On December 27, I posted “Marshall McLuhan — Brilliant Analyst, Prophet and Gravedigger?” Keith Spillett responded in a separate blog posting on December 30:
Koch’s post is utterly insane. The “unscholarly probes” argument rears it’s ugly head again! Basically, this is a criticism of McLuhan for not knowing exactly which one of his insights would bare out over time. The problem with being right as much as McLuhan was is people, like Koch, want to take shots at you on the occasions that you aren’t. McLuhan wasn’t an oracle looking into a crystal ball, he was a brilliant man trying to understand the human condition. The sarcastic rip at McLuhan for “telling jokes” is a dig at his being accessible to non-academics, which apparently in Koch’s opinion is a horrible transgression. So, basically, Koch spent a paragraph criticizing McLuhan for being occasionally wrong and an excellent writer.
Instead of weakening McLuhan’s case, he illustrates another example of what McLuhan was up against. You made that point vividly when you wrote “such misunderstandings sometimes originate from those who seem to be locked in a disappearing print culture, with its sequential and linear forms which leave such observers unable to comprehend the evolving digital media ecology.” The evolution from one media form to another is what Koch likes to refer to as “dumbing down.”
The coup de grace of the piece is Koch’s “probe” about McLuhan being responsible for a half century of human de-evolution. The sheer absurdity of that statement is remarkable. Koch tries to be sneaky here and hide behind a question mark, but it’s clear that his point is to somehow tie McLuhan’s work to some intellectual apocalypse that has befallen the universe. Talk about shooting the messenger!
A story written in 2008 by Eric Koch that relates directly to understanding McLuhan has been posted on the Stories page.
I could be wrong, but I think McLuhan gets it right.
So does Spillett.
Koch too.
McLuhan predicted much of what would happen. The Catholic McLuhan would not have liked that future, but the catholic McLuhan would have frolicked in it and cantered through it.
Spillett is right in telling Koch off for attributing too much power to McLuhan. McLuhan didn’t create the future, he (merely?) foresaw it.
Koch is right to point out that McLuhan helped set the stage for our acceptance that ‘ the medium is the message’ and that new media subsume the old. McLuhan appeared to make it respectable to reject our sometimes stodgy but very rich past. But even if McLuhan had never existed, our past would be behind us anyway. And so it goes…
Eric,
I have an infinite amount of respect for anyone who would reprint a comment as nasty as mine. Thanks! I read through some of your blog and it is excellent. I look forward to violently disagreeing with you in the future.
I do need to clear up one issue. I am only a commenter (and rabid reader) of the McLuhan Galaxy blog. I have not been able to figure out who is its creator, but I do not deserve credit for that website (as much as I’d love to have created a site as excellent as that one).
My website is The Tyranny of Tradition (http://tyrannyoftradition.wordpress.com/.) I do some writing on McLuhan, but deal with a wider range of topics that runs the gamut from philosophy to basketball coaching. You are welcome to visit if you’d like.
-Keith
What a delightful misunderstanding. You attributed my exhibiting your blog posting on my blog to high-minded motives on my part whereas they could not have been more low-minded. I hoped to expose you to public ridicule. At a minimum, I assumed that one or two of my loyal readers would spare me the trouble of setting you straight. I have now looked at your blog and discovered that you are straight already!!!! Even straighter than I – and certainly much more knowledgeable about philosophy than I – even though I do know that you need courage and enterprise to try to outdo Voltaire when attacking Leibnitz. As to your other categories – basketball training, for example – all I can say is that you have successfully dumbed me down.
As to my personal relations with McLuhan, and my response to him generally, may I recommend that you read my (so far unpublished) short story about him, which has been posted on the Stories page. It deals with some of the issues you and other respondents have raised.
I love it! A sadist after my own heart. These readers of yours are a tough lot. Two of them were waiting in front of my house with tire irons at three o’clock in the morning yelling terrible things about McLuhan, whistling and beckoning me outside for “a sound thrashing”.
Thanks for reading the blog. Coaching basketball has markedly reduced my ability to hold normal human conversations and has contributed to this terrible new habit of foaming at the mouth that I have developed. Its dumbing down effect is legendary!
I am very much looking forward to reading your McLuhan story. It sounds fantastic.
Surely there’s a connection between the proposition that the medium is the message and the undeniable dumbing-down. It’s pretty tough to be very smart in a 140-character tweet or a 20-second sound bite.
I’ll take our “sometimes stodgy but very rich past”, thanks.
Wit is nature to advantaged dressed, what oft was thought but n’er so well expressed. (69 characters from Alexander Pope)
I’m glad I left myself the narrow escape by saying “pretty tough” rather than “impossible”. If Pope had been on Twitter, this discussion would clearly be going in a different direction.
Brilliant reply!
Whatever McLuhan’s intention, many of his followers in the 60′s understood “The medium is the message” as devaluating content. To that extent it validates dumbing-down. “Democratization” also justifies dumbing-down as far as simplification and over-simplification sound the death of the idea that “content” can be judged for quality quite apart from the technical means of transmission. By the way, I got the impression that Koch in no way deplored McLuhan’s humour.
Fred, I’m torn. There are aspects of the “stodgy” past which sustain me; without which I could not live happily. But I don’t want to denigrate or deny myself and others the different kind of utility and satisfaction that high-speed internet and digital technology facilitate. It’s not either-or, it is both-and. We’re lucky to have the choice!
I don’t think that the current world is “dumbed-down”, I just think it’s different. I’m not really sure what “dumbed-down” even means. Does it mean less linear? Does it mean more reactionary? Does it mean appealing more to an emotion rather than rational set of responses?
A commonly held misconception that is bought into by many people is that the past is superior to the present (intellectually, spiritually, etc.). The “dumbed-down” value judgement fits neatly into this framework. When was the past? When was this time period where folks were more evolved? We have the writings of brilliant minds like Hume or Descartes, but for the most part, people of those times would scarcely have been unable to read a 140 character tweet. During many supposedly less dumbed down periods in our history we have had things like segregation, rampant colonialism, slavery, and wars on a global scale. These are hardly signs of a deeply enlightened past.
I believe that, as a society, we are as dumb as we’ve ever been. The modes of expression may change, but the people who choose to express those ideas are strikingly similar.
Sorry, I’m not buying it.
I say “dumbed-down” means comparatively lacking in intellectual rigour.
I acknowledge that we seem (sometimes and in some places) to be making progress in areas such as social justice, public health, and a greater degree of international good order and discipline. But I remain unconvinced that the progress results from, or is even contributed to, by Twitter, Facebook and the like.
With the obvious exception of blogs such as this one, of course.
Using objective measures, explain to me what time periods had more “intellectual rigor”. I would agree that Facebook, Twitter and the like are not contributing to progress but that is a completely different argument. We are talking about the abstract, as yet satisfactorily defined term “dumbed-down”. I believe that you see this in the world and I think that is a valid point of view I just don’t believe it’s objectively true and I fail to see how you can prove its truth.