17:16.319 --> 00:17:18.619
Exactly. He argued it's a single sense hearing

00:17:18.619 --> 00:17:20.759
that is filled to the brim with information.

00:17:21.019 --> 00:17:23.980
You just sit back and receive the download. The

00:17:23.980 --> 00:17:26.660
key thing about hot media is they require low

00:17:26.660 --> 00:17:29.099
participation from the audience. Low participation.

00:17:29.400 --> 00:17:30.980
I don't have to fill in the blanks. Exactly.

00:17:31.119 --> 00:17:34.400
Now flip it. A cool medium is low definition.

00:17:34.599 --> 00:17:36.799
It gives you very little information. It's sketchy.

00:17:36.980 --> 00:17:39.900
It's impressionistic. And his primary example

00:17:39.900 --> 00:17:43.500
is TV. But wait a second. TV gives me pictures

00:17:43.500 --> 00:17:45.500
and sound. Isn't that way more information than

00:17:45.500 --> 00:17:48.039
radio, which is just sound? This is the crucial

00:17:48.039 --> 00:17:49.920
point. This is where you have to remember he's

00:17:49.920 --> 00:17:52.539
watching television in 1960. Right. Rabbit ears.

00:17:52.740 --> 00:17:55.779
A tiny, blurry, black and white screen with a

00:17:55.779 --> 00:17:58.819
snowy picture. Exactly. The image was terrible.

00:17:59.019 --> 00:18:02.059
It was a mesh of scanning dots, a low -resolution

00:18:02.059 --> 00:18:06.019
mosaic. McLuhan argued that to watch that kind

00:18:06.019 --> 00:18:09.750
of television, your brain had to constantly subconsciously

00:18:09.750 --> 00:18:13.130
work to connect the dots just to form a coherent

00:18:13.130 --> 00:18:15.690
picture you were participating you were leaning

00:18:15.690 --> 00:18:18.390
in to complete the image so cool literally means

00:18:19.000 --> 00:18:21.920
have to do some of the work. Yes. The user has

00:18:21.920 --> 00:18:24.440
to be active to create meaning. The telephone

00:18:24.440 --> 00:18:26.900
is another classic cool medium. Because you can't

00:18:26.900 --> 00:18:29.000
see the person's face. Right. You have to imagine

00:18:29.000 --> 00:18:30.920
their expression. You have to listen carefully

00:18:30.920 --> 00:18:33.259
to the tone of their voice to guess if they're

00:18:33.259 --> 00:18:35.880
smiling or frowning. You are actively filling

00:18:35.880 --> 00:18:38.880
in all the missing data. That is high participation.

00:18:39.589 --> 00:18:41.569
A cartoon is cool for the same reason it's just

00:18:41.569 --> 00:18:43.690
a few lines, and your brain fills in the rest.

00:18:43.890 --> 00:18:46.809
Okay, so let me try a pop quiz. A podcast. This

00:18:46.809 --> 00:18:49.069
thing we're doing right now, is a podcast hot

00:18:49.069 --> 00:18:52.849
or cool? Ooh, that is a good question. By his

00:18:52.849 --> 00:18:54.990
original logic, radio is hot, so you'd think

00:18:54.990 --> 00:18:57.549
a podcast would be hot. But podcasts are often

00:18:57.549 --> 00:18:59.410
so conversational, right? They're rambling, they're

00:18:59.410 --> 00:19:01.410
intimate. And I'm probably not sitting in rapt

00:19:01.410 --> 00:19:03.849
attention. I'm listening while I do the dishes

00:19:03.849 --> 00:19:06.930
or go for a run. I'd argue a scripted audiobook.

00:19:07.519 --> 00:19:10.819
read by a professional actor is hot. It's a complete

00:19:10.819 --> 00:19:13.400
performance being delivered to you. But a rambling

00:19:13.400 --> 00:19:15.660
chat show like this one, it might be cooler.

00:19:15.839 --> 00:19:18.259
You feel like you're hanging out. You're interpreting

00:19:18.259 --> 00:19:21.640
the silence, the laughter. It's more participatory.

00:19:21.839 --> 00:19:25.210
What about something like TikTok? Extremely cool.

00:19:25.349 --> 00:19:27.789
Not in the slang sense, but in the McLuhan sense.

00:19:28.069 --> 00:19:31.289
The videos are short, often chaotic. They require

00:19:31.289 --> 00:19:33.789
you to know all the pre -existing memes and inside

00:19:33.789 --> 00:19:36.369
jokes and sounds to understand what's even happening.

00:19:36.490 --> 00:19:38.029
Right. If you show a TikTok to your grandma,

00:19:38.210 --> 00:19:39.809
she doesn't get it. She doesn't get it. Why?

00:19:40.009 --> 00:19:42.369
Because she can't fill in the blanks. She doesn't

00:19:42.369 --> 00:19:44.549
have the context. She can't participate in the

00:19:44.549 --> 00:19:47.029
meaning making. So for her, it's just noise.

00:19:47.450 --> 00:19:51.589
For a teenager, it's a rich, cool, highly participatory

00:19:51.589 --> 00:19:54.000
medium. So why does this distinction even matter?

00:19:54.119 --> 00:19:56.259
Who cares if a medium is hot or cool? What's

00:19:56.259 --> 00:19:58.819
the point? Because McLuhan believed they create

00:19:58.819 --> 00:20:01.359
fundamentally different types of societies. Yeah.

00:20:01.400 --> 00:20:03.980
Different types of people. He argued that hot

00:20:03.980 --> 00:20:06.440
media like print, which is very dense, linear

00:20:06.440 --> 00:20:10.299
and visual, creates people who are logical, individualistic,

00:20:10.420 --> 00:20:13.660
specialized and emotionally detached. Think left

00:20:13.660 --> 00:20:16.160
brain people. The classic intellectual, the accountant

00:20:16.160 --> 00:20:18.599
reading a spreadsheet in their office. Exactly.

00:20:18.900 --> 00:20:22.279
But cool media like television. or the telephone.

00:20:22.519 --> 00:20:25.140
He thought they create people who are more involved,

00:20:25.359 --> 00:20:28.599
tribal, holistic, and emotional right -brain

00:20:28.599 --> 00:20:31.559
people. He believed the massive societal shift

00:20:31.559 --> 00:20:34.460
from a print -dominated culture to a TV -dominated

00:20:34.460 --> 00:20:37.160
culture was literally shifting us from being

00:20:37.160 --> 00:20:39.759
a society of logical individuals to being one

00:20:39.759 --> 00:20:43.460
giant emotional soup. And that emotional soup...

00:20:43.789 --> 00:20:46.789
That brings us to the Global Village. Yes. This

00:20:46.789 --> 00:20:49.509
is part four. The great epic shift from what

00:20:49.509 --> 00:20:51.730
he called the Gutenberg Galaxy to the Global

00:20:51.730 --> 00:20:53.730
Village. Okay, before the village, can we talk

00:20:53.730 --> 00:20:56.029
about Typographic Man? Because that sounds like

00:20:56.029 --> 00:20:58.769
a truly terrible superhero. Able to alphabetize

00:20:58.769 --> 00:21:00.730
a phone book at the speed of light. No, Typographic

00:21:00.730 --> 00:21:03.029
Man is us. Or at least who we used to be for

00:21:03.029 --> 00:21:05.400
about 500 years. What does that mean? McLuhan

00:21:05.400 --> 00:21:07.339
argues that the invention of the printing press

00:21:07.339 --> 00:21:09.420
in the 15th century didn't just give us more

00:21:09.420 --> 00:21:12.720
books. It rewired the Western brain to think

00:21:12.720 --> 00:21:14.880
in straight lines. Because the lines of text

00:21:14.880 --> 00:21:17.799
on a page are straight. Left to right, top to

00:21:17.799 --> 00:21:20.980
bottom, one word after another, in a fixed sequence,

00:21:21.220 --> 00:21:24.559
cause and effect. Introduction, body, conclusion.

00:21:25.160 --> 00:21:27.099
McLuhan says that living inside that environment

00:21:27.099 --> 00:21:29.660
for five centuries made us intensely visual,

00:21:29.960 --> 00:21:34.480
linear, and rational. It also, he argued, made

00:21:34.480 --> 00:21:37.359
us lonely lonely how does a book make you lonely

00:21:37.359 --> 00:21:40.460
because reading is a silent private act you do

00:21:40.460 --> 00:21:43.180
it alone in your own head it separated us from

00:21:43.180 --> 00:21:45.880
the group it literally invented the modern concept

00:21:45.880 --> 00:21:49.319
of the individual before print in an oral tribal

00:21:49.319 --> 00:21:51.700
culture nobody was an individual with a private

00:21:51.700 --> 00:21:53.319
point of view you were just part of the tribe

00:21:53.319 --> 00:21:55.660
print allowed you to have a private mind okay

00:21:55.660 --> 00:21:57.880
so that's the gutenberg galaxy it's orderly it's

00:21:57.880 --> 00:21:59.960
rational it's private and then comes the electric

00:21:59.960 --> 00:22:04.109
wire the telegraph the radio The internet. And

00:22:04.109 --> 00:22:06.170
suddenly the walls of that private mind are just

00:22:06.170 --> 00:22:08.269
blown out. Information isn't linear anymore.

00:22:08.369 --> 00:22:10.289
It's not sequential. It's simultaneous. It's

00:22:10.289 --> 00:22:12.390
coming at you from everywhere all at once. And

00:22:12.390 --> 00:22:14.809
this is the global village. This is the global

00:22:14.809 --> 00:22:16.809
village. But I want you to notice the word he

00:22:16.809 --> 00:22:19.589
chose. He didn't say global city or global library.

00:22:19.849 --> 00:22:23.109
He said global village. Have you ever lived in

00:22:23.109 --> 00:22:25.190
a really small village? I grew up in a suburb,

00:22:25.250 --> 00:22:27.569
which is bad enough. Everyone knows when you

00:22:27.569 --> 00:22:30.309
get a new package from Amazon. Exactly. Now multiply

00:22:30.309 --> 00:22:33.480
that by a thousand. In a real preliterate village,

00:22:33.740 --> 00:22:36.339
there is zero privacy. If you have a fight with

00:22:36.339 --> 00:22:38.660
your spouse, the entire village hears it. If

00:22:38.660 --> 00:22:41.599
you sneeze, the village blesses you. It is a

00:22:41.599 --> 00:22:44.640
place of total, absolute interdependence. And

00:22:44.640 --> 00:22:47.480
total surveillance. Everyone is in everyone else's

00:22:47.480 --> 00:22:49.920
business. All the time. And this is the quote

00:22:49.920 --> 00:22:52.400
you have to remember. McLuhan wrote, Terror is

00:22:52.400 --> 00:22:55.039
the normal state of any oral society. For in

00:22:55.039 --> 00:22:57.359
it, everything affects everything all the time.

00:22:57.609 --> 00:23:00.230
Terror is the normal state. Yeah. That is not

00:23:00.230 --> 00:23:03.529
cozy. Think about Twitter or X or whatever we're

00:23:03.529 --> 00:23:06.349
calling it. Oh, God. Yeah. Is it a calm, rational

00:23:06.349 --> 00:23:09.390
place where we exchange linear, well -reasoned

00:23:09.390 --> 00:23:11.690
arguments? You know, it's a mob. It's a constant

00:23:11.690 --> 00:23:14.349
riot. It's a tribal drum. It's acoustic space.

00:23:14.609 --> 00:23:16.829
Someone beats the drum. Look at this person who

00:23:16.829 --> 00:23:20.630
said a bad thing. And the entire village instantly

00:23:20.630 --> 00:23:23.410
rushes to the public square to scream and throw

00:23:23.410 --> 00:23:28.690
things. It is pure. instantaneous emotion. The

00:23:28.690 --> 00:23:31.170
rational individual doesn't stand a chance in

00:23:31.170 --> 00:23:33.910
that environment. That makes so much sense. We

00:23:33.910 --> 00:23:36.450
think we're using these new tools to express

00:23:36.450 --> 00:23:39.150
our unique selves, but really we're just rejoining

00:23:39.150 --> 00:23:41.289
the tribe. We're giving up our hard -won privacy

00:23:41.289 --> 00:23:44.009
to be part of the group mind again. And McLuhan

00:23:44.009 --> 00:23:47.190
saw this coming in the 1960s. He saw that the

00:23:47.190 --> 00:23:49.150
electronic age would re -tribalize humanity.

00:23:49.549 --> 00:23:52.029
He said, in the electric age, Big Brother goes

00:23:52.029 --> 00:23:54.309
inside. We don't need a dictator with cameras

00:23:54.309 --> 00:23:57.079
watching us anymore. We watch each other. We

00:23:57.079 --> 00:23:59.220
internalize the surveillance. That's so dark.

00:23:59.299 --> 00:24:01.079
But, you know, when you read him, he didn't seem

00:24:01.079 --> 00:24:03.339
to hate it or love it, for that matter. He just

00:24:03.339 --> 00:24:05.819
observed it like a scientist looking at ants.

00:24:06.039 --> 00:24:08.220
That was his absolute stance. He refused to be

00:24:08.220 --> 00:24:10.539
a moralist. He had this great line. To raise

00:24:10.539 --> 00:24:12.500
a moral complaint about this is like cussing

00:24:12.500 --> 00:24:15.200
a buzzsaw for lopping off fingers. Laughs. I

00:24:15.200 --> 00:24:17.019
mean, that's a fair point. If you stick your

00:24:17.019 --> 00:24:18.819
hand in a buzzsaw, don't blame the saw for being

00:24:18.819 --> 00:24:21.539
a saw. Exactly. The saw does what a saw does.

00:24:22.109 --> 00:24:24.789
If you understand the mechanism of the saw, you

00:24:24.789 --> 00:24:27.349
can use it safely and keep your fingers. If you

00:24:27.349 --> 00:24:30.490
just stand there yelling, saws are evil, you're

00:24:30.490 --> 00:24:33.130
going to get hurt. McLuhan's goal was awareness

00:24:33.130 --> 00:24:35.630
of the mechanism so we wouldn't be victims of

00:24:35.630 --> 00:24:37.710
it. He wanted us to wake up and see the water

00:24:37.710 --> 00:24:41.670
in the fishbowl. Yes. He famously said, I wouldn't

00:24:41.670 --> 00:24:44.589
be seen dead with a living work of art. Meaning

00:24:44.589 --> 00:24:47.029
he didn't want to just live inside the environment

00:24:47.029 --> 00:24:49.650
and enjoy it. He wanted to stand outside and

00:24:49.650 --> 00:24:52.650
probe it. He was a provocateur. Speaking of being

00:24:52.650 --> 00:24:55.769
a provocateur, the guy was a bit of a pop culture

00:24:55.769 --> 00:24:57.589
celebrity, wasn't he? He wasn't just hiding in

00:24:57.589 --> 00:24:59.710
the library stacks. Oh, he absolutely loved the

00:24:59.710 --> 00:25:02.170
spotlight. He was on television constantly. He

00:25:02.170 --> 00:25:04.150
wrote for popular magazines. He was analyzing

00:25:04.150 --> 00:25:06.769
advertising way before it was cool. Right. The

00:25:06.769 --> 00:25:08.769
Mechanical Bride. That was his first book from

00:25:08.769 --> 00:25:12.549
1951. Yes. He would take these glossy magazine

00:25:12.549 --> 00:25:16.049
ads for cars and stockings and deodorant and

00:25:16.049 --> 00:25:18.670
analyze them with the same seriousness that a

00:25:18.670 --> 00:25:21.750
critic would analyze a Shakespeare play. He saw

00:25:21.750 --> 00:25:24.130
that ads were the real folk art of the 20th century

00:25:24.130 --> 00:25:26.410
because they were designed to manipulate the

00:25:26.410 --> 00:25:28.470
collective subconscious. And then there's the

00:25:28.470 --> 00:25:31.289
famous typo. I love this story. His big visually

00:25:31.289 --> 00:25:33.950
experimental book, The Medium is the Massage.

00:25:34.190 --> 00:25:37.410
M -A -S -S -A -G -E. It was supposed to be message,

00:25:37.569 --> 00:25:40.329
wasn't it? The original title. It was. The typesetter

00:25:40.329 --> 00:25:42.289
at the printer made a mistake. The proof came

00:25:42.289 --> 00:25:44.369
back from the printer and it said, the medium

00:25:44.369 --> 00:25:47.210
is the massage. And his co -author was probably

00:25:47.210 --> 00:25:49.809
horrified, but instead of fixing it, McLuhan

00:25:49.809 --> 00:25:51.730
shouted, leave it alone, it's great, it's right

00:25:51.730 --> 00:25:55.049
on target. Why? Was he just being lazy or contrary?

00:25:55.269 --> 00:25:57.630
No. He instantly saw the four -level pun. It

00:25:57.630 --> 00:25:59.630
was a happy accent. Okay, what are the four levels?

00:25:59.950 --> 00:26:02.450
Well, you have message, the original idea, but

00:26:02.450 --> 00:26:04.890
you also have mass age, as in the age of the

00:26:04.890 --> 00:26:08.089
masses, and message, as in our messy, chaotic

00:26:08.089 --> 00:26:11.549
era. And finally, massage. Massage, like literally

00:26:11.549 --> 00:26:15.119
rubbing someone. Yes. because the medium works

00:26:15.119 --> 00:26:18.940
us over. It needs our brains. It physically massages

00:26:18.940 --> 00:26:21.480
our sensorium, changing our sensory balance.

00:26:21.660 --> 00:26:23.420
He thought it was the most perfect accident.

00:26:23.640 --> 00:26:25.619
That book is wild, by the way. If you haven't

00:26:25.619 --> 00:26:27.640
seen it, listeners, you have to Google the images.

00:26:27.900 --> 00:26:30.680
It's not just text. It's weird photos, text that

00:26:30.680 --> 00:26:33.240
runs upside down and backwards. It looks like

00:26:33.240 --> 00:26:35.980
a punk rock zine from the 90s, but it's from

00:26:35.980 --> 00:26:39.920
1967. It was a cool book. He made the book itself

00:26:39.920 --> 00:26:43.039
into a... television -like non -linear experience.

00:26:43.420 --> 00:26:45.839
He was practicing what he preached about form.

00:26:46.019 --> 00:26:48.380
And we absolutely can't talk about his celebrity

00:26:48.380 --> 00:26:50.740
status without mentioning his cameo in Annie

00:26:50.740 --> 00:26:53.789
Hall. The ultimate academic mic drop. one of

00:26:53.789 --> 00:26:55.710
the greatest scenes in movie history. For anyone

00:26:55.710 --> 00:26:57.869
who hasn't seen it, Woody Allen is standing in

00:26:57.869 --> 00:27:00.789
a movie line, and this unbelievably pompous academic

00:27:00.789 --> 00:27:03.670
guy behind him is lecturing his date about McLuhan's

00:27:03.670 --> 00:27:05.769
theories. And he's getting it all wrong. Just

00:27:05.769 --> 00:27:08.049
babbling, pretentious nonsense. He doesn't get

00:27:08.049 --> 00:27:10.089
it. The medium is the message, but the message

00:27:10.089 --> 00:27:13.069
is really the medium. Just total garbage. And

00:27:13.069 --> 00:27:15.130
Woody Allen gets more and more frustrated, and

00:27:15.130 --> 00:27:17.990
finally he turns to the camera and says, if only

00:27:17.990 --> 00:27:21.160
life were like this. And he walks over to a movie

00:27:21.160 --> 00:27:24.420
poster and pulls the real Marshall McLuhan out

00:27:24.420 --> 00:27:26.839
from behind it. The man himself. And McLuhan

00:27:26.839 --> 00:27:29.259
looks the pompous guy dead in the eye and says,

00:27:29.460 --> 00:27:31.440
I heard what you were saying. You know nothing

00:27:31.440 --> 00:27:34.019
of my work. You mean my whole fallacy is wrong?

00:27:34.480 --> 00:27:36.740
How you got to teach a course in anything is

00:27:36.740 --> 00:27:39.339
totally amazing. It is the most brutal, satisfying

00:27:39.339 --> 00:27:42.299
burn. It's the fantasy of every nerd who's ever

00:27:42.299 --> 00:27:44.640
been stuck listening to a loudmouth in public,

00:27:44.819 --> 00:27:47.240
to have the actual expert appear out of thin

00:27:47.240 --> 00:27:50.079
air and just destroy them. Sadly, though, we

00:27:50.079 --> 00:27:52.640
can't just summon Marshall McLuhan today to explain

00:27:52.640 --> 00:27:56.099
TikTok or AI to us. We can't. But he did leave

00:27:56.099 --> 00:27:59.339
us a tool, a specific practical tool to do it

00:27:59.339 --> 00:28:02.279
ourselves. He called it the Tetrad. The tetrad.

00:28:02.299 --> 00:28:04.319
This sounds like a powerful artifact from a sci

00:28:04.319 --> 00:28:06.839
-fi movie. It kind of is. It's from his last

00:28:06.839 --> 00:28:09.059
book, Laws of Media, which was published after

00:28:09.059 --> 00:28:11.779
he died. He and his son Eric claim that every

00:28:11.779 --> 00:28:14.859
human artifact, from a word to a car to a computer,

00:28:14.960 --> 00:28:18.240
follows four consistent laws. If you want to

00:28:18.240 --> 00:28:19.859
understand what a technology is really doing

00:28:19.859 --> 00:28:22.059
to you and your culture, you have to ask these

00:28:22.059 --> 00:28:24.559
four questions. Okay, let's do this. I want to

00:28:24.559 --> 00:28:26.480
use the tetrad on something happening right now.

00:28:26.539 --> 00:28:28.460
Let's do generative AI. That's something like

00:28:28.460 --> 00:28:30.900
chat GPT. Well, that is a juicy one. Perfect.

00:28:31.359 --> 00:28:34.500
Okay. The four questions of the tetrad are, what

00:28:34.500 --> 00:28:37.759
does it enhance? What does it obsolesce? What

00:28:37.759 --> 00:28:40.299
does it retrieve? And what does it reverse into

00:28:40.299 --> 00:28:42.859
when pushed to its limit? Okay. Question one,

00:28:42.940 --> 00:28:45.900
enhancement. What does AI enhance or amplify?

00:28:46.279 --> 00:28:48.619
Well, the obvious one is it enhances the speed

00:28:48.619 --> 00:28:51.319
of text and image production. It amplifies the

00:28:51.319 --> 00:28:53.400
average consensus of information found on the

00:28:53.400 --> 00:28:55.700
internet. It enhances our ability to simulate

00:28:55.700 --> 00:28:58.160
reasoning. It enhances the first draft. I never

00:28:58.160 --> 00:29:00.019
have to stare at a blank page again. It gets

00:29:00.019 --> 00:29:02.279
me started. Correct. It amplifies the retrieval

00:29:02.279 --> 00:29:05.579
of data. Okay, good. Question two, obsolescence,

00:29:05.660 --> 00:29:08.480
what does it push aside? What becomes junk because

00:29:08.480 --> 00:29:12.740
of AI? The high school essay. Maybe the traditional

00:29:12.740 --> 00:29:16.779
school essay, yes. But also maybe things like

00:29:16.779 --> 00:29:20.680
rote memorization or the job of the junior copywriter,

00:29:20.779 --> 00:29:24.660
the need to learn basic grammar. Perhaps. It

00:29:24.660 --> 00:29:26.680
obsolesces the struggle of writing. You know,

00:29:26.700 --> 00:29:28.779
that painful part where you have to sit and figure

00:29:28.779 --> 00:29:30.140
out what you actually think about something.

00:29:30.279 --> 00:29:33.819
Yes. And McLuhan would immediately ask, if we

00:29:33.819 --> 00:29:36.279
obsolesce the struggle, do we also obsolesce

00:29:36.279 --> 00:29:39.400
the thinking that comes from that struggle? That's

00:29:39.400 --> 00:29:43.079
a good question. OK, next, retrieval. What does

00:29:43.079 --> 00:29:45.160
it bring back from the past that we thought we'd

00:29:45.160 --> 00:29:47.950
lost? This is always the tricky one. Retrieval

00:29:47.950 --> 00:29:50.349
usually brings back something from the deep,

00:29:50.369 --> 00:29:54.329
often preliterate past with AI. I think it retrieves

00:29:54.329 --> 00:29:57.210
the oracle. The oracle, like the oracle at Delphi.

00:29:57.559 --> 00:30:00.000
Think about it. You go to a mysterious non -human

00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:02.579
entity. You ask it a question in plain language.

00:30:02.660 --> 00:30:04.440
It gives you an answer that sounds profound,

00:30:04.579 --> 00:30:07.420
authoritative, but might be a complete hallucination.

00:30:07.500 --> 00:30:10.779
It's a bit magical. It retrieves the mythic voice

00:30:10.779 --> 00:30:13.519
from the machine. That's so true. It feels like

00:30:13.519 --> 00:30:15.640
talking to a spirit sometimes. It's not like

00:30:15.640 --> 00:30:18.039
Googling. It's like asking a question. Or it

00:30:18.039 --> 00:30:20.940
retrieves orality again. You're having a conversation,

00:30:21.119 --> 00:30:23.319
a chat, instead of performing a search query.

00:30:23.559 --> 00:30:27.140
Okay, I like that. Final one, reversal. What

00:30:27.140 --> 00:30:29.799
does it flip into when it's pushed to its extreme?

00:30:30.299 --> 00:30:33.819
So when any technology overheats, it flips into

00:30:33.819 --> 00:30:36.099
its opposite. The automobile is supposed to speed

00:30:36.099 --> 00:30:38.140
up travel and create freedom. When there are

00:30:38.140 --> 00:30:40.539
too many cars, it creates gridlock, which stops

00:30:40.539 --> 00:30:43.720
travel and traps you. Right. So if AI is pushed

00:30:43.720 --> 00:30:47.279
to the limit, what happens? If AI produces all

00:30:47.279 --> 00:30:49.559
the new content and then the next version of

00:30:49.559 --> 00:30:52.619
AI is trained on that synthetic content, it might

00:30:52.619 --> 00:30:55.890
flip into absurdity. Or madness. Model collapse,

00:30:56.049 --> 00:30:57.789
where it just starts feeding on its own tail

00:30:57.789 --> 00:30:59.789
and speaking gibberish. Exactly. Or it flips

00:30:59.789 --> 00:31:02.509
from being a tool for information into a tool

00:31:02.509 --> 00:31:05.329
for pure noise, a total loss of meaning. You

00:31:05.329 --> 00:31:07.430
can't tell what's real from what's fake, so nothing

00:31:07.430 --> 00:31:10.029
is real. It reverses into the opposite of knowledge.

00:31:10.250 --> 00:31:12.089
That is a dark thought, but that's the tool,

00:31:12.150 --> 00:31:13.829
right? You can apply those four questions to

00:31:13.829 --> 00:31:15.690
anything. Try it with your toaster. Try it with

00:31:15.690 --> 00:31:18.049
Zoom. Try it with a fork. It works every time.

00:31:18.069 --> 00:31:20.289
It's an amazing thinking tool. I want to touch

00:31:20.289 --> 00:31:22.329
on one more concept from his later work before

00:31:22.329 --> 00:31:25.069
we wrap up, because it really connects to this

00:31:25.069 --> 00:31:29.829
madness or noise idea, the idea he had of robotism

00:31:29.829 --> 00:31:32.269
or androidism. Right. This is from his later

00:31:32.269 --> 00:31:34.630
work with Bruce Powers in a book called The Global

00:31:34.630 --> 00:31:37.609
Village. He was looking at how Eastern and Western

00:31:37.609 --> 00:31:40.190
modes of thinking were colliding in the electric

00:31:40.190 --> 00:31:43.509
age. And he had this core idea of visual space

00:31:43.509 --> 00:31:46.880
versus acoustic space. Right. We talked about

00:31:46.880 --> 00:31:49.319
visual space being the Western world. It's linear,

00:31:49.420 --> 00:31:52.660
sequential, rational, the world created by the

00:31:52.660 --> 00:31:55.279
printed page. But acoustic space is different.

00:31:55.359 --> 00:31:58.700
It's the world of oral cultures and now the electric

00:31:58.700 --> 00:32:01.059
world. He had that great description, the center

00:32:01.059 --> 00:32:03.359
is everywhere and the margin is nowhere. Which

00:32:03.359 --> 00:32:05.319
is a perfect description of the Internet, isn't

00:32:05.319 --> 00:32:07.460
it? There's no center of the Internet. It's a

00:32:07.460 --> 00:32:09.900
sphere of information coming from all directions

00:32:09.900 --> 00:32:12.880
at once. And McLuhan thought that to survive

00:32:12.880 --> 00:32:20.019
in this new... That sounds like an insult, like

00:32:20.019 --> 00:32:22.480
we're becoming unfeeling machines. He didn't

00:32:22.480 --> 00:32:24.319
mean it negatively. He wasn't talking about metal

00:32:24.319 --> 00:32:26.740
robots. He meant we would need the flexibility

00:32:26.740 --> 00:32:30.559
to be in many places at once, to have no fixed

00:32:30.559 --> 00:32:33.640
identity, to adjust instantly to the constant

00:32:33.640 --> 00:32:37.380
flow of feedback. So? Like a shapeshifter. Exactly.

00:32:37.480 --> 00:32:40.819
The old fixed point of view, the solid principled

00:32:40.819 --> 00:32:42.960
individual who stands on a rock and says, I am

00:32:42.960 --> 00:32:46.539
this and I believe this. He gets crushed by the

00:32:46.539 --> 00:32:50.240
waves in the global village. The survivor is

00:32:50.240 --> 00:32:52.539
the one who can surf the waves of information,

00:32:52.779 --> 00:32:55.740
the one who can swing from one identity to another.

00:32:55.940 --> 00:32:58.039
But isn't that just isn't that exhausting being

00:32:58.039 --> 00:33:00.680
a shapeshifter all the time? Yes. Which brings

00:33:00.680 --> 00:33:02.500
us right back to his quote about terror being

00:33:02.500 --> 00:33:04.859
the normal state. It's a high stress, high anxiety

00:33:04.859 --> 00:33:06.960
way to live. It sounds like we're all just reacting

00:33:06.960 --> 00:33:09.119
all the time to everything, which would certainly

00:33:09.119 --> 00:33:11.359
explain why everyone seems so burned out. And

00:33:11.359 --> 00:33:13.460
why McLuhan is more relevant now than he ever

00:33:13.460 --> 00:33:16.150
was in the 60s. He diagnosed the digital burnout

00:33:16.150 --> 00:33:18.650
50 years before it happened. So is he always

00:33:18.650 --> 00:33:20.569
right? I feel like we're painting him as this

00:33:20.569 --> 00:33:22.990
flawless prophet, but surely he missed some things

00:33:22.990 --> 00:33:25.849
or got things wrong. Oh, absolutely. He had plenty

00:33:25.849 --> 00:33:28.410
of critics, and many of them had very valid points.

00:33:28.690 --> 00:33:30.710
Who were the big ones who came after him? The

00:33:30.710 --> 00:33:33.069
cultural critic Raymond Williams was a big one.

00:33:33.329 --> 00:33:36.589
He accused McLuhan of technological determinism.

00:33:36.990 --> 00:33:40.329
Which means? It means McLuhan talks as if technology

00:33:40.329 --> 00:33:43.710
just happens to us, like the weather, like it

00:33:43.710 --> 00:33:46.329
just falls out of the sky and changes us. Williams'

00:33:46.450 --> 00:33:49.789
point was, hey, hold on. Humans invent these

00:33:49.789 --> 00:33:52.329
machines. Corporations build them to make money.

00:33:52.730 --> 00:33:56.029
Politicians regulate them. There are human choices

00:33:56.029 --> 00:33:59.390
and power structures involved. Right. The Facebook

00:33:59.390 --> 00:34:02.230
algorithm didn't just evolve in nature. A specific

00:34:02.230 --> 00:34:04.710
engineer at Meta wrote it with the specific goal

00:34:04.710 --> 00:34:08.119
of maximizing engagement. to sell more ads. Exactly.

00:34:08.679 --> 00:34:11.199
Critics like Williams felt McLuhan ignored the

00:34:11.199 --> 00:34:13.659
politics and the economics. He was so focused

00:34:13.659 --> 00:34:16.360
on the abstract medium that he ignored the man

00:34:16.360 --> 00:34:18.500
behind the curtain pulling the levers. That feels

00:34:18.500 --> 00:34:20.820
like a very fair critique. If we just say the

00:34:20.820 --> 00:34:22.619
medium is the message, it feels like we're helpless.

00:34:22.719 --> 00:34:25.260
Like, oh, the phone made me do it. It absolves

00:34:25.260 --> 00:34:28.519
us of responsibility. Precisely. Also, the great

00:34:28.519 --> 00:34:31.619
writer and semiotician Umberto Eco, the guy who

00:34:31.619 --> 00:34:34.119
wrote The Name of the Rose, he got very annoyed

00:34:34.119 --> 00:34:36.840
with McLuhan's sloppy terminology. McLuhan would

00:34:36.840 --> 00:34:40.099
use words like medium and channel and code and

00:34:40.099 --> 00:34:42.780
message almost interchangeably. For a rigorous

00:34:42.780 --> 00:34:45.840
academic, McLuhan was a complete headache. He

00:34:45.840 --> 00:34:48.780
was a jazz musician improvising in a room full

00:34:48.780 --> 00:34:50.739
of classical conductors. That is the perfect

00:34:50.739 --> 00:34:53.760
metaphor. He was riffing. He called his own ideas

00:34:53.760 --> 00:34:57.960
probes. He once said, I don't explain, I explore.

00:34:58.280 --> 00:35:00.480
I don't explain, I explore. I like that. It's

00:35:00.480 --> 00:35:02.599
a good excuse when you're wrong. Hey, I was just

00:35:02.599 --> 00:35:06.320
probing. It served him well. But, yeah, he fell

00:35:06.320 --> 00:35:08.199
out of fashion in the late 70s and 80s. People

00:35:08.199 --> 00:35:10.280
got tired of the guru act. But then the Internet

00:35:10.280 --> 00:35:12.219
happened and he came roaring back. Roaring back.

00:35:12.780 --> 00:35:15.840
In the early 90s, Wired magazine basically adopted

00:35:15.840 --> 00:35:18.400
him as their patron saint and put him on their

00:35:18.400 --> 00:35:21.440
masthead. Because suddenly we move from the optic

00:35:21.440 --> 00:35:23.500
age of television, which was all about watching,

00:35:23.639 --> 00:35:27.039
to the haptic age of the Internet. Haptic, meaning

00:35:27.039 --> 00:35:30.539
touch. The Internet is tactile. We click. We

00:35:30.539 --> 00:35:35.360
drag. We swipe. We type. We are physically touching

00:35:35.360 --> 00:35:38.019
and manipulating the information. It's interactive.

00:35:38.260 --> 00:35:41.360
It's not just watching. It's doing. And McLuhan

00:35:41.360 --> 00:35:43.719
had predicted that the electric age would retrieve

00:35:43.719 --> 00:35:46.360
the sense of touch that the visual culture of

00:35:46.360 --> 00:35:48.860
print had suppressed. And there it was. It's

00:35:48.860 --> 00:35:51.239
so weird to think of a cold glass screen as tactile,

00:35:51.360 --> 00:35:53.460
but I guess my thumb knows more about the world

00:35:53.460 --> 00:35:55.860
than my eyes do these days. That is a very...

00:35:56.030 --> 00:35:58.610
Very McLuhan -esque thought. I try. Okay, one

00:35:58.610 --> 00:36:00.869
last concept to leave our listeners with. This

00:36:00.869 --> 00:36:02.949
might be my favorite one, the rearview mirror.

00:36:03.170 --> 00:36:05.329
We march backward into the future. I asked you

00:36:05.329 --> 00:36:06.969
about this before we started recording, and I

00:36:06.969 --> 00:36:09.010
still struggle to wrap my head around it. Why

00:36:09.010 --> 00:36:11.010
are we looking in the rearview mirror? Because

00:36:11.010 --> 00:36:14.510
the future is terrifying and unknown. The new

00:36:14.510 --> 00:36:17.690
environment is, by its nature, invisible to us

00:36:17.690 --> 00:36:20.369
at first. So when we get a new technology and

00:36:20.369 --> 00:36:22.250
a new environment, we don't look at it for what

00:36:22.250 --> 00:36:23.949
it is. We look at it through the lens of the

00:36:23.949 --> 00:36:25.900
thing that came right before it. Can you give

00:36:25.900 --> 00:36:27.860
me an example? When the car was invented, what

00:36:27.860 --> 00:36:30.559
did we call it? A horseless carriage. Exactly.

00:36:31.039 --> 00:36:34.260
We defined it by what it wasn't. We slapped an

00:36:34.260 --> 00:36:36.840
engine on a buggy and thought of it as just a

00:36:36.840 --> 00:36:39.440
faster carriage. We didn't understand that the

00:36:39.440 --> 00:36:41.579
car was not a carriage at all. We didn't see

00:36:41.579 --> 00:36:44.659
that it would create suburbs, highways, the oil

00:36:44.659 --> 00:36:47.199
industry, and climate change. We just saw a faster

00:36:47.199 --> 00:36:49.340
horse. We were looking at the future through

00:36:49.340 --> 00:36:52.000
a 19th century lens. When the first movies came

00:36:52.000 --> 00:36:54.800
out, they were just filmed stage plays. Right.

00:36:54.860 --> 00:36:57.099
They put a stationary camera in front of a stage

00:36:57.099 --> 00:36:59.860
and recorded the action. They didn't understand

00:36:59.860 --> 00:37:03.260
the cut, the zoom, the montage, the unique language

00:37:03.260 --> 00:37:06.309
of film until much, much later. They were treating

00:37:06.309 --> 00:37:08.550
the new medium like the old one. So what are

00:37:08.550 --> 00:37:10.409
we doing now? What's our rearview mirror for

00:37:10.409 --> 00:37:12.130
the Internet? We still treat the Internet like

00:37:12.130 --> 00:37:14.250
a big library or a post office. We talk about

00:37:14.250 --> 00:37:16.869
web pages. We talk about sending mail. We try

00:37:16.869 --> 00:37:19.110
to apply copyright laws that were meant for physical

00:37:19.110 --> 00:37:22.630
newspapers to a fluid medium like Facebook. We're

00:37:22.630 --> 00:37:24.650
driving 100 miles an hour into a completely new

00:37:24.650 --> 00:37:27.429
digital future. But our eyes are glued to the

00:37:27.429 --> 00:37:29.650
rearview mirror, looking at the familiar industrial

00:37:29.650 --> 00:37:32.769
past because it feels safe. That explains the

00:37:32.769 --> 00:37:35.429
constant feeling of disorientation. We're trying

00:37:35.429 --> 00:37:37.929
to navigate a spaceship using a map that was

00:37:37.929 --> 00:37:40.170
drawn for a steam train. And Marshall McLuhan

00:37:40.170 --> 00:37:43.070
is the guy in the passenger seat, gently, or

00:37:43.070 --> 00:37:45.389
maybe not so gently, tapping on the glass and

00:37:45.389 --> 00:37:47.769
saying, put down the map, look out the windshield,

00:37:48.090 --> 00:37:50.570
even if what you see out there is terrifying.

00:37:51.150 --> 00:37:55.059
Wow. Marshall McLuhan, the man who saw the windshield

00:37:55.059 --> 00:37:56.860
when everyone else was staring in the mirror.

00:37:56.960 --> 00:37:59.820
A poet of technology. A mechanic of the mind.

00:38:00.059 --> 00:38:02.719
You know, for a guy who died in 1980, before

00:38:02.719 --> 00:38:05.380
the personal computer really even took off, he

00:38:05.380 --> 00:38:07.420
seems to understand my daily life better than

00:38:07.420 --> 00:38:10.420
I do. That's the mark of a true visionary. He

00:38:10.420 --> 00:38:12.639
didn't just see the machines. He understood the

00:38:12.639 --> 00:38:15.400
grammar of the machine. The hidden effects. So

00:38:15.400 --> 00:38:17.380
here is my final thought for you, the person

00:38:17.380 --> 00:38:18.719
listening to this. And I want to make this a

00:38:18.719 --> 00:38:20.679
little uncomfortable. McLuhan said the content

00:38:20.679 --> 00:38:23.239
is the juicy steak that distracts the watchdog

00:38:23.239 --> 00:38:25.719
of the mind. You've been listening to us talk

00:38:25.719 --> 00:38:28.400
for the last hour. That's the steak. Well, what

00:38:28.400 --> 00:38:31.139
about the medium? Right. What about the device?

00:38:31.789 --> 00:38:34.570
in your hand or in your pocket or the smart speaker

00:38:34.570 --> 00:38:37.090
in your room right now? What is it doing to your

00:38:37.090 --> 00:38:39.650
body as you listen? Are you hunched over a phone?

00:38:39.809 --> 00:38:41.610
Are you walking through traffic with earbuds

00:38:41.610 --> 00:38:44.269
in, not looking where you're going? Are you ignoring

00:38:44.269 --> 00:38:46.710
a real human being in the room with you to listen

00:38:46.710 --> 00:38:50.349
to two disembodied digital voices? How has that

00:38:50.349 --> 00:38:53.449
specific device rewired your sensorium today?

00:38:53.710 --> 00:38:55.309
Don't just answer the question intellectually.

00:38:55.590 --> 00:38:58.170
Feel it in your body. And maybe just for a second

00:38:58.170 --> 00:39:00.190
after this ends, put the device down and look

00:39:00.190 --> 00:39:02.309
out the windshield. Thanks for diving up with

00:39:02.309 --> 00:39:04.550
us. See you in the global village. Welcome to

00:39:04.550 --> 00:39:07.329
the debate. Today, we are dissecting the mind

00:39:07.329 --> 00:39:10.889
of a man who really predicted the architecture

00:39:10.889 --> 00:39:13.510
of our digital lives before most people even

00:39:13.510 --> 00:39:16.929
owned a color television. He was a Canadian English

00:39:16.929 --> 00:39:19.989
professor who somehow became the patron saint

00:39:19.989 --> 00:39:22.789
of Wired magazine, a figure who appeared on the

00:39:22.789 --> 00:39:26.190
cover of Newsweek and the pages of Playboy and.

00:39:26.969 --> 00:39:29.250
even silenced the pompous academic in that famous

00:39:29.250 --> 00:39:32.409
cameo for Woody Allen's Annie Hall. I am talking,

00:39:32.449 --> 00:39:34.730
of course, about Herbert Marshall McLuhan. A

00:39:34.730 --> 00:39:36.809
man who was equal parts, you know, high priest

00:39:36.809 --> 00:39:39.250
of pop and, if you believe as harsher critics,

00:39:39.409 --> 00:39:42.250
a peddler of magical naivety. We're looking at

00:39:42.250 --> 00:39:44.469
a legacy built on these slogans that sound incredibly

00:39:44.469 --> 00:39:46.869
profound at two in the morning, but often fall

00:39:46.869 --> 00:39:49.130
apart in the harsh light of day. And that is

00:39:49.130 --> 00:39:52.309
the friction we need to explore. McLuhan is the

00:39:52.309 --> 00:39:55.230
father of media studies. The source material

00:39:55.230 --> 00:39:57.769
highlights that he predicted the World Wide Web

00:39:57.769 --> 00:40:01.250
30 years early, describing a private line to

00:40:01.250 --> 00:40:04.090
speedily tailored data. But the core question

00:40:04.090 --> 00:40:06.849
isn't just about his predictions. It's about

00:40:06.849 --> 00:40:09.829
his central thesis. The medium is the message.

00:40:10.190 --> 00:40:13.670
Did McLuhan unlock the secret code of human consciousness?

00:40:13.869 --> 00:40:17.449
Or did he just give us catchy poetry? I'm here

00:40:17.449 --> 00:40:20.590
to argue he was a visionary, a pattern recognizer

00:40:20.590 --> 00:40:23.320
who understood that the form of our communication

00:40:23.320 --> 00:40:26.500
changes us fundamentally, regardless of what

00:40:26.500 --> 00:40:28.980
we say through it. And I'm here to argue that

00:40:28.980 --> 00:40:32.159
this very view, the medium is the message, is

00:40:32.159 --> 00:40:35.260
a dangerous trap. It's what critics like Raymond

00:40:35.260 --> 00:40:38.400
Williams called technological determinism. By

00:40:38.400 --> 00:40:41.199
obsessing over the machinery, McLuhan ignores

00:40:41.199 --> 00:40:43.280
the social context, the political decisions,

00:40:43.539 --> 00:40:46.099
and crucially, the actual content of what we

00:40:46.099 --> 00:40:48.869
consume. He treats technology like a weather

00:40:48.869 --> 00:40:51.429
system we just have to endure rather than a tool

00:40:51.429 --> 00:40:54.429
we can actually control. Okay, well, let's get

00:40:54.429 --> 00:40:56.230
right into the machinery then. To understand

00:40:56.230 --> 00:40:59.090
McLuhan, you have to start with his 1964 work,

00:40:59.289 --> 00:41:02.269
Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man. His

00:41:02.269 --> 00:41:05.289
premise is radical, but I think essential. Media

00:41:05.289 --> 00:41:07.969
are not just passive pipes for information. They

00:41:07.969 --> 00:41:11.250
are extensions of our biological senses. A wheel

00:41:11.250 --> 00:41:14.199
extends the foot. A book extends the eye. and

00:41:14.199 --> 00:41:16.699
electronic media, the telegraph, the radio, the

00:41:16.699 --> 00:41:19.400
internet, extend our central nervous system.

00:41:20.039 --> 00:41:23.039
Extensions of the central nervous system. It

00:41:23.039 --> 00:41:25.179
sounds impressive, but let's just strip away

00:41:25.179 --> 00:41:27.639
the jargon for a second. What does that actually

00:41:27.639 --> 00:41:29.980
mean? It means that when you use a technology,

00:41:30.239 --> 00:41:33.860
you are physically and psychologically altering

00:41:33.860 --> 00:41:36.139
your relationship with the world. We tend to

00:41:36.139 --> 00:41:37.940
focus on the content, you know, the specific

00:41:37.940 --> 00:41:41.480
words in a book or the show on TV. McLuhan argued

00:41:41.480 --> 00:41:44.260
that the content is a distraction. He called

00:41:44.260 --> 00:41:47.019
it the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar

00:41:47.019 --> 00:41:49.960
to distract the watchdog of the mind. While you

00:41:49.960 --> 00:41:52.639
are arguing about the plot of the TV show, the

00:41:52.639 --> 00:41:55.719
medium of television is rewiring how your brain

00:41:55.719 --> 00:41:58.880
processes information. But that's where the logic

00:41:58.880 --> 00:42:01.699
just feels slippery to me. If you ignore content,

00:42:01.960 --> 00:42:05.300
you lose the ability to critique reality. But

00:42:05.300 --> 00:42:07.360
OK, let's look at his favorite proof of concept,

00:42:07.599 --> 00:42:10.530
the light bulb. The light bulb is the perfect

00:42:10.530 --> 00:42:14.369
example because it is a medium without any content.

00:42:14.670 --> 00:42:17.670
It doesn't speak. It doesn't show you pictures.

00:42:18.190 --> 00:42:22.510
But does it have a message? Absolutely. The message

00:42:22.510 --> 00:42:25.010
of the light bulb is that it allows human activity

00:42:25.010 --> 00:42:28.570
to extend into the night. It restructures how

00:42:28.570 --> 00:42:31.409
we associate, how we work, and how we organize

00:42:31.409 --> 00:42:35.389
society. A brain surgery or a baseball game happening

00:42:35.389 --> 00:42:38.679
at night? That is the message of the light. not

00:42:38.679 --> 00:42:42.139
the surgery or the game itself. The medium changes

00:42:42.139 --> 00:42:45.980
the scale and pace of human affairs. I will grant

00:42:45.980 --> 00:42:48.800
you that the light bulb changes the environment,

00:42:49.019 --> 00:42:52.639
of course. But when McLuhan expands the definition

00:42:52.639 --> 00:42:57.079
of medium to include light bulbs and roads and

00:42:57.079 --> 00:43:00.460
wheels and the alphabet, the term becomes so

00:43:00.460 --> 00:43:03.900
broad it's almost useless. This was Umberto Eco's

00:43:03.900 --> 00:43:10.659
main critique. codes, and messages all under

00:43:10.659 --> 00:43:13.239
one umbrella. I mean, if a light bulb is a medium

00:43:13.239 --> 00:43:15.739
and a novel is a medium, how can we possibly

00:43:15.739 --> 00:43:18.460
analyze them with the same tools? You're mixing

00:43:18.460 --> 00:43:21.400
infrastructure with communication. You analyze

00:43:21.400 --> 00:43:24.639
them by looking at their structural impact on

00:43:24.639 --> 00:43:27.980
the sensorium, not their semiotics. The light

00:43:27.980 --> 00:43:30.860
bulb changes how we see the world just as much

00:43:30.860 --> 00:43:32.840
as a book changes how we think about the world.

00:43:33.000 --> 00:43:35.500
But you can't separate the structure from the

00:43:35.500 --> 00:43:38.909
usage. Understanding media contains a claim that

00:43:38.909 --> 00:43:42.349
I find genuinely baffling. McLuhan asserts that

00:43:42.349 --> 00:43:44.769
the social effect of television is identical,

00:43:45.050 --> 00:43:47.309
whether it's broadcasting children's educational

00:43:47.309 --> 00:43:50.750
shows or violent programming. He actually wrote,

00:43:50.889 --> 00:43:53.889
and I quote, even witlessness is not a moral

00:43:53.889 --> 00:43:56.829
issue. He didn't mean morality doesn't exist.

00:43:57.110 --> 00:43:59.769
He meant it's irrelevant to the structural change

00:43:59.769 --> 00:44:02.869
the medium is causing. But that is a massive

00:44:02.869 --> 00:44:06.159
abdication of responsibility. If we accept that

00:44:06.159 --> 00:44:08.480
the machine does the work, regardless of what

00:44:08.480 --> 00:44:11.219
we put on it, we absolve ourselves of any choice.

00:44:11.480 --> 00:44:14.099
It implies that if you put a fascist on the radio

00:44:14.099 --> 00:44:16.559
or a saint on the radio, the societal impact

00:44:16.559 --> 00:44:18.920
is the same because radio is doing the work.

00:44:19.099 --> 00:44:22.000
That is the definition of technological determinism.

00:44:22.099 --> 00:44:26.039
It strips us of human agency. I disagree. I think

00:44:26.039 --> 00:44:29.000
McLuhan argues that agency is impossible without

00:44:29.000 --> 00:44:31.980
awareness. He famously said we look at the present

00:44:31.980 --> 00:44:34.539
through a rearview mirror. We march backward

00:44:34.539 --> 00:44:37.139
into the future, obsessing over the content of

00:44:37.139 --> 00:44:39.519
the past, while the new medium works us over.

00:44:39.880 --> 00:44:42.280
Early movies were just plays filmed on a stage.

00:44:42.519 --> 00:44:45.599
Early TV was just radio with pictures. We don't

00:44:45.599 --> 00:44:47.699
see the new medium's true nature until it's too

00:44:47.699 --> 00:44:49.780
late. He wasn't telling us to give up. He was

00:44:49.780 --> 00:44:51.760
telling us to look at the windshield so we don't

00:44:51.760 --> 00:44:54.179
crash. The rearview mirror is a nice metaphor,

00:44:54.260 --> 00:44:56.739
but let's apply this to history. McLuhan didn't

00:44:56.739 --> 00:44:58.679
just analyze the present. He tried to rewrite

00:44:58.679 --> 00:45:01.559
the past using this whole media ecology idea,

00:45:01.760 --> 00:45:04.440
specifically in the Gutenberg Galaxy. Published

00:45:04.440 --> 00:45:07.699
in 1962, and frankly, his most compelling historical

00:45:07.699 --> 00:45:10.420
argument, McLuhan traced how the invention of

00:45:10.420 --> 00:45:12.480
the printing press, specifically movable type,

00:45:12.699 --> 00:45:15.820
created what he called typographic man. Experience

00:45:15.820 --> 00:45:19.179
was communal and auditory. You heard the news

00:45:19.179 --> 00:45:21.659
from the town crier. You heard scripture in church.

00:45:21.900 --> 00:45:25.789
You didn't possess it. But print is visual. linear

00:45:25.789 --> 00:45:29.809
and solitary. You read alone. It fostered the

00:45:29.809 --> 00:45:33.170
habit of a fixed point of view. McLuhan argued

00:45:33.170 --> 00:45:36.010
that this shift to visual dominance created the

00:45:36.010 --> 00:45:38.650
conditions for individualism, for nationalism,

00:45:38.869 --> 00:45:42.550
and even for the assembly line. The visual homogenizing

00:45:42.550 --> 00:45:45.250
of experience allowed us to see ourselves as

00:45:45.250 --> 00:45:47.969
separate units. And as a historian, this is where

00:45:47.969 --> 00:45:50.360
I really have to pull the brake. To attribute

00:45:50.360 --> 00:45:53.599
the rise of democracy, Protestantism, capitalism,

00:45:53.940 --> 00:45:56.300
and the nation -state solely to the technology

00:45:56.300 --> 00:45:59.380
of movable type is a gross oversimplification.

00:45:59.719 --> 00:46:02.880
It completely ignores class struggle, economics,

00:46:03.320 --> 00:46:06.400
theology. It's like the great man theory of history

00:46:06.400 --> 00:46:09.179
replaced with the great machine theory. You can't

00:46:09.179 --> 00:46:12.119
just say, Gutenberg invented the press, therefore

00:46:12.119 --> 00:46:14.760
we got the Reformation. He isn't saying economics

00:46:14.760 --> 00:46:17.619
didn't happen. He's saying the environment that

00:46:17.619 --> 00:46:20.820
made those economic structures possible was typographic.

00:46:21.400 --> 00:46:24.840
You cannot have a nation state without a standardized

00:46:24.840 --> 00:46:28.199
print language to bind it. You can't have a scientific

00:46:28.199 --> 00:46:31.280
method without the ability to exactly reproduce

00:46:31.280 --> 00:46:35.099
diagrams and text for peer review. The medium

00:46:35.099 --> 00:46:37.739
laid the groundwork for the culture. But the

00:46:37.739 --> 00:46:40.760
crucial part is what happens next. He argued

00:46:40.760 --> 00:46:44.059
that the electronic age, radio, TV, and now the

00:46:44.059 --> 00:46:47.719
Internet, is reversing that whole process. We

00:46:47.719 --> 00:46:51.380
are being retribalized. Ah, the global village.

00:46:51.820 --> 00:46:54.619
Perhaps the most misunderstood term in his entire

00:46:54.619 --> 00:46:57.920
canon, without a doubt. People hear global village

00:46:57.920 --> 00:46:59.940
and they think of some Coca -Cola commercial,

00:47:00.340 --> 00:47:03.619
everyone holding hands in harmony. But McLuhan

00:47:03.619 --> 00:47:06.800
was very clear. He said, terror is the normal

00:47:06.800 --> 00:47:10.460
state of any oral society. In the global village,

00:47:10.500 --> 00:47:13.360
we move from visual space, which is logical and

00:47:13.360 --> 00:47:17.179
compartmentalized, to acoustic space. Okay, explain

00:47:17.179 --> 00:47:19.880
acoustic space for the listeners, because this

00:47:19.880 --> 00:47:22.119
gets into his neurology theories, which are,

00:47:22.219 --> 00:47:25.840
to put it mildly, contentious. Right. Visual

00:47:25.840 --> 00:47:28.280
space is like looking at a painting. It's static,

00:47:28.380 --> 00:47:31.139
linear, it has a perspective. It belongs to the

00:47:31.139 --> 00:47:34.239
typographic man. Acoustic space is like being

00:47:34.239 --> 00:47:36.659
in a dark room with surround sound. Information

00:47:36.659 --> 00:47:38.860
comes from everywhere at once, simultaneously.

00:47:39.659 --> 00:47:42.579
You are the center of the sphere. In an electronic

00:47:42.579 --> 00:47:45.340
environment, think about Twitter or a 24 -hour

00:47:45.340 --> 00:47:48.199
news cycle, we aren't detached observers anymore.

00:47:48.420 --> 00:47:51.159
We lose our private identity and merge into a

00:47:51.159 --> 00:47:53.840
corporate, tribal identity. We become totally

00:47:53.840 --> 00:47:57.360
interdependent. Which sounds terrifying. It is

00:47:57.360 --> 00:48:02.000
terrifying. He explicitly warned of panic terrors.

00:48:02.099 --> 00:48:04.460
When everyone is involved in everyone else's

00:48:04.460 --> 00:48:06.460
business instantly, you don't get peace, you

00:48:06.460 --> 00:48:09.889
get friction. You get a loss of privacy. He predicted

00:48:09.889 --> 00:48:12.610
that the loss of the private individual would

00:48:12.610 --> 00:48:15.070
lead to violence as people scrambled to find

00:48:15.070 --> 00:48:17.949
a new group identity. I appreciate you highlighting

00:48:17.949 --> 00:48:20.829
the terror aspect because the utopian interpretation

00:48:20.829 --> 00:48:23.789
is so persistent. However, the science behind

00:48:23.789 --> 00:48:26.449
this, the visual left brain versus the acoustic

00:48:26.449 --> 00:48:29.929
right brain, is incredibly shaky. By the time

00:48:29.929 --> 00:48:33.010
he wrote The Global Village in 1989, he was relying

00:48:33.010 --> 00:48:35.929
on a binary view of neurology that modern neuroscience

00:48:35.929 --> 00:48:38.630
doesn't really support. And does the internet

00:48:38.630 --> 00:48:41.630
actually create a tribe? I see fragmentation.

00:48:41.849 --> 00:48:44.929
I see echo chambers. I don't see a unified village.

00:48:45.030 --> 00:48:49.110
I see a billion fractured realities. Well, McLuhan

00:48:49.110 --> 00:48:52.070
would argue the echo chamber is the tribe. The

00:48:52.070 --> 00:48:55.010
retribalization implies a return to emotion and

00:48:55.010 --> 00:48:58.130
group identity over logical, detached debate.

00:48:58.679 --> 00:49:01.219
The internet creates microtribes that are constantly

00:49:01.219 --> 00:49:04.679
at war. That is exactly what an acoustic oral

00:49:04.679 --> 00:49:08.199
society looks like. Rumor, emotion, and reaction,

00:49:08.400 --> 00:49:11.199
rather than the cool detachment of reading a

00:49:11.199 --> 00:49:14.880
book. Well, speaking of cool and hot, we have

00:49:14.880 --> 00:49:17.719
to tackle his categorization system. This is

00:49:17.719 --> 00:49:20.380
the part that usually trips people up. And honestly,

00:49:20.559 --> 00:49:22.780
the part that makes me question his rigor the

00:49:22.780 --> 00:49:25.099
most. It's counterintuitive, I'll grant you,

00:49:25.159 --> 00:49:27.360
but it's consistent if you follow the logic.

00:49:27.849 --> 00:49:30.769
In Understanding Media, he classifies media based

00:49:30.769 --> 00:49:33.230
on the degree of participation required by the

00:49:33.230 --> 00:49:37.230
user. A hot medium is high definition. It provides

00:49:37.230 --> 00:49:39.449
a massive amount of data to a single sense. A

00:49:39.449 --> 00:49:42.409
photograph is hot. The radio is hot. Its spoon

00:49:42.409 --> 00:49:44.389
feeds you the information so you don't have to

00:49:44.389 --> 00:49:46.809
work to complete the picture. And cool media?

00:49:47.190 --> 00:49:50.429
Cool media are low definition. They give you

00:49:50.429 --> 00:49:53.269
very little data, which forces the audience to

00:49:53.269 --> 00:49:56.369
participate, to fill in the gaps. The telephone

00:49:56.369 --> 00:49:59.110
is cool because the audio quality is poor. Your

00:49:59.110 --> 00:50:02.650
brain has to work to visualize the person. Cartoons

00:50:02.650 --> 00:50:06.190
are cool. And crucially for the 1960s, television

00:50:06.190 --> 00:50:08.570
was cool. And this is where it just breaks down

00:50:08.570 --> 00:50:11.150
for me. He claims a movie is hot because it's

00:50:11.150 --> 00:50:14.949
high res, but TV is cool because the 1960s image

00:50:14.949 --> 00:50:17.750
was a fuzzy mosaic of dots. I mean, to the average

00:50:17.750 --> 00:50:20.050
person, watching a film and watching TV are almost

00:50:20.050 --> 00:50:23.010
identical passive acts. Yet McLuhan insists that

00:50:23.010 --> 00:50:25.769
because TV is cool, it requires deep participation

00:50:25.769 --> 00:50:28.929
and involvement, whereas radio is hot and detached.

00:50:29.469 --> 00:50:33.500
It just feels... He argued that any hot medium

00:50:33.500 --> 00:50:36.159
allows of less participation than a cool one.

00:50:36.260 --> 00:50:39.400
Think about a lecture versus a seminar. A lecture

00:50:39.400 --> 00:50:42.840
is hot. Information is blasted at you. A seminar

00:50:42.840 --> 00:50:45.340
is cool. You have to engage to make it work.

00:50:45.539 --> 00:50:48.079
He believed the TV generation was fundamentally

00:50:48.079 --> 00:50:50.780
different from the radio generation because their

00:50:50.780 --> 00:50:53.940
brains were trained to complete the mosaic. The

00:50:53.940 --> 00:50:56.199
physical act of watching the scanning lines of

00:50:56.199 --> 00:50:59.320
a CRT TV engaged the nervous system in a way

00:50:59.320 --> 00:51:02.260
film didn't. But these labels, hot and cool,

00:51:02.440 --> 00:51:05.119
they don't hold up to scrutiny. Regis Debray

00:51:05.119 --> 00:51:07.539
called McLuhan a master of intellectual collage

00:51:07.539 --> 00:51:10.119
for this exact reason. He just pasted labels

00:51:10.119 --> 00:51:12.579
where he wanted them. For example, is a high

00:51:12.579 --> 00:51:15.420
-definition podcast today hot while a scratchy

00:51:15.420 --> 00:51:18.000
vinyl record is cool? What about a 4K television?

00:51:18.219 --> 00:51:20.219
Is that now hot because the resolution is high?

00:51:20.400 --> 00:51:22.659
If the classification changes with the technical

00:51:22.659 --> 00:51:25.260
specs, it's not a law of media. It's just a tech

00:51:25.260 --> 00:51:27.179
review. I think you're getting hung up on the

00:51:27.179 --> 00:51:29.800
technical specs rather than the cognitive load.

00:51:30.400 --> 00:51:32.920
The insight is that we engage differently based

00:51:32.920 --> 00:51:35.800
on the fidelity of the signal. But I admit McLuhan

00:51:35.800 --> 00:51:38.340
didn't write for the classifiers. He explicitly

00:51:38.340 --> 00:51:41.119
stated he didn't want to explain, he wanted to

00:51:41.119 --> 00:51:45.119
explore. He called his works probes. Probes is

00:51:45.119 --> 00:51:47.719
such a convenient excuse for a lack of rigor.

00:51:47.940 --> 00:51:50.420
It allows him to throw out a hundred ideas, have

00:51:50.420 --> 00:51:53.239
90 be nonsense, and then claim victory on the

00:51:53.239 --> 00:51:55.900
10 that actually land. But the ones that landed

00:51:55.900 --> 00:51:58.699
changed the world. And his methodology wasn't

00:51:58.699 --> 00:52:01.280
just throwing darts. Look at the medium is the

00:52:01.280 --> 00:52:05.179
massage. A title that came from a typo. A serendipitous

00:52:05.179 --> 00:52:08.539
typo. Yes, the typesetter wrote massage instead

00:52:08.539 --> 00:52:12.159
of message, and McLuhan kept it. He saw message,

00:52:12.420 --> 00:52:16.780
mess age, massage, and mass age. That book, designed

00:52:16.780 --> 00:52:19.300
with Quentin Fiore, was a masterpiece of graphic

00:52:19.300 --> 00:52:22.280
design. It wasn't a linear argument. It was a

00:52:22.280 --> 00:52:25.210
visual experience. He was trying to replicate

00:52:25.210 --> 00:52:28.230
the chaos of the electronic age in a book. He

00:52:28.230 --> 00:52:30.610
was showing us that the book itself, the medium

00:52:30.610 --> 00:52:34.510
of the book, was changing. It was certainly a

00:52:34.510 --> 00:52:36.909
successful art project, but we have to address

00:52:36.909 --> 00:52:40.110
the Fordham experiment. His son, Eric McLuhan,

00:52:40.190 --> 00:52:42.349
tried to scientifically prove these theories,

00:52:42.409 --> 00:52:44.690
testing light on versus light through media,

00:52:44.869 --> 00:52:47.110
to see if they stimulated different parts of

00:52:47.110 --> 00:52:49.849
the brain. Did it actually yield empirical results?

00:52:50.389 --> 00:52:54.019
Not really. It was inconclusive. Dwight McDonald,

00:52:54.320 --> 00:52:56.500
a fierce critic, noted that McLuhan's books were

00:52:56.500 --> 00:52:58.760
full of facts that are distorted and facts that

00:52:58.760 --> 00:53:02.179
are not facts. McLuhan wasn't an empiricist.

00:53:02.280 --> 00:53:05.239
He was a pattern recognizer. He wasn't trying

00:53:05.239 --> 00:53:07.800
to give you a double -blind study. He was trying

00:53:07.800 --> 00:53:10.980
to give you a lens. And frankly, late in his

00:53:10.980 --> 00:53:14.239
life, he did formalize his thinking into something

00:53:14.239 --> 00:53:17.889
structured, the tetrad of media effects. I will

00:53:17.889 --> 00:53:20.150
grant that the Tetrad is the most rigorous tool

00:53:20.150 --> 00:53:22.190
he produced. It's certainly more useful than

00:53:22.190 --> 00:53:24.510
the whole hot -cool dichotomy. It's a tool that

00:53:24.510 --> 00:53:27.110
lets you strip away the judgment of good or bad

00:53:27.110 --> 00:53:30.630
and just look at impact. He argued you can ask

00:53:30.630 --> 00:53:33.449
four questions of any technology, a car, a smartphone,

00:53:33.670 --> 00:53:38.250
AI. First, what does it enhance? Second, what

00:53:38.250 --> 00:53:42.050
does it obsolesce or push aside? Third, what

00:53:42.050 --> 00:53:45.260
does it retrieve that was previously lost? And

00:53:45.260 --> 00:53:48.199
fourth, what does it reverse into when pushed

00:53:48.199 --> 00:53:51.139
to its extreme? Walk us through an example. How

00:53:51.139 --> 00:53:53.420
would he apply this today? Okay, let's take the

00:53:53.420 --> 00:53:56.440
smartphone. It enhances accessibility and communication

00:53:56.440 --> 00:53:59.820
speed. You are always connected. The world is

00:53:59.820 --> 00:54:03.260
in your pocket. It obsoletes distance, the landline,

00:54:03.360 --> 00:54:05.980
the wristwatch, and to some extent memory. You

00:54:05.980 --> 00:54:08.039
don't need to remember phone numbers or fax anymore.

00:54:08.460 --> 00:54:11.400
It retrieves the scroll. We are back to scrolling

00:54:11.400 --> 00:54:14.079
like ancients reading papyrus. And we retrieved

00:54:14.079 --> 00:54:16.019
pictorial communication of the pre -print era

00:54:16.019 --> 00:54:19.420
via emojis and Instagram. And finally, what does

00:54:19.420 --> 00:54:21.900
it reverse into? When pushed to the extreme,

00:54:22.019 --> 00:54:24.159
the tool of ultimate connection reverses into

00:54:24.159 --> 00:54:26.860
a tool of isolation and anxiety. The digital

00:54:26.860 --> 00:54:29.500
leash. We are so connected we become lonely.

00:54:29.780 --> 00:54:32.880
That is a compelling analysis. It's elegant.

00:54:33.179 --> 00:54:37.079
But my issue remains. The tetrad treats the technology

00:54:37.079 --> 00:54:40.199
as this evolving organism with its own will.

00:54:40.750 --> 00:54:45.210
The smartphone reverses into isolation. No, designers

00:54:45.210 --> 00:54:48.510
built algorithms to keep us addicted. Corporations

00:54:48.510 --> 00:54:51.929
decided to harvest our data. By focusing on these

00:54:51.929 --> 00:54:55.750
inevitable structural changes, enhancement, reversal,

00:54:56.050 --> 00:54:59.409
we lose sight of the who. Who is building the

00:54:59.409 --> 00:55:02.309
machine? Who is profiting from the obsolescence?

00:55:02.630 --> 00:55:05.329
I would argue that unless we use the tetrad to

00:55:05.329 --> 00:55:07.750
understand the nature of the organism, we are

00:55:07.750 --> 00:55:10.750
powerless against the creators. You can't regulate

00:55:10.750 --> 00:55:13.269
what you don't understand. If you think the smartphone

00:55:13.269 --> 00:55:15.929
is just a phone, you've already lost the battle.

00:55:16.150 --> 00:55:18.849
The designers themselves often don't realize

00:55:18.849 --> 00:55:21.909
the reversal effects until they happen. The creators

00:55:21.909 --> 00:55:23.869
of Twitter didn't set out to create political

00:55:23.869 --> 00:55:26.389
polarization. That was an effect of the medium

00:55:26.389 --> 00:55:28.769
itself. And I would argue that understanding

00:55:28.769 --> 00:55:32.570
the grammar of the medium is useless if we ignore

00:55:32.570 --> 00:55:35.329
the political economy behind it. We aren't just

00:55:35.329 --> 00:55:37.909
fighting a medium. We are fighting a market.

00:55:38.440 --> 00:55:40.739
This is why McLuhan's friendship with advertising

00:55:40.739 --> 00:55:43.119
executives like Howard Gossage is problematic.

00:55:43.500 --> 00:55:45.980
He was too comfortable with the people manipulating

00:55:45.980 --> 00:55:49.460
the message. He consulted for IBM. He consulted

00:55:49.460 --> 00:55:52.619
for AT &T. He was criticizing the water while

00:55:52.619 --> 00:55:55.400
taking checks from the sharks. He was engaging

00:55:55.400 --> 00:55:57.679
with the powers that be because they were the

00:55:57.679 --> 00:56:00.019
one shaping the environment. He famously said

00:56:00.019 --> 00:56:03.579
art is a distant, early warning system. He viewed

00:56:03.579 --> 00:56:06.460
his work as art, as a way to wake people up.

00:56:06.809 --> 00:56:08.949
A fair point, but we have to acknowledge the

00:56:08.949 --> 00:56:11.769
limitations. We are nearing the end of our time,

00:56:11.809 --> 00:56:13.630
and we should probably try to land this plane.

00:56:14.050 --> 00:56:16.949
I'll stand by my assessment. Marshall McLuhan

00:56:16.949 --> 00:56:19.590
was a fascinating cultural figure. He was the

00:56:19.590 --> 00:56:21.690
patron saint of the digital age for a reason.

00:56:21.849 --> 00:56:24.550
But his theories, I think, suffer from that magical

00:56:24.550 --> 00:56:27.710
naivete described by Debray. By insisting that

00:56:27.710 --> 00:56:29.860
the medium is the message, He leaves us with

00:56:29.860 --> 00:56:32.219
a toolkit that is fantastic for describing the

00:56:32.219 --> 00:56:34.780
vibe of an era, but terrible for critiquing the

00:56:34.780 --> 00:56:37.800
actual power structures. He was a poet, perhaps

00:56:37.800 --> 00:56:40.239
even a mystic, given his private Catholicism,

00:56:40.340 --> 00:56:42.320
but he was not a scientist of communication.

00:56:42.820 --> 00:56:45.380
And I will maintain that his lack of scientific

00:56:45.380 --> 00:56:48.280
rigidity was his greatest strength. He saw what

00:56:48.280 --> 00:56:50.639
others missed because he wasn't looking at the

00:56:50.639 --> 00:56:54.019
data, he was looking at the environment. He predicted

00:56:54.019 --> 00:56:56.619
the internet would retrieve the individual's

00:56:56.619 --> 00:56:59.369
encyclopedic function. He warned us about the

00:56:59.369 --> 00:57:01.949
panic terrors of a totally interdependent world.

00:57:02.170 --> 00:57:04.469
Whether his definitions of hot and cool were

00:57:04.469 --> 00:57:06.929
perfect is, at the end of the day, irrelevant

00:57:06.929 --> 00:57:09.710
compared to the magnitude of his central insight,

00:57:09.909 --> 00:57:12.849
that we are fish swimming in water unaware of

00:57:12.849 --> 00:57:15.610
the water itself. McLuhan forced us to look at

00:57:15.610 --> 00:57:18.349
the water. He certainly made us look, though

00:57:18.349 --> 00:57:20.829
I suspect we are still arguing about what exactly

00:57:20.829 --> 00:57:23.510
we are seeing in the reflection. Perhaps that

00:57:23.510 --> 00:57:26.210
ambiguity is fitting for the man who said, I

00:57:26.210 --> 00:57:29.019
don't explain, I explore. Whether you view him

00:57:29.019 --> 00:57:31.960
as a prophet or a determinist, Marshall McLuhan

00:57:31.960 --> 00:57:34.579
provided the vocabulary we still use to attempt

00:57:34.579 --> 00:57:37.400
to understand our digital lives. On that, at

00:57:37.400 --> 00:57:39.619
least we can agree. Thank you for joining us

00:57:39.619 --> 00:57:41.300
on The Debate. Thank you.