McLuhan’s 5 Tips for Surviving the Internet

Marshal McLuhan’s theories are germane to understanding the internet—the electric media where we find ourselves stimulated and overwhelmed. McLuhan died in 1980 but stands alone as a guide to making sense of our “too much information” world. 

He saw it coming as clear as day. His tips, appear below, numbered 1-5. They come from Understanding Media, McLuhan’s groundbreaking book from 1964. 

McLuhan’s writings help you gain a measure of confidence about “Why Is This Happening” way more than any TV show by Chris Hayes! 

McLuhan correctly identified the significance of the Sputnik launch (1957) and satellite communications systems. We now had the earth in our electronic embrace.

1) Today the action and reaction occur almost at the same time.

The mechanical/industrial era began in 1450 with Johannes Gutenberg and the printing press. We are now in an era of electric technology. The printing press changed the world. The internet is today's revolution-- and cause of anxiety. 

Some folks didn’t get the memo and think cause-and—effect determines outcomes. There is no chain of logic in the electronic environment. It happens so fast, everything is simultaneous.

2) We actually live mythically and integrally, as it were, but we continue to think in the old, fragmented space and time patters of the pre-electric age. 

The electronic revolution has started to feel oppressive—even to the most enthusiastic Facebook, Instagram, Twitter user.  Just as a fish is not aware of water we don’t know what social media does to our lives. We cannot put down the phone and want to know why! 

We are so connected to screens it makes you want to scream. Your mind, body and spirit is flying around with all the other electrons created by the new environment.

3) In the electric age, where our central nervous system is technologically extended to involve us in all of mankind and to incorporate the whole of mankind in us, we necessarily participate, in depth in the consequences of every action. 

We get too much information, all day long. Is there any escape. Not sure there is. But always remember McLuhan’s great axiom—“the medium is the message.”

McLuhan stated the medium is more significant than whatever the content being produced. 

4) For the “content” of a medium is like the juicy meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.

The content of your phone conversations has little significance; what matters is that you are using the cellphone.  

Donald Trump’s tweets matter less than the fact that he is using Twitter.

McLuhan recognized the difficulty in grasping the internet—abstract and invisible. McLuhan compared his task to Louis Pasteur’s scientific revelations—for germs are also invisible to the eye. 

5) I am in the position of Louis Pasteur telling doctors that their greatest enemy was quite invisible, and quite unrecognized by them.

Do not fall for content the fast-moving hype generated by social media, cable news, etc.. Do remember the medium for therein lives the answer. 

Our very spirit and bodies have become the medium. We extend outward to the whole universe. That’s a lot of electrons to carry on your shoulders. 

Separate from the monster…? Can you not glance at your phone every few seconds…?

Marshall McLuhan is the best medicine—the true doctor for our overworked synapses. 

Read McLuhan before going to bed each night.

We Are All Actors (Marshall McLuhan)

Donald Trump, former host of a reality television show, became president and turned the nation and the world into a reality television show-- complete with cliff-hangers, constant conflict and a barrage of insults for friends and foe alike. Trump TV engages us all. Marshall McLuhan died in 1980 but anticipated correctly our present state of connectedness. His comments below, powerful and challenging, are tour de force McLuhan... every sentence contains a Master's thesis.

The End of the Work Ethic 

(an address by Marshall McLuhan to the Empire Club of Canada)

Living electronically, where the effects come before the causes, is a rather graphic and vivid way of explaining why distant goals and objectives are somewhat meaningless to “neuronic” man. Electronic man, that is, works is a world where electronic services are an expansion of an environmental form, of his own nervous system. To such a man is it meaningless to say that he should seek or pursue distant goals and objectives, since all the satisfactions and objectives are already present to him. This explains the mystery of why preliterate and acoustic peoples appear to us to be so deeply satisfied with such shallow resources and means of existence. Acoustic man, living in a simultaneous environment of electric information, is suddenly disillusioned by the ideal of moreness, whether it be more goods or more people or more security or more fame. Acoustic, or electronic man, understands instantly that the nature and limits of human satisfactions, forbid any increase of happiness through an increase of power or wealth. Acoustic man naturally “plays it by ear” and leaves harmoniously and musically and melodiously. Ecology is only another name for this acoustic simultaneity and sudden responsibility for creating ecological environments pressed very suddenly upon Western man on October 17^th, 1959. That was the day when Sputnik went into orbit, putting this planet inside a man-made environment for the first time. As soon as the planet went inside a man-made environment, the occupants of the planet began to hum and sing the ecological theme song without any further prompting.

When the planet was suddenly enveloped by a man-made artifact, “Nature” flipped into art form. The moment of Sputnik was the moment of creating Spaceship Earth and/or the global theatre. Shakespeare at the Globe had seen all the world as a stage, but with Sputnik, the world literally became a global theatre with no more audiences, only actors.

from Marshall McLuhan essays:

media research

technology, art, communication

—edited with commentary by Michel A. Moos

1980, 1997