MORE ON MARSHALL MCLUHAN even to be reconsidered today round about the cyberspace

ENVIRONMENTS ARE NOT PASSIVE WRAPPINGS, but are rather actıve processes which are invisible ANTIENVIRONMENTS, OR COUNTER SITUATIONS MADE BY ARTISTS PROVIDES MEANS OF DIRECT ATTENTION AND ENABLE US TO SEE AND UNDERSTAND MORE CLEARLY çevremiz tümüyle edilgin bir giysi gibi olmayıp, görünmeyen fakat etkin süreçler olarak düşünülmelidir... çevreye karşı çıkan olağan dışı durumlar ancak sanatçılar tarafından üretilen işlevsel nitelikli, dikkat çekici ve olayları daha iyi belirleyen eylemlerdir.

(1. quotation from medium is the massage mc luhan, 2. blogspots.com is new and practice is a must... below 10 recent pc graphics prepared with random methodology will be exhibited 4u)

Marshall McLuhan's lasting contribution is his vision of the ways in
which history and culture and individuals are modified and, to some extent,
determined by technology. His work will continue to be discussed and
debated, dismissed and praised because of the ongoing need to consider not
just the influence of technology upon society but also upon individuals and
their habitual modes of perception. Consider a characterisation by James J.
O'Donnell of the work of McLuhan and some of his colleagues:

"...those who offer technologically determinist analyses of the
history of western cultures--the Havelocks, Ongs, McLuhans,
and their followers--remain marginalized.... The determinists
see culture as a series of behaviours determined by the powers
and limits of each generation's "hardware", that is, the
technologies of communication..."[1]

There is only one McLuhan, one Havelock, one Ong: the audience
O'Donnell had in mind seems to have occasioned this remark from him, for
he is otherwise open to the arguments of the so-called "determinists." Is he
accurate in saying that McLuhan "offers a technologically determinist
analysis of the history of western cultures"? The short answer is that
McLuhan was concerned with exploring the ways in which culture and
history are determined by technology, not the ways in which they aren't; he
may have overstated his case, but has posed interesting questions.





Technologies need to develop as updated extensions of ourselves


McLuhan's famous remark that "The medium is the message" is typical
of his overstatements. I interpret the rhetorical intent of the slogan as an
attempt to correct an imbalance. If there's a great weight on a fulcrum and
you want to displace the dead weight toward the centre, you must apply
considerable force from the extreme end. It was McLuhan's misfortune to
have been successful enough to displace the rock onto the top of his head.

Previous to McLuhan, we had not thought of technologies as extensions of
ourselves. The car can be thought of as an extension of the body. Electronic
communication systems extend our senses of sight and sound toward the
creation of the global village just as our sense of sight is extended to the
scales of the very small and large by the microscope and telescope. The
book can be thought of as an extension of the mind and memory; we do not
have to remember everything but, rather, may re-member knowledge to us
by way of the book. This allows us to develop extended runs of ingenuity
that would be unthinkable were we required to remember the entire
sequence at once. Moreover, the language need not be expressed in
mnemonics of rhyme, metre, and tone necessary for extended recall.
Language, no longer under these particular constraints of human memory,