I find that typing up a response to a set of readings is actually more appealing when I'm typing it into the blog widget on my dashboard. Weird eh? Too bad I won't have spell check. Well here goes:
(October 4 McCluhan 16 and 18, Carey on the Telegraph)
I find several things interesting and pervasive in the readings from McCluhan and Carey, perhaps these where subpoints in the main arguments but the ever changing relationship between time and automation fascinates me. He says "...the American farmer...was goaded into a frenzy of creation of labor-saving devices. It would seem that the logic of success in this matter is the ultimate retirement of the work force from the scene of toil. In a word automation." (219) In fact quite the opposite is the case. As Carey points out that "Time has been redefined as an ecological niche to be filled down to the microsecond, nannosecond, and picosecond-down to a level at which time can be pictured but not experienced." (228-229) In my experience the electronic technology consumes me more than it sets me free. In fact my leisure becomes the time I spend consumed in somesort of electronic medium, perhaps this is because in creating labor saving devices (and McCluhan points this out later) that the technology enables us to DO more in a shorter amount of time, and also creates means of escape into an electronic world. Seriously, how much time do I spend unabsorbed in a computer or other piece of technology/media, a couple of hours? When I'm sleeping? I feel as though I could try to disagree with either of these observations, maybe argue the other side, but that would be a bit pointless. These readings definately made me want to go back and read parts of Jacques Ellul's analysis of the changing nature of technology. In his book The Technological Society (1964...same year as McCluhans Understanding Media) Ellul I think provides a more lucid look at the effects of technological developments on the human mind, society and institutions...where McCluhan says technology is the extension of ourselves Ellul spends most of his time examining technique, one might even say that he looks at how our external nervous system destroys our internal nervous system (I'm grossly over generalizing but I think Ellul takes a more fatalistic approach than McCluhan) "technique has taken over all of man's activities, not just his productive activity...technique transforms everything it touches into a machine." (4) Here, I believe he "...when technique enters into every area of life, including the human, its ceases to be external to man and becomes his very substance." (6) In the final chapter of Technology and Society Ellul says "Humanity seems to have forgotten the wherefore of all its travail, as though its goals had been translated into an abstraction or had become implicit; or as though its ends rested in an unforeseeable future of undetermined date, as in the case of Communist society. Everything today seems to happen as though ends disappear, as a result of the magnitude of the very means at our disposal." (430)
2 comments:
Ben,
Though I have not read Ellul, there does seem to be some continuity between his ideas and McLuhan's. Ellul refers to the magnitude of our means as obscuring our view of the ends. McLuhan has a similar argument when he discusses the idea that most people have no sense of the effect of technology on their existence, and therefore, no way to guard against ill-effects. Though McLuhan, in general, may have a more optimistic view of technology as a means of connecting all of us in a global village, he still insinuates the magnitude of the means and the lack of understanding implied by Ellul. Thanks for introducing Ellul into the discussion.
yeah, i think the arguments are similar, although i believe ellul is far more pessimistic in terms of the vieled effects or ends of our technological progess. i really need to read that book.
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