McLuhan: Hot+Cool
Stearn,
G. E. (ed.) (1967). McLuhan: Hot and Cool: a primer for the understanding
of and a critical symposium with responses by McLuhan. New York: Dial.
This collection of texts addressing McLuhan's ideas was first published in the late 1960s. The articles, book reviews and interviews were written by some of the leading thinkers and critics of the time, and the volume also includes a selection of essays by McLuhan himself, from the early part of his career.
2. Tom Wolfe, The New Life Out There, pp.
15-34
Author Tom Wolfe captures the mood of the time (1965) as McLuhan's converts
and critics alike wonder 'what if he is right?' The essay includes brief,
accessible summaries of McLuhan's key ideas - electronic media as a new
environment, changing sense ratios, aural vs visual man, tactile TV, outdated
education methods, changing perceptions of space and time - and concludes
with an assessment of the strengths and potential weaknesses of his ideas
and a visit to a topless restaurant in San Francisco. Available
online.
5. Kenneth E. Boulding, The Medium and the Message,
pp. 56-64
The economist Kenneth E. Boulding here suggests that McLuhan hits 'very
large nails not quite on the head'. After providing slightly innaccurate
tasters of Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media, Boulding
isolates three of their key ideas: (1) social systems are structured by
their communications media, irrespective of content, a proposition with
which Boulding largely agrees, especially viz. writing; (2) media are hot
(require little participation) or cool (require significant participation),
an idea Boulding believes to be important even if it conflates the 'demandingness'
of media with the additional dimensions of range and density; (3) print
caused an explosion (societies fragmented) whereas electric media
cause an implosion (the globe unifies), a theme which is exciting
but concentrates on range to the exclusion of demandingness and density.
22. Raymond Williams, A Structure of Insights, pp. 186-89
Raymond Williams' short, thoughtful comment on The Gutenberg Galaxy
starts from the seeming paradox that 'if the books works it to some extent
annihilates itself', that is, our experience in reading the book
makes us critical of the linear and uniform properties of the print-culture
that made it possible. McLuhan attempts to address this problem in the form
of the book, which is not a linear argument but a mosaic 'structure of insights',
but nonetheless inevitably relies himself on the authorities and scholarship
of print. Williams' key criticism, however, is that McLuhan isolates and
privileges print as a causal factor in social development, even if this
remains 'a wholly indispensable' book.