In a few days, this December 31st will mark the 30th anniversary of the death of Canadian university professor, philosopher and author Marshall McLuhan.
Over 40 years ago, McLuhan made many interesting observations about mass communications that still apply in today’s World Wide Web, which was launched almost exactly ten years after McLuhan’s death.
One of his most well-known sayings, “The medium is the message”, from the 1960s, seems to describe the Web perfectly.
Some McLuhan quotes which apply to the World Wide Web:
“The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village.”
“Today, the business of business is becoming the constant invention of new business.”
“When a thing is current, it creates currency.”
“All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values.”
“As the unity of the modern world becomes increasingly a technological rather than a social affair, the techniques of the arts provide the most valuable means of insight into the real direction of our own collective purposes.”
“As technology advances, it reverses the characteristics of every situation again and again. The age of automation is going to be the age of ‘do it yourself.’ “
“Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn’t know the first thing about either.”
“It is the framework which changes with each new technology and not just the picture within the frame.”
“Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication.”
McLuhan observations on photography:
“It is one of the peculiar characteristics of the photograph that it isolates single moments in time.”
“At the speed of light, policies and political parties yield place to charismatic images.”
“Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.”
“To say that ‘the camera cannot lie’ is merely to underline the multiple deceits that are now practiced in its name.”
“The camera tends to turn people into things, and the photograph extends and multiplies the human image to the proportions of mass-produced merchandise. The movie stars and matinee idols are put into the public domain by photography. They become dreams that money can buy. They can be bought and thumbed more easily than public prostitutes.”
