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"Freedom is a road seldom travelled by the multitudes."
The Anarchives Volume 2 Issue 6
The Anarchives Published By
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--/\-- Raping The Media Messenger
/ / \ \ McLuhan is Transformed
---|--/----\--|--- By the Information Age
\/ \/
/\______/\ by Jesse Hirsh
jesse@lglobal.com
Today, Saturday July 22 The Globe And Mail, Canada's elite newspaper
published an article on the front page of the arts section on Marshall
McLuhan. The title of the article by Robert Everett-Green
<letters@GlobeAndMail.ca> was called "Resurrecting the media
messiah", but in actuallity what is described in the article is the
raping of a media mind. McLuhan was not a messiah, he hasn't saved anyone
from anything. Rather he enlightens us all with some of the secrets of
language and the way in which in we communicate.
As with countless other ideas in our society, McLuhan's are being raped;
transformed to meet popular conceptions of an emerging electronic
envrionment.
As McLuhan is brought from the grave he is laid out over his tombstone
and fucked up the ass with a big corporate penis. Digital technology not
only enables this to happen, but transposes a smile upon the dead man's face.
Let's take a journey thourgh part of this article and see if we can
discern exactly how this violation is being carried out.
McLuhan in the subhead is described as:
"not just as a footnote or thesis subject, but as an icon of our times."
As an icon the figure of McLuhan is robbed of all substance and meaining.
The image of the guy becomes a figure of consumption, and dissolves into
the barren nothingness of our consuming culture. He is an icon to sell
CD-Roms and corporate technological development.
"Opinion is divided as to what he might have thought about the new
gadgets, but there's no doubt he would have savoured his present role as
the prophet who turned out to be right."
McLuhan feared the changes he prophesized, so much so that he always
retained his devout faith, even as he preached aspects of the
secularization of our society, or even further the emergence of new gods.
McLuhan was motivated by the horror he foresaw our society heading
towards. He tried to explain this horror in the hopes that knowledge and
awareness of these changes may affect their outcomes.
"The question today, even among his admirers, is whether there is any
further point in reading him."
Exactly, why read him when he can be packaged for easy consumption. Why
try to understand what he was saying when you pay someone else to do it
for you. Let the real message fade into the oblivion of the individual
mindset, and allow the collective corporate mindset dictate the real
meaning of McLuhan.
<reching sound as i gag on the realization of a horrible reality>
"'Nobody reads McLuhan, because he was right,' says Kevin Kelly
<kelly@wired.com or editor@wired.com>, executive editor of Wired. 'He was
right in that we're not a book culture any more. If you're getting your
information about McLuhan from books, you're not getting it.'"
This might explain why that rag Wired is 85% adds. They have nothing to
say outside of selling image. They sell the medium of technology without
having to justify the message that medium brings. As the book is defeated
and turfed out of our corporate culture, so goes with it the ability for
individual thought, and critical independent analysis.
"it makes sense that he should have tried to wake the sleepers though a
medium that was literally obsolescent (books) but that at least did not
undermine his message."
McLuhan did not spend his time trying to communicate through the medium
of books or the printed word, but rather his focus was on the medium of
language. Language in many forms, in many mediums; that was where McLuhan
did his jig of media prophesy. He was an English Prof, not a book publisher.
"That's part of the reason postmoderns, like the staff at Wired, dig
McLuhan but don't want to read him, at least not in book-length form."
This is an example of the lack of substance, or dillution of the message
in the medium.
With television people are exposed to a fraction of the real picture, and
then collectively, with the rest of the electronically drugged out masses
assume that they know the whole story.
The post-modern-dummies at Wired get a bit of McLuhan with their morning
coffee and think that they all embody McLuhan. Meanwhile his dead body is
brought to the exec-editors office for a little
alt.binaries.up.his.white.ass.
"'Reading McLuhan continously is not a good idea,' says Derrick
DeKerckhove, director of the McLuhan Program for Culture and
Communications at the University of Toronto. 'It's better to jump in,
take a peek, and then go somewhere with it.'"
I'm sorry to see Derrick (derrick@epas.utoronto.ca) mentioned in this
plunder of McLuhan, I've wanted to think that maybe he is not in league
with the corporate rapists, but like any mortal he too seems to bend in
the face of global power.
At his book release party Derrick talked about the book and the act of
reading in the context of clarification and comprehension in the
speeded-up electronic age. I was joyed to see a guru of the electronic
age promote the act of reading.
But maybe now he too is being raped, while still alive, to be quoted out
of context, supporting the McLuhan soundbite, and the McLuhan corporate
run-away train.
"So maybe we don't need to read McLuhan cover to cover, but only in
probe-length bits, while savouring the stinging effects of these viruses
of the mind. Perhaps McLuhan has joined the small elite of pivotal
thinkers whose lessons have entered general consciousness. It seems a
part of common sense to ask what impact any new technology is going to
have on the cultural environment. The internet had scarcely hit the
headlines before people began debating the effect this new medium might
have on the culture at large. To that extent the sleepers are at least
half awake, and McLuhan's work was not in vain."
People are not contemplating what the message of these new media are. It
is fashionable to assume that it will affect us, even dramatically, but
very few are actually stopping to think how it is actually changing us.
And furthermore even fewer are examining what McLuhan is saying about all
of this shit.
On the picture of the article there was a statement to the effect of
"propaganda ends where dialogue begins".
This was trying to imply that when the current broadcasting model of
communications subsides to the multi-way format of electonic
communications, propaganda also subsides.
What a crock of shit.
Propaganda will exist as long as power exists.
Today's Globe And Mail was an example of power and an example of
propaganda. The entire section was a tirade against writing, reading, and
the methods of communication that encourage critical independent thougt.
I was able to write this critique today because I have read McLuhan, sat
down and spent prolonged hours reading what the guy had to say. I also
sat down and read the article in the globe.
I'm sure the large majority of Globe readers read the head line,
sub-head, looked at the picture, figured they knew the story anyway and
went on to read more of the bullshit.
Exploitation and domination run our civilization.
I and I are being drowned in a substance-less sea of information.
Those brave enough to try and figure out what the fuck is going on end up
becoming isolated because their ideas no longer fit within the artificial
consciousness of corporate tv culutre.
Those who do not consent willingly get raped anyway.
What the fuck are you supposed to do?
TAO keeps burnin'