Understanding Media by McLuhan: Introduction

• Introduction to "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man" by Marshall McLuhan

• James Reston wrote in The New York Times in July of 1957 about a mouse who had supposedly been watching television and attacked a little girl and her full-grown cat.

• According to Reston, both the mouse and cat survived.

• The Western world is imploding after three thousand years of explosion by fragmented and mechanical technologies.

• Mechanical ages extended bodies in space, while electric technology has extended the central nervous system, abolishing space and time.

• The final stages of humanity's extensions are approaching, including the technological simulation of consciousness.

• Media extends senses and nerves across society.

• Considering extensions of humans together is key.

• Whether it's skin, hand, or foot, any extension impacts the whole psychic and social complex.

• The effects of extensions of humanity are becoming more urgent.

• Actions and reactions now occur almost simultaneously, unlike the slow movement of the mechanical age.

• Literacy gave Westerners the power to act without reacting.

• Electric age extends nervous system, involving everyone in consequences.

• The detached literate Westerner is becoming obsolete.

• The Theater of the Absurd reflects the dilemma of Western man appearing uninvolved in action, which is why there is the origin for Samuel Beckett's clowns.

• The world has become compressional through dramatic reversal after 3,000 years of technological extensions that increased specialism and alienation.

• Electric speed has heightened awareness of responsibility.

• The Age of Anxiety is due to electric implosion compelling participation, regardless of viewpoint.

• An aspiration for wholeness, empathy, and awareness naturally comes with electric technology.

• Examination of extensions of humanity should begin with the numbness each extension brings.

The Gadget Lover / Narcissus as Narcosis

• The Greek myth of Narcissus relates directly to a fact of human experience.

• Narcissus comes from the Greek word narcosis, meaning numbness.

• Narcissus mistook his reflection in the water for another person, becoming numb to his own extended image, thus becoming a closed system.

• People can become fascinated by any extension of themselves.

• Physiologically, extensions of self can induce numbness.

• Medical researchers Hans Selye and Adolphe Jonas believe extensions are attempts to maintain equilibrium, referring to it as "autoamputation."

• The body uses autoamputation when perceptual power cannot locate or avoid irritation.

• Jonas and Selye's theory of disease or discomfort helps explain why humans extend parts of their bodies via autoamputation.

• The central nervous system uses amputation to isolate the organ or sense being affected due to physical stress.

• Amplification is bearable to the nervous system only via numbness or blocking of perception.

• Young man's image in the Narcissus myth exemplifies self-amputation induced by irritating pressures.

• Self-amputation can provide immediate relief to the central nervous system.

• The central nervous system, an electric network coordinating senses, plays a vital role.

• Threats must be contained, localized, or cut off by the system, acting as a group of protective organs.

• Sudden social failure or shame is a shock that can cause muscular disturbance, signaling you to withdraw from what may threaten the situation.

• Therapy and pleasure act as counter-irritants that help restore equilibrium to the nervous system.

• Electric technology extends the model of a central nervous system itself.

• Man may be experiencing such a desperate and suicidal autoamputation that the mechinations of the various physical organs since the invention of printing made violent/superstimulated social experience for the central nervous system.

• Narcissus is numbed by his self-amputated image.

• There is a close parallel of response between physical and psychic trauma/shock.

• Battle shock created by violent noise has been adapted for dental use in technology known as audiac.

• The selection of a single sense for intense stimulus, or of a single extended, isolated, or "amputated" sense in technology, is in part the reason for the numbing effect that technology as such has on its makers and users.

• The sensory system rallies in response to irritation.

• Closure and Equilibrium amongst the other senses is fairly predictable.

• Sensation is always at 100% intensity, as is color.

• Intensifying one sense affects others.

• Writing enabled individualism and introspection.

• Inventions are extensions of the body, demanding equilibriums in organs.

• TV image evokes senses, altering culture.

• Europe can intensify the visual sense with TV.

• The concept of idols is similar in Hebrew and Greek cultures. The Psalmist expresses that the use of idols (technology) conforms men to them, and Blake created a communication model of social change from that.

• Blake describes technology as self-amputations.

• Embracing technology puts us in the Narcissus role, relying on servomechanisms.

• It is necessary to serve extensions as gods to use them at all.

• Group pressures can prompt innovation as counter-irritants.

• War is a major incentive, as Lewis Mumford says that the walled city is a defense and extension of self.

• After invasion, adapting leads to social energy & new tech.

• Since 1910, governments have spent 3.5 trillion on airplanes.

• The principle of numbness comes with electric tech.

• One must numb the nervous system to not die.

• Anxiety becomes apathy.

• The central nervous system strategically numbed the tasks of order are transferred to physical life.

• There is increased awareness of tech as an extension.

• Awareness has hoicked out private/social life, with guilt-feelings as the cause.

• Existentialism values involvement over separateness.