Chapter 13

1962/1964
Marshall McLuhan

The Galaxy Reconfigured:

• media extend human abilities and the human body itself
• culture was moving backwards toward tribal configurations
• "electric" or "new" media was causing a shift in western thought
• sense ratios change when "any one sense or bodily or mental function is externalized in technological form"
• popular press offers no single vision, no point of view, but a mosaic of the postures of the collective concousness
• "In opulent and commercial societies to think or to reason comes to be, like every other employment, a particular business, which is carried on by a very few people, who furnish the public with all the thought and reason possessed by the vast multitudes that labour."
• best means of communication with the unconscious is through myth and symbol
  

The Medium is the Message:

• popular media should not just be treated as unimportant entertainment, but deserves to be studied on its own terms
• consider the medium on its own, separate from content
• change in media will bring both positive and negative consequences; "print caused much trash to circulate, but it had also disseminated the bible and the thoughts of seers and philosophers."
• the medium shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action (ie, IBM realizes it is in the business of information processing, rather than just office equipment)
• the content of any medium is always another medium
• argues that typography created cultural uniformity and continuity. 

I thought it was really interesting what McCluhan said about thinking/reasoning becoming an occupation of few people. I would be curious to hear him go into more depth on this issue. I think this is probably true today, but I wonder who society would consider to be the "reasoners" since everyone's idea of rational is different. In terms of the medium, we definitely see this idea that the medium is the message in our class as we examine new types of media and their potential impact on "human association."