One of the problems I seem to keep striking with McLuhan is the whole technological determinism thing. Just because two things happen at more or less the same time, no matter how related they are, it does not necessarily follow that one caused the other. Take ‘the medium is the message’, for instance. The clear [...]
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The distinction between hot and cool media, as outlined by McLuhan in ‘Understanding Media’ makes direct reference to the two predominant styles of jazz – particularly in the 50s and 60s. Hot jazz was the East Coast, fiery, high intensity music typified by the be-bop of Charlie Parker. Cool jazz was the West Coast, laidback [...]
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After having written yesterday about mythology and the digital ground, I spent a couple of hours this morning reading more from the Donald Theall book, ‘The Virtual McLuhan’. Naturally, it started at once to talk about McLuhan and his interest in the mystical – the kabbalah, tarot, and other hermetic structural bases. Of course, the [...]
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There are, as Joseph Campbell points out, strong ties between the mythic/religious archetypes and narratives among all cultures. The same can presumably be said for digital culture. In the beginning was The Word. Language is primal. Whether spoken, drawn in pictographic form, written using the phonetic alphabet, printed, encoded for telegraphy, transmitted electronically via radio [...]
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