We are all cyborgs now

Technology is evolving us, says Amber Case, as we become a screen-staring, button-clicking new version of homo sapiens. We now rely on "external brains" (cell phones and computers) to communicate, remember, even live out secondary lives. But will these machines ultimately connect or conquer us? Case offers surprising insight into our cyborg selves.

Amber Case studies the symbiotic interactions between humans and machines -- and considers how our values and culture are being shaped by living lives increasingly mediated by high technology.

The Wave of the Future: Understanding Marshall McLuhan

This is a summary of Marshall McLuhan's work applied to understanding the past, present and future. It covers - the medium is the message, the medium as content, hot and cool media, our change from a pre-literate to literate to post literate society, characteristics of the post literate society, and the four laws of media. It will close with a discussion of the wave of the future.

The benefits of understanding this approach are that you:

• Will understand why our present environment is the way that it is
• Gain a greater understanding of the interrelationships of past, present and future.
• Will understand the influence of media on our perception, thinking and actions
• Will gain insight on the long term future.

Paul Schumann is a practicing futurist with expertise in creativity and innovation. He has lived long enough to see forecasts fail and succeed, including some of his own. He had a thirty year career with IBM in three very different arenas - as a technologist and technology manager in semiconductor technology, as an internal entrepreneur creating the first independent business unit within IBM, and as a cultural change agent developing a more creative and innovative culture. Since retiring from IBM he has 19 years of experience in consulting as a business futurist with programs in creativity and innovation. He is the founding president of the Central Texas Chapter of the World Future Society. And he is the founder of the Insights – Intelligence - Innovation Collaborative . He is on the advisory boards of the Marketing Research Association and the Austin Center for Nonprofit and community Based Organizations.

The Wave of the Future: Understanding Marshall McLuhan

View more presentations from Paul Schumann.

Introduction: The Medium Is the Massage


McLuhan on the information age:


McLuhan's Wake: National Film Board of Canada
McLuhan's Wake: Introduction




Web 2.0 (The Machine is Us/ing Us)

References
The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man, Marshall McLuhan, Beacon Press, 1951
The Gutenberg Galaxy, Marshall McLuhan, University of Toronto Press, 1962
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshal McLuhan (McGraw-Hill: 1964; MIT Press: 1994)
The Medium is the Massage, Marshall McLuhan & Quentin Fiore, Jerome Agel, 1967
“The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan”, Playboy, 1969
Four Causes of Reality, William Crews, Philosophical Library, 1969
Culture is Our Business, Marshall McLuhan, Ballantine Books, 1972
Media: The Second God, Tony Schwartz, Random House, 1981
The Alphabet Effect, Robert Logan, William Morrow & Co., 1986
Laws of Media: The New Science, Marshal and Eric McLuhan, University of Toronto Press, 1988
The Global Village, Marshall McLuhan & Bruce Powers, Oxford University Press, 1989
Essential McLuhan, Edited by Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone, Basic Books, 1995
The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion, Marshall McLuhan, edited by Eric McLuhan & Jacek Szklarek, Stoddart, 1999
Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium, Paul Levinson, Routledge, 1999
“McLuhan’s Wake”, National Film Board of Canada (video), 2002
“The Wave of the Future: From Four Causes to Four Laws or McLuhan Re...”, Paul Schumann, 2005,

Other Resources
The McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology, http://www.mcluhan.utoronto.ca
The Media Ecology Association, http://www.media-ecology.org/
A Model Media Ecologist, Bob Blechman, http://robertkblechman.blogspot.com/
McLuhan & Mailer, video, http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5470443898801103219&sou...
The Medium is the Massage, Marshall McLuhan Audio, http://www.ubu.com/sound/mcluhan.html
Marshal McLuhan, the Man and his Message, CBC Archives, http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainemnt/media/topics/342/
The Official Site of Marshall McLuhan, http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/
Marshall McLuhan, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan
Digital Ethnography, Michael Wesch, Kansas State University, http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/
Numerous McLuhan Videos on YouTube

The Wave of the Future; Understanding the Present

Introduction
This webinar, jointly sponsored by the Central Texas Chapter of the World Future Society, presented a summary Marshall McLuhan's work and applied it to understanding the past, present and future. It covered - the medium is the message, hot and cool media, our change from pre-literate to literate to post literate, characteristics of the post literate society, and the four laws of technology. It will close with a discussion of the wave of the future.

The benefits of understanding this approach are that you:

• Will understand why our present environment is the way that it is
• Gain a greater understanding of the interrelationships of past, present and future.
• Will understand the influence of media on our perception, thinking and actions
• Will gain insight on the long term future.

Paul Schumann, a student of Marshall McLuhan, will explain in simple terms McLuhan’s work, and his extension of McLuhan's work.

This insightful presentation will suddenly make clear what we are experiencing in today’s environment and why you have to ride the wave.

Slides

Wave of the Future: Understanding the Present

View more presentations from Paul Schumann.

The Medium is the Message Slide Show

Recording of this webinar.

Transcript of chat room.

More Information
The Wave of the Future: From Four Causes to Four Laws, or McLuhan R... article

About the Speaker
Paul Schumann is a practicing futurist with expertise in creativity and innovation. He has lived long enough to see forecasts fail and succeed, including some of his own. He had a thirty year career with IBM in three very different arenas - as a technologist and technology manager in semiconductor technology, as an internal entrepreneur creating the first independent business unit within IBM, and as a cultural change agent developing a more creative and innovative culture. Since retiring from IBM he has been consultant as a business futurist with programs in creativity and innovation. He is the founding president of the Central Texas Chapter of the World Future Society . And he is the founder of the Insights – Intelligence - Innovation Collaborative. More information about Paul can be found on his web site.

The Medium is the Message: A Prezi Demonstration

Prezi is a new communication tool. It's much more free form than PowerPoint, and has some advantages. There are still functions needed to make it really useful. One that I would really like to see is the ability to add audio to the final show. You can could make some pretty cool videos this way. I'd also like to see the embed code to embed the result in a blog.

This what their web site reports:

Prezi is zooming sketches on a digital napkin.

It's visualization and storytelling without slides. Your ideas live on stage and on the web.

Have you ever wondered about presenting your thoughts as free as they come? Ever got tired of creating a slideshow? It's been said, that the best innovations come from people who are unhappy with the tools they use. We realized that our ideas won't fit into slides anymore. Putting together creative thinking and technology expertise, we have created Prezi, a living presentation tool.

My first attempt to use the tool - no color- no graphics, just words:

Prezi Demonstration

What Technology Has Taught Us

Innovation Watch, International Herald Tribune

Frisky thumbs aren't the only legacy of the latest round of design innovations. The type of products and technologies we use not only affects the development of our physical skills, but mental skills too. Mostly it does so surreptitiously, because we make the necessary changes instinctively.

More

Being There

It was Sunday. Chance was in the garden. He moved slowly, dragging the green hose from one path to the next, carefully watching the flow of the water. Very gently he let the stream touch every plant, every flower, every branch of the garden. Plants were like people; they needed care to live, to survive their diseases, and to die peacefully.

Yet plants were different from people. No plant is able to think about itself or able to know itself; there is no mirror in which a plant can recognize itself its face; no plant can do anything intentionally; it cannot help growing, and its growth has no meaning, since a plant cannot reason or dream.

It was safe and secure in the garden, which was separated from the street by a high, red brick wall covered with ivy, and not even the sounds of the passing cars disturbed the peace. Chance ignored the streets. Though he had never stepped outside the house and its garden, he was not curious about life on the other side of the wall.

Thus begins this amazing novel by Jerzy Kosinski. This 1971 book has stayed mostly dormant in my brain for over thirty years only occasionally popping to the surface. However, in my recent studies of McLuhan, it surfaced and requested that I reread it. I believe after rereading the book that Kosinski was drawing a metaphor for the impacts of electronic media on perception and thinking, and the emergence of the post-literate man.

Chance went inside and turned on the TV. The set created its own light, its own color, its own time. It did not follow the law of gravity that forever bent all plants downward. Everything on TV was tangled and mixed and yet smoothed out: night and day, big and small, tough and brittle, soft and rough, hot and cold, far and near. In this colored world of television, gardening was the white cane of a blind man.

By changing the channel he could change himself. He could go through phases, as garden plants went through phases, but he could change as rapidly as he wished by twisting the dial backward and forward. In some cases he could spread out onto the screen without stopping, just as on TV people spread out onto the screen. By turning the dial, Chance could bring others inside his eyelids. Thus he came to believe that it was he, Chance, and no one else, who made himself to be.

Chance, you find out in the story, is a person of unknown origin who lived his entire life tending the garden of a very wealthy man. His education was TV and the garden. When the old man died, his life was abruptly changed.

He rose early as always, found the breakfast that had been left at his door by the maid, ate it, and went into the garden,

He checked the soil under the plants, inspected the flowers, snipped away dead leaves, and pruned the bushes. Everything was in order. It had rained during the night, and many fresh buds had emerged. He sat down and dozed in the sun.

As long as one didn't look at people, they did not exist. They began to exist, as on TV, when one turned one's eyes on them. Only then could they stay in one's mind before being erased by new images. The same was true for him. By looking at him, others could make him clear, could open him up and unfold him; not to be seen was to blur and fade out. Perhaps he was missing a lot by simply watching others on TV and not being watched by them. He was glad now, after the Old Man died, he was going to be seen by people he never been seen by before.

Chance is called in to meet with the executors of the Old Man's will. He is found to have no papers, no record of his existence. The executors are unbelieving and fear a scam. Chance retorts,

"But you have me. I am here. What more proof do you need?"

He is told that the house and garden will be locked the next day and he must leave. On the morning of the next day, he dresses and packs his suitcase with the very expensive suits that the Old Man had given him, now in style, and prepared to leave.

He turned on the TV, sat down on the bed, and flicked the channel changer several times. Country houses, skyscrapers, newly built apartment houses, churches shot across the screen. He turned the set off. The image died; only a small blue dot hung in the center of the screen, as if forgotten by the rest of the world to which it belonged; then it too disappeared. The screen filled with greyness; it might have been a slab of stone.

Chance got up and now on the way to the gate, he remembered to pick up the old key that for years had hung untouched on a board in the corridor next to his room. He walked to the gate and inserted the key; then, pulling the gate open, he crossed the threshold, abandoned the key in the lock, closed the gate behind him. Now he could never return to the garden.

Chance is now on the hero's journey described by Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

He almost immediately has an accident. A chauffeur driven limousine crushes his leg. The wealthy man's wife, Eve or EE, brings Chance back to her house to care for him. There through a series of misunderstandings his name gets changed to Chauncey Gardiner. Her powerful husband is old and very ill. The doctors already in the house care for Chance.

Chance thinks,

"When one was addressed and viewed by others, one was safe. Whatever one did would then be interpreted by the others in the same way that one interpreted what they did. They could never know more about one than one knew about them."

Chance wondered whether Mr. Rand would ask him to leave the house. The thought that he might have to leave did not upset him; he knew that he would eventually have to go but that, as on TV, what would follow next was hidden; he knew the actors on the new program were unknown. He did not have to be afraid, for everything had its sequel, and the best that one could do was to wait patiently for his own forthcoming appearance.

Benjamin Rand has a meeting with the President. He is prepared for the meeting by his handlers. Chance comments:

"I hope that you're feeling well, sir. You do look better."

Rand moved uneasily in his chair. "It's all makeup, Chauncey - all make-up. The nurse was here all night and through the morning, and I asked her to fix me up so the President won't feel I'm going to die during our talk. No one likes a dying man, Chauncey, because few know what death is. All we know is the terror of it. You're an exception, Chauncey, I can tell. I know that you're not afraid. That's what EE and I admire in you: your marvelous balance. You don't stagger back and forth between fear and hope, you're a truly peaceful man! Don't disagree; I'm old enough to be your father. I've lived a lot, trembled a lot, was surrounded by little men who forgot that we enter naked and exit naked and that no accountant can audit life in our favor."

Chance participates in the meeting with the president. The President and Rand are discussing the economy, which has recently taken a turn for the worse. Chance observes trying to emulate what he has seen on TV about how to act making sure that he looks straight into the President's eyes. The President turns to Chance and asks him a question.

"And you, Mr. Gardiner? What do you think about the bad season on The Street?"

Chance draws on the only knowledge he possesses, gardening, and replies.

"In a garden, growth has its seasons. There are spring and summer, but there is also fall and winter. And then spring and summer again. As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all will be well."

Rand and the President are pleased. The President incorporates Chance's philosophy into his thoughts and in a national TV speech quotes him. This leads quickly to a TV appearance for Chance on a talk show.

Chance turned on the TV. He wondered whether a person changed before or after appearing on the screen. Would he be changed forever or only during the time of his appearance? What part of himself would he leave behind when he finished the program? Would there be two Chances after the show: one Chance who watched TV and another who appeared on it?

When Chance went to the studio for his telecast, Kosinski observes and comments.

Chance was astonished that television could portray itself; cameras watched themselves and, as they watched, they televised a program. This self-portrait was telecast on TV screens facing the stage and watched by the studio audience. Of all the manifold things there were in the world - trees, grass, flowers, telephones, radios, elevators - only TV constantly held up a mirror to its own neither solid nor fluid face.

Later:

Facing the cameras and the audience, now barely visible in the background of the studio, Chance abandoned himself to what would happen. He was drained of thought, engaged, yet removed. The cameras were licking up the image of his body, were recording his every movement and noiselessly hurling them into millions of TV screens scattered throughout the world - into rooms, cars, boats, planes, living rooms and bedrooms. He would be seen by more people than he could ever meet in his entire life - people who would never meet him. The people who watched him on their sets did not know who actually faced them; how could they, if they had never met him? Television reflected only people's surfaces; it also kept peeling their images from their bodies until they were sucked into the caverns of their viewers' eyes, forever beyond retrieval, to disappear.

When Chance gives his garden answer to the host's question on the economy, he becomes an instant national, and later even an international, celebrity. The story concludes with Chance being considered as a presidential candidate.

Chance is attending a large party for international dignitaries as the novel ends.

He crossed the hall. Chilled air streamed in through an open window. Chance pushed the heavy glass door open and stepped out into the garden. Taut branches laden with fresh shoots, slender stems with tiny sprouting buds shot upward. The garden lay calm, still sunk in repose. Wisps of clouds floated by and left the moon polished. Now and then, boughs rustled and gently shook off their drops of water. A breeze fell upon the foliage and nestled under the cover of its moist leaves. Not a thought lifted itself from Chance's brain. Peace filled his chest.

Marshal McLuhan wrote about three stages in the development of mankind - preliterate, literate and post literate. Preliterate society existed until the development of an alphabetic phonetic language. Literate society's development was accelerated by the invention of the moveable type printing press. Post literate society began developing with the invention of the telegraph and was accelerated by the development of TV and computers. Most of what we know is based on literate perceptions and means of communication.

McLuhan believed that the real impact of a change in a medium is in the medium's ability to alter our perception of reality. This altered perception of reality is nearly impossible for anyone to consciously notice, and therefore its impacts are profound. Media, which are extensions of man's senses, alter the ratio of our sense usage. Kosinski opens and closes the book with sense driven descriptions of reality.

McLuhan's post literate society has many of the characteristics of the preliterate society of the distant past. He labeled the society "acoustic", not that it was going back to being only an oral - aural environment of the preliterate age, but that it was going to be more "wavelike", as in the wave nature of matter. However, the post literate age was going to rely more heavily on the spoken word, rather than the written word of the literate age. And, instead of gathering around fires, we gather around the TV screens (TV or computer), in our caves.

Chance is Kosinski's conception of what someone would be like if they skipped the literate age entirely. Chance's learning is preliterate and post literate. He learned from nature and TV.

He draws a distinction in the second paragraph between nature and humankind in the ability to be aware and have intention. Later he points out that TV could portray itself, a feat unmatched in nature.

Kosinski gives hints about TV's ability to alter our sense ratios and it's impact on our perception of reality when he writes, "The set created its own light, its own color, its own time. It did not follow the law of gravity that forever bent all plants downward. Everything on TV was tangled and mixed and yet smoothed out: night and day, big and small, tough and brittle, soft and rough, hot an cold, far and near. In this colored world of television, gardening was the white cane of a blind man."

The last phrase is a particularly important piece of advice about how to cope with the changes when he advises the perception of nature as a way to achieve balance.

Chance is so altered by his TV education that he's not sure of his existence outside of the TV, and he thinks that he can change himself by changing channels.

In a literate world, existence is proven through demonstration of literacy and a written record. In Kosinski's post literate world, existence is proven by being seen.

"The cameras were licking up the image of his body, were recording his every movement and noiselessly hurling them into millions of TV screens scattered throughout the world," writes Kosinski. "Television reflected only people's surfaces; it also kept peeling their images from their bodies until they were sucked into the caverns of their viewers' eyes, forever beyond retrieval, to disappear." In a chaotic post literate world where electronic media have altered our perceptions of time, space, sequence, cause and effect, past and future, the present moment and temporality, Chance appears to be a wise man. He is "post literate" and wise in the way of the garden.

Being There
Jerzy Kosinski
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971

Also the movie:
Being There
Lorimar Production
United Artists, 1979
Screenplay by Jerzy Kosinski

The Wave of the Future: From Four Causes to Four Laws or McLuhan Revisited

Paul Schumann

"...the wave of the future...the wave of the future...the wave of the future...the wave of the future...
Attributed to Howard Hughes, "The Aviator"

Preface
The origin of this work is a couple of Monday Morning Memos from Roy Williams, and an article by Norman Mailer . The questions raised caused me to think about Marshal McLuhan and the books I read about 30 years ago. I posted a quick response to Mailer's article based on my recollection. But I realized that I must reread McLuhan. So, I reread those books, this time to the point that I'm beginning to understand, as well as some additional material I researched. The result is this article. This article is not an attempt to justify or critique McLuhan, it is merely an attempt to understand him and communicate my understanding to you.

McLuhan began his study of media with work on advertising that culminated in his book The Mechanical Bride. The first book I read by McLuhan was Understanding Media that was published in 1964. He was an academic who refused to act like one. He was criticized for his use of media to get his message out, an undeserved criticism. He felt strongly about the necessity for everyone to 'wake up' and become aware of the invisible effects of media, not the message, on our culture. He was not a critic or an advocate of the changes he was describing. He was like an artist trying to show others what he saw.

He was a poet and philosopher, not a scientist. He was similar to Lucretius who wrote an epic poem describing his philosophy of the world.

His writing is dense, with references to a vast amount of knowledge not possessed by the ordinary reader and filled with poetics, making his work difficult to understand.

"By the mid-1970s, a number of books appeared attacking McLuhan's work, branding him too conservative, too Catholic, too flippant and, above all, arguing that he was a technological determinist. Emboldened by the intellectuals, newspaper reviewers trashed his latest books. Undaunted, McLuhan begins his work on the Laws of Media, his grand unified theory...But, by the time he formulated the Laws, McLuhan had lost his audience. Journalist were baffled by him and most academics were dismissive. "

Remember as you read this, McLuhan was a poet. For example, even if his explanation of the physiology of TV is incorrect, his understanding of the effects of TV is profound.

I found his observations about the culture we are in now to be shockingly profound. So, I put myself in the category of Tom Wolfe when he wrote, "What if he's right? "

This article begins with a brief description of the Four Causes of Reality and then describes some of McLuhan's observations - the medium is the message, hot and cool media, pre-literate to literate to post literate, my interpretation of the characteristics of the post literate society, and the four laws. It closes with a discussion of the wave of the future.

Read Complete Article The Wave of the Future

See also slide show The Wave of the Future: Revisiting Marshall McLuhan

The Wave of the Future: Revisiting Marshall McLuhan

This presentation summarizes the printed work of Marshall McLuhan and applies it to understanding our present environment, and to forecast some of the future.

The Wave of the Future: Revisiting Marshall McLuhan

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: mcluhan media)

The Web and TV, a sibling rivalry

In this absorbing look at emerging media and tech history, Peter Hirshberg shares some crucial lessons from Silicon Valley and explains why the web is so much more than "better TV."

A Silicon Valley executive, entrepreneur and marketing specialist, Peter Hirshberg might just be the definitive voice on how new technology affects business and culture.

The Influence of New Media

Philosophical interview about the state and future of the media with Fordham University's Chair of Communication and Media Studies, Paul Levinson. Levinson is the author of numerous fictional and nonfiction books including "Digital McLuhan" and "The Soft Edge" and has appeared in countless media venues from PBS to Fox to offer his insight on media issues. Levinson discusses the current exponential rise of new media and what this means for us all in terms of expression, information and challenge. He also discusses his thoughts on the iconic Marshall McLuhan and what he would think of the extraordinary digital age we live and now create in.