Canada’s McLuhan &

McLuhan’s Canada

Norm Friesen

Outline

• A little about me• How McLuhan is seen in Canada (some

personal reflections)• How Canada (and Germany) is seen in

McLuhan• Conclusions, questions, etc…

Thompson Rivers University Open Learning

• 16,000 students a year • 52 degree, diploma and certificate programs • 400+ courses offered

Canadian Perspective

Canadian Context: Geography

Germany

• Size: 357,021 km²

• Persons per km²:230

Canada

• Size: 9,984,670 km²

• Persons per km²: 3.3

“Technological Nationalism"(Babe, 1989, p. 5)

• Canada: “a country that exists by reason of communication” (Boyle, in Shallit & Lyons, 1997, p. 150).

• transcontinental railroad, satellite ,Internet infrastructures

• singularly “rich heritage of communication thought” (Babe, 2000, p. 3)

CA*net4

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Canada’s McLuhan

• Current situation• Media Ecology• Recent Publications• Pop-McLuhan

University of Toronto

• The largest university in Canada• Home of the “Toronto School” of

communication• Principle theorists in this school:

– Harold Innis (Media, space and time)– Marshall McLuhan (media as message)– Derrick de Kerckhove (McLuhan popularizer)

• Neil Postman

McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of

Toronto“there is no longer an official McLuhan Program at the University of Toronto”

McLuhan Right Now

• Mediatropes.com: Journal; edited by Twyla Gibson (twyla.gibson@utoronto.ca)

• The Marshall McLuhan Global Research Network (www.mcluhan.ca) “a labour of love in honour of the work of McLuhan. This is an open source not-for-profit web project”

• Media Ecology Association: www.media-ecology.org

Derrick de Kerckhove

Media Ecology• Media ecology is the study of media as

environments... (e.g., books, radio, film, television, etc.)

• These environmental characteristics “are more often implicit and informal, half concealed by our assumption that what we are dealing with is not an environment but merely a machine.”

• “Media ecology tries to make these specifications explicit.” (Postman, 1970, p. 161)

Recent Publications

McLuhan as more a popular than intellectual figure

From: Woody Allen, Annie Hall, 1979http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpIYz8tfGjY

McLuhan Published Prolifically, often NOT academically; e.g. 1967-1970

• 1967 Verbi-Voco-Visual Explorations. Reprint. New York: Something Else Press.

• 1968 Dew-Line Newsletters. New York: Human Development Corporation.

• with Harley Parker. 1969. Counterblast. New York: Harcourt Brace & World.

• 1970. Culture is Our Business. New York: McGraw-Hill. • with Wilfred Watson. 1970. From Cliché to Archetype. New

York: Viking. • http://www.mcluhan.utoronto.ca/images/Fellows/lynnereso

urce_mcluhanbibliography.pdf

Pop-McLuhan

Clip: “McLuhan’s Wake”

• McLuhan as involved with business and politics of the 1960’s and early 1970’s:– Pierre Trudeau: Prime Minister of Canada– Roy Thompson: Famous Canadian Publisher,

cultural figure

• McLuhan more as a popular, controversial figure rather than a philosopher or theorist

• “No one can make sense of more than 10% of what McLuhan is trying to say.”

McLuhan now as “officially sanctioned” part of Canadian HeritageDevelopment

sponsored by Canada Post & a Bronfman Charity

Broadcast costs supported through “Canadian Content” requirements

“The McLuhan Explosion” (Documentary)

McLuhan’s Canada

• McLuhan’s theory of “mediatic nationality”• The typographic – oral/electronic continuum• Nationhood and media• America, Russia, Germany• Canada, the Artist and the “DEW Line”

“Mediatic Nationality”

• Mediatic “nationalism;” in connection with Canada and other nations

• Geoffrey Winthrop-Young: • „McLuhans Neigung, Nationen als homogene

Wahrnehmungsgemeinschaften zu behandeln“ • „deren Sinneskoordinationspraktiken von

historisch kontingenten Medienkonstella-tionen geprägt werden“

McLuhan’s mediatic “Nationalism”

• Um zu ergründen, wie eine Nation sich und die Welt erlebt und was für politische Konsequenzen daraus erwachsen, muß man herausfinden, zu welchem Zeitpunkt und aufgrund welcher evolutionären Dynamik welches Leitmedium dem kollektiven Sinneshaushalt seinen Stempel aufgedrückt hat.“

• Geoffrey Winthrop-Young (2008) „Von gelobten und verfluchten Medienländern: Kanadischer Gesprächsvorschlag zu einem deutschen Theoriephänomen“

Typographic <--> Oral/Electronic

• Europe, urban America, Germany

• Print: Book, newspaper, letters

• Visual Space; external, detatched, eye

• Linear order/sequence• City , the cosmopolitan• Hierarchy, bureaucracy,

specialization

• Rural & Black America, the Orient, Africa

• Electronic: Radio, TV, computer

• Acoustic Space, tactile, involved, ear

• Simultaneous• Global Village, the tribal• Tribal family, unity• Canada as “borderline”

Geopolitical Mediality

America, Russia

• “America is therefore one of the countries in which Descartes' precepts are least studied and best applied. Everyone shuts himself up tightly within himself and insists upon judging the world from there.” (Tocqueville)

• “The Russians’ love of the telephone is congenial to the oral tradition…. The Russian uses the telephone for the sort of effects we associate with the eager conversation of the lapel gripper whose face is 12 inches away.”

Germany

• “That Hitler came into political existence at all is directly owing to radio and public-address systems” (1966: 262).

• “The German defeat had thrust them back from visual obsession into brooding upon the resonating Africa within. The tribal past has never ceased to be a reality for the German psyche” (1966: 262).

Canada & the DEW Line• The McLuhan Dew Line (a mixed-media newsletter)• The Marshall McLuhan Dew Line Plattertudes

(series of recordings)• “Today, when the old industrial hardware is

obsolescent, we can see that the Canadian condition of low-profile identity and multiple borders approaches the ideal pattern of electronic living”

• Canada and the role of the artist

From: Counterblast, 1969

• “I bring you greetings from the country of the DEW line, or early warning system. As the United States becomes a world environment, Canada might serve very well as an early warning system for culture and technology.”(Address at vision 65)

From: Counterblast, 1969

From: Counterblast, 1969