Explorations in Media Ecology - Volume 10, Issue 3-4, 2011

This article builds on the notion that McLuhan is "beyond categorization" in the sense that his thought—much like the media of communication he sought to understand—is in constant flux. Attempts to reduce the multiple resonances of McLuhan's work to an explicit "message" or text, either by erroneously assigning ready-made labels such as "technological determinism" or by uncritically worshipping an accumulation of mummified insights, are destined to fail. McLuhan should be engaged by an authentic appropriation of the possibilities inherent in his work. This requires apprehending his work as a medium (a body of thought to think from, through, and with) rather than containing hard truths to be understood explicitly. The key is to engage with his probes as explorations at the level of ground; it is about deploying his insights in order to uncover "areas of inattention"—that is, digging up possibilities for interpreting mediated reality from out of unlikely regions in his oeuvre. A mostly unexplored area of inquiry within McLuhan studies is the connection between the perceptual model of his "general media theory" and Heideggerian-inspired phenomenologies. This article brings McLuhan's media theory—grounded on the senses, embodiment, and mediation-into conversation with existential phenomenology—grounded on perception, existence, and lived-through world experience. This article plumbs an unexplored hidden existential side to McLuhan that should be examined for the mutual benefit of McLuhan studies, media theory, and phenomenology.Heidegger surfboards along on the electronic wave as triumphantly as Descartes rode on the mechanical wave. —Marshall McLuhan (1962)Existentialism offers a philosophy of structures, rather than categories, and of total social involvement instead of the bourgeois spirit of individual separateness or points of view. —Marshall McLuhan (1964)[P]henomenology [is] that which I have been presenting for many years in non-technical terms. —Marshall McLuhan (Letter to Roger Poole, July 24, 1978)

This article highlights under-articulated resonances between McLuhan and Deleuze—two philosophers of communication. It illustrates how Deleuze actively used McLuhan as a mediator for his philosophical speculation, how he picked up a whole volley of McLuhan's probes and relaunched them in a new direction, giving them a distinct Spinozian ethical undertone. The article indicates with its very texture that bringing the two philosophers together creates a resonating interval in between and serves to shed new light on both philosophers' work. An ethical preoccupation runs through the entire article. After affirmatively critiquing select vectors of influence and extension, the essay also points to directions for further research.I am an intellectual thug who has been slowly accumulating a private arsenal with every intention of using it. In a mindless age every insight takes on the character of a lethal weapon. Every man of good will is the enemy of society. Marshall McLuhan (1987, p. 227)The key thing, as Nietzsche said, is that thinkers are always shooting arrows into the air, and other thinkers pick them up and shoot them in another direction. Gilles Deleuze (1995, p. 118)

Through a media ecology perspective, this article examines the debates over slideware. Opponents indict slideware for promoting sophistry and deadening speakers and audiences, yet they implicate public speaking in general rather than inherent attributes of slideware. Proponents, however, draw on the same topoi, validating slideware as a neutral tool for transmission of the speaker's content. Slideware, instead, should be understood as responding to the remediation of public speaking and the cultural influences of electronic media (transmediation). This media environment alters audience expectations and perceptions, providing new possibilities for slideware and expanding the domain of rhetorical study.

This article begins by exploring the relationship between Walt Whitman's "body electric" and Marshall McLuhan's "discarnate man." It then applies the concepts of body arising from that discussion to the changes that have occurred in Western culture's notion of "self," "identity," and particularly "the body" as a consequence of the development of virtual reality and immersive systems in the past two decades. An overview of the writings of various cultural critics and media theorists is provided to illustrate that conflicting attitudes have continued into the next phase of virtual reality—social networking and trans-human technologies—which challenge the prevailing notions of "body." The article concludes that, despite these developments, the body remains the basis of our humanity.

This article introduces the communication theory of Yuri Rozhdestvensky, using Marshall McLuhan to contextualize Rozhdestvensky's work. Rozhdestvensky and McLuhan both analyze the effects of new media on old. McLuhan argues that new media tend to make old media obsolete; Rozhdestvensky argues that new media enhance and extend old media. Both compare the social and psychological effects of the present shift in technologies to the shifts that occurred with the development of speech, writing, and print. The article provides evidence that Rozhdestvensky's theory is more accurate and that their different perceptions of media color their prognosis for the future: McLuhan perceiving the future as a return to atavism and irrationality, Rozhdestvensky believing in a continuation of human control of outer and inner nature.

There has been a resurgence of interest in Marshall McLuhan in the past two decades, and 2011 saw numerous tributes and retrospectives honoring the centenary of his birth. This article considers McLuhan's standing among contemporary scholars by analyzing three of the most common criticisms of his work: technological determinism, technological utopianism, and nonscientific methodology. The author concludes that many commentators have neglected to note that McLuhan deliberately adopted an artistic rather than scientific approach in his probes of media effects, and that his work remains relevant to scholars and students of mass communication.

In 1945, Canadian author Hugh MacLennan published, Two Solitudes, a novel about the tense relationship between Québec's French and English cultures. Today, "two solitudes" is the eponym signifying the divide between French and English Canada. Like MacLennan, Marshall McLuhan saw the English Canadians as the environment of the French Canadians. In the electric age, both populations grew acutely aware of each other's presence, and television abetted the quest for national identity by French speakers. That such a quest was accompanied by turmoil proved unsurprising to McLuhan. It is therefore not insignificant that the McLuhan centenary follows the 40th anniversary of Québec's October Crisis, when a group of Québec indépendantistes orchestrated kidnappings and assassination. Television viewers watched as Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau called in federal troops to quell further violence. A decade earlier, the Quiet Revolution had already begun transforming Québec. French speakers leapfrogged into the global village, and suddenly old environmental arrangements were no longer sustainable.

Skype, a voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) system, allows people to communicate through text, audio, and visual exchanges across short or great distances. At less than a decade old, it hosts the interaction of as many as 30 million people at one time (Skype, 2011). Its services, some free and others for fee-based, are especially valuable to fragmented families. This is despite the limits of technology to truly allow for "being" and "keeping" in touch while apart. Skype may create the illusion of being together because it brings distant sounds and images closer. However, it also may simultaneously emphasize the distance between people. The screen that draws us together also may keep us apart. Through phenomenology, the researcher presents some facets of the Skype experience. Particular attention is given to how families encounter time and space using a technology designed to overcome distant time and distant space.

Acknowledged as the father of media studies and prophet of the information age, Marshall McLuhan is scarcely recognized at all as an educational theorist. But that is changing. Harshly critical of the educational practices of his time, McLuhan offered a vision of learning that replaced lectures with active student participation, interaction, and active involvement, engaging learners in discovery learning, rather than prepackaged teacher and textbook-delivered content to be regurgitated on tests. His vision of "classrooms without walls" included a transition from hardware to software, redefinition of teacher roles, elimination of subjects, reform of assessment, and the use of instructional media, not just books. The curriculum would focus on media literacy and include the training of perception through figure/ground analysis and the inclusion of arts education. Noting the trend toward "learning a living," the constant upgrading of knowledge and skills by professional workers, he anticipated today's emphasis on lifelong learning and workplace training. McLuhan's ideas on education align with the philosophy and theory of constructivism espoused by educational reformers today and anticipate reform initiatives in pedagogy, curriculum, assessment, and the media literacy movement.Not all of McLu is nu or tru, but then again neither is all of anybody else. —John M. Culkin, S.J. (1967, p. 51)

The author undertakes research into conceptions of media ecology held by some of its leading scholars and disciplinary identity formation. Identifying media ecology as a field of study that stresses either network, nodal features or coherence of content, conceptualizing media ecology as a network seems to correspond more closely with pedagogical practice while an emphasis on primary theorists bears out in the classroom. Becher and Trowle's analysis of disciplines suggest that media ecology is an emerging discipline not yet a fully realized one. Viewing media ecology comparatively against identity studies of other emerging disciplines leads to the same conclusion. That author concludes that what marks media ecology as an emerging discipline is not its conceptual closure but the inter-relatedness of its ideas.

This article offers a glimpse of the religious dimensions of the life and work of Marshall McLuhan. It posits that, in addition to being seen as a literary and media scholar, McLuhan should be considered equally seriously as a theologian. With this proposition as a premise, the article also is a brief exposition of the research being conducted and the technology and religion seminars being offered under the Marshall McLuhan Initiative at St. Paul's College, University of Manitoba.

KORZYBSKI: A BIOGRAPHY, BY BRUCE I. KODISH, (2011) Pasadena CA: Extensional Publishing, (694 pp.) ISBN 978-0970066404 $29.95 (paperback)FAST MEDIA, MEDIA FAST: HOW TO CLEAR YOUR MIND AND INVIGORATE YOUR LIFE IN AN AGE OF MEDIA OVERLOAD, BY THOMAS W. COOPER, (2011) Boulder, CO: Gaeta Press, (225 pp.) ISBN: 978-1-4520-8500-5, $19.95 (paperback)