lighten though that the university has
come through with payment on its own we
should pause a woman to thank command
most responsible for carrying through
father John Culkin father would you
stand up and take a bow one more thing
which might make dr. McLuhan slightly
more understandable he is a Texan by
marriage his wife is from Fort Worden
now it gives me pleasure to introduce
our seeing-eye dog for the day dr. Ralph
Baldwin who will be followed by dr.
McLuhan topic open mind surgery dr.
Malden
Thank You Ralph Thank You mr. chairman
mr. Jacobs it's good to be here with all
of you although I can't profess that
this is the very moment I've been
waiting for the young the young I'm very
indebted to Steve Allen for an
observation he made long time ago the
funny man is a man with a grievance I
tried that one backwards and said all
right then where there are grievances
there should be lots of jokes and mostly
it proves that way in French Canada
there lots of grievances and remember
how General de Gaulle offered to free
French Canada recently he offered to
free the Scots - that didn't make the
press quite as excited as it should have
I didn't dream of freeing the Irish said
I think there would have been a storm
but the goal is you know a new
lalibertĂŠ huh but as a result of paying
attention to grievances I've discovered
to play quite a batch of jokes and I pay
special attention to media jokes like
the one of the teachers speaking to a
class and saying now class what does
this century almost - Thomas Edison and
the hand went up and said teacher if it
weren't for Thomas Edison we would be
watching TV by candlelight
the French Canadians raveling jokes like
the one about the president of Canadians
shell mmm chatting on the phone with the
president of American shell couple years
hence and the Canadian present president
is saying Diamond Lee and we must have a
big personnel program in Sherbrooke and
the total reorganization see whole
sheltered suite was a pause and voice
from the American end says hey
well thank you thank you talking to
white boy
it was quite it was quite recently that
I began to pay a little attention to the
effect of radio on the huntys and as you
know it brought in the Jazz Age and the
jazz babies it brought in Hitler that is
Hitler as a man who played it by ear and
who will I was a region a retry belies
man who had a new message to offer to
the Germans by way of their Ruggeri
gaining their tribal identity the other
night the CBS show on Germany was
terrifying it revealed that the Germans
are desperately seeking for a new tribal
identity it was Ray Bradbury who pointed
out maybe others too but I just happened
to hear him say this violence is the
quest for identity and whether you do it
a lie John Wayne or Ella Negro riots
whether you do it individually or
corporately the quest for identity can
only be satisfied by violence doesn't
have to be punch in the face it can be
violence violence one does to one's own
nature self-discipline asceticism and so
on it also forms a violent button the
twenties having them become alienated
from the visual world of goals and
simple directions began to live it up
they got turned on they began to live it
up in the Jazz Age that turned the negro
zone it was one of their great moments
not as great as their TV moment by any
means I'm glad to
the coming of this new tribal mentality
to the 1920s inspired Gertrude Stein to
point out to her group her age group you
were all a lost generation this is the
condition of the twenty ones and over
right now lost generation because - they
were too old to tribal eyes to get the
jazz baby message of involvement in
tribal form the twenty ones and over
today are much too old to get the TV
tribal message of involvement and they
are we are a lost generation in that
sense expendable but to come back for a
moment in the 1920s when those jazz
babies reached the job plateau and
fifteen years later they arrived with
this total involved habit without any
specialized directions or preferences
off the old fashioned say John Wayne
variety and then knew exactly what he
wanted and when you put the tribal man
in a decision-making area and he quickly
reveals his loss of direction and and
you get a slump literally when the man
of visual direction and specialism is
pushed aside by the electronic all round
turned on swinging prison I got plenty
of nothing and nothing is plenty for me
remember porgy and bess that was the
great message of the twenties when those
people reached the job plateau we had a
slump but it's nothing compared to the
slump that we're just about at my
five years the slump that's coming from
the TV generation will be on a much
greater scale unless we decide to
operate but the the German world
recovered direction and and identity by
violence by war and got into action
recovered itself and I suppose the same
war helped us to recover our sense of
direction in spite of the jazz babies
but this kind of use of the Airways or
the total human environment as a
teaching machine a programmed aging
machine is what it has become this
extension of our own nervous system as a
total infant environment of information
is in a sense an extension of the
evolutionary process and instead of it's
taking place biologically over many
thousands of years it is now possible in
fact it has happened to us in the last
few decades it is not possible to
traverse many millions of years in
seconds by putting evolutionary
extensions of ourselves outside as
environments as teaching machines the
man-made environments that are now
Planetary are in terms of evolutionary
development a greater step than anything
that ever happened to our biological
lives in the whole biological past just
because they are environments they're
invisible and this is a peculiarity
that's one answer the meaning of that
message to the fish or the we don't know
who discovered water but we're sure it
wasn't efficient one thing that is
always invisible to occupants is the
environment what stands out loud and
clear is the
old environment where view mirror so
that to the TV operator is the movie
world is very visible TV is invisible
the TV TV world is an x-ray world TV is
an x-ray device the viewer of TV is
being x-rayed at all times the radiation
goes right through them the children get
this message at once and they carry the
message out into the schoolroom where
they find no resemblance to TV x-ray
where subjects are laid out in little
classified forms algebra and history and
such no depth no involvement so our
children are teeny boppers and the
under-20 ones utterly confused by the
discrepancy between the environment they
encounter is entertainment and the
environment of the schoolroom this
confusion is on a bigger scale if you
like repeated in the Vietnam business
Vietnam is getting a Western treatment
it's getting a thoroughly massive
educational program we put our whole
mechanical industrial environment around
them as an educational machine this is
what Julius Caesar did with the Huns
Alexander the Great did war as an
educational institution is the most
powerful because it bill deals with the
whole environment in action as an
educational teaching machine and
somebody or other gets the message but
what we are doing in Vietnam is using
the old 19th century machine program for
the Orient what we're doing to ourselves
is orientalizing ourselves by our own
latest technology instead of the Eldar
trip
the integer instead of individual
specialism integral organic involvement
the TV world and the lake world of
electric circuitry automatically ensures
that the orientalizing off the whole of
the human population exposed to it no
when the Negro experiences our new
electric environment he is turned on as
never before black power just surges up
as he feels this involvement and
congenial hospitality of the electronic
environment and he looks around and he
sees the old literate mechanical
environment which had always rejected
him degraded him alienated him and this
naturally enrages him he destroys it if
possible the enemy India and China and
Africa will do this on a much bigger
scale as soon as they encounter an
electronic environment up til now
they're getting the 19th century not the
20th the 19th century was the old
machine age of fragmentation literacy
and specialism the one that the liberal
mind has never got beyond it's never
studied the layered environment its
literate visual detached non-involved
the visual man is the only detached
human being that ever lived on this
planet all the other senses except sight
smell hearing touch movement these are
involving and they are discontinuous and
unconnected
only the electronic permits a total
encounter with the discontinuous the
disconnected the world of the
discontinuity came in most vividly with
the Telegraph in the newspaper the
stories in the newspaper are completely
discontinuous because they're
simultaneous they're all under one
Dateline but there's no storyline to
connect them TV is like that of course
it's a it's a an x-ray mosaic screen
with the light charging through the
screen at the viewer Joyce called it the
charge of the Light barricade in fact
Finnegan's Wake is the greatest guide to
the media ever devised on this planet
and is a tremendous study of the action
of all media upon the human psyche and
sensorium but it's difficult to read but
it's worth it now as we move our
evolutionary process out into the
environment itself and instead of
putting something inside the Darwin
thought of man as inside an environment
it never occurred to Darwin that it
would be possible to program the
environment itself as evolutionary
Darwin is a literate 19th century man
and never he had no information of the
electronic information circuit or in
total human environment of information
so where I are dejardines a little more
aware of the meaning of the electronic
then Darwin could possibly have been but
that's a perfect example of the rear
view mirror this Darwinian obsession
with men's thumbs fingers and appendages
as biological evolution
this had right in the midst of the great
evolutionary step into the electronic
circuitry Darwin has remains obsessed
with this content of this old
environment what we of course saying
here is that if man is now in a position
to program the total human environment
as a teaching machine for the first time
in human history he's also in a position
to exercise some reasonable choice and
preference over the programming of that
environment that rational man may really
get his first innings out of this
computerized university up till now he's
been a kind of little straw blown around
by the technology one of the reasons why
we can now notice these environments
generated by new technologies is that
they yield to one another so rapidly
that it's almost impossible not to
notice the changing of the scene or the
guard or something but no previous human
age ever understood the effect of these
human endeavors on the environment as
they affected that age they always
understood the effect on the previous
age but never the effect on themselves
the history of utopias is the history of
rearview mirrors every utopia is a
picture of the preceding age like
Bonanza land there is never a utopia
that copes with the present any present
man seems to have this built-in device
of rearview mirror ISM because he fears
this confrontation with the total human
environment the only person who seems to
have virtually encounter and report on
the new
present is the artist and whenever he
passes in his report he is at once
branded as a cook because the present is
always unrecognizable because it is not
safe to look at when one understands the
operation of these new environments on
our human equipment it then becomes easy
to predict and to forecast the changes
that will take place in many levels of
programming of even of entertainment the
end of the star system is automatic with
TV the end of baseball it's a star
system you can like prizefighting won't
work for TV it's cool it's involving it
doesn't permit the flashy blazing-hot
star cooperation the young kids today
are not interested in stars less mothers
brothers are not stars in the old sense
at all but the kids are very interested
in the techniques used by the smothered
brothers they're very interested in late
processes how things are done and how
things happened or do happen this
following of complex processes is part
of the involvement need of an electric
agent Expo at in Montreal is a has been
a great success for the simple reason
that pulled the storyline off the whole
show like a Fellini movie no storyline
the storyline hots it up and leaves the
spectator outside looking on helplessly
without involvement Expo is a mosaic
without connections just like page 1
total involvement results everybody
wants to go back again and again to
follow through
that pavilions activities the New York
World Fair relative plot too much
storyline too many connections no room
for involvement or participation you can
fill in from your experience with
countless examples but this happens to
be the reason why the examples occurred
and Expo is exactly like the TV screen
it's a mosaic it's not a picture there
are no pictures on TV even when you put
a movie on TV those are not pictures it
still comes through as a charge of the
Light Brigade it's a an involving mosaic
situation in which the storyline or
connected spaces are not there the
viewer has to supply them that's how he
gets involved however I'm not trying to
present any programs of action or any
directions of action
I'm really trying to suggest ways of
perceiving the situation we have
developed for ourselves I have them as I
listen to Ralph
I was recalled another communication
starting about the two Navajo Indians
who are having a little chat across a
Arizona Valley by smoke signal and
midway through their chat the AEC
released an atomic charger and when the
big mushroom cloud cleared away one of
the Indians sent up little smoke signal
to the effect gee I wish I'd said that
the world of communication stories is
very rich a sort of old-fashioned one is
about the two goats at the back of
Hollywood studio an old MGM studio where
there are masses of old throwaway film
and one of the goats kicked open a can
containing picture of Gone with the Wind
and having nibbled a bit eagerly signal
to its companion to come on got a bite
of this when the companion arrived and
nibbled the other one say how about it
no I don't know I I think I liked the
book better
Media stories can be very useful though
for studying media and I heard one about
the two mice in a nose cone moving
around the planet one says to the other
how do you like this kind of work
another one says all well better than
cancer research you can see the
grievances sticking out a mile but good
old Steve Allen and his observation if
jokes arise from grievances and
irritation then perhaps they serve as a
release or catharsis of the same I'm
rather puzzled I'm sure there's a
reasonable cause I I haven't heard a
story in the last a funny story since I
came to New York two or three weeks ago
don't hear any ah well it isn't
repeatable that's like grievance for the
day but I am have this uneasy feeling
that I've released a number of these
atomic charges and predicting the next
depression is not far off once our TV
kids reach the job plateau they don't
want jobs the next phase is the dropout
executive
all the reason for that is very simple a
big exact doesn't have a job he has 60
jobs that's a role a mother doesn't have
a job she's 40 or 50 jobs that's a role
in the electronic age where everything
becomes associate all activities become
associated and interrelated you can't
have jobs you can only have roles so the
whole job structure is a storyline that
just or an organization chart just has
to be yanked out if business is to
survive now the organization charges is
as a dentist as baseball and for the
same reasons one thing at a time
baseball can't live in a TV age because
there's one play at a time one pitch one
hit one catch won't work in an all at
once world one thing at a time won't
work on the job front or on the sports
player but them or the educational front
I'm trying to be helpful here I'm not
trying to just put on an act I wish
somebody had told me some of these
things a few years ago it's been
exciting to discover them but also feel
I feel is a bit of waste for example in
the PV generation there ought to be
studies made and heaven knows we're
trying to do a few of them this year
there ought to be studies made of the
difference between those who saw TV
after they learn to read and write and
those who first began to watch TV before
they learn to read and write I think
you'll find is a big watershed they're
two totally different kinds of human
beings are coming on oncoming traffic
two totally different kinds the kids who
learn to read and write before they saw
TV had a kind of immunity a cushion for
their senses that made the TV impact
very much less and I think there are
those exact
dates and age groups ought to be
carefully ascertained and studies made
because the whole future programming of
work and education depends on it
again Vietnam is our first TV war that's
why people won't buy it it's into
involving all the previous wars were
fought on hot media like movies pictures
are photographs and press and now people
experience the war as something it
involves them profoundly and they don't
want to have anything to do with it it
isn't a question of a trying to
ascertain the pros and the cons the
rights and the wrongs of the Cong or
whoever that is nothing to do with it
it's just this new phase of total
involvement and participation that is
unthinkable so the new gang coming on
the kids who are really turned on will
find that war much less tolerable or any
other war much less tolerable than the
present generation no comparison here it
seems to me that we do waste an awful
lot of time assigning fanciful reasons
for these events and also in selecting
very unfortunate and wasteful goals for
our energies when we do after all have a
rather deep desire to work out a livable
equilibrium for the human community we
do go to so much trouble to create
violent upsets and disequilibrium I'm
glad I know I'm not sure how successful
a reprogramming could be in our say our
life our lifetime
I'm just going to check whether I have
omitted some crucial funny stories and
then probably not but the no none none
of them repeatable last thing I see are
one hint there Columbus went too far
it's like that similar observation
Plymouth Rock should have landed on the
pilgrims but in our present world there
cannot be a Columbus how X t-rex ternal
exploration has ended and the future of
exploration is necessarily internal
whether in medicine or in entertainment
a film since I feel you are in good
humor at this moment I am I think I will
hold my dents like the arts and quietly
steal off thank you very much
dr. McLuhan you are a seer thank you
very much doctor and dr. Ralph Baldwin
you've added immeasurably to our to to a
seminar and we thank you