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lighten though that the university has

come through with payment on its own we

should pause a woman to thank command

most responsible for carrying through

father John Culkin father would you

stand up and take a bow one more thing

which might make dr. McLuhan slightly

more understandable he is a Texan by

marriage his wife is from Fort Worden

now it gives me pleasure to introduce

our seeing-eye dog for the day dr. Ralph

Baldwin who will be followed by dr.

McLuhan topic open mind surgery dr.

Malden

Thank You Ralph Thank You mr. chairman

mr. Jacobs it's good to be here with all

of you although I can't profess that

this is the very moment I've been

waiting for the young the young I'm very

indebted to Steve Allen for an

observation he made long time ago the

funny man is a man with a grievance I

tried that one backwards and said all

right then where there are grievances

there should be lots of jokes and mostly

it proves that way in French Canada

there lots of grievances and remember

how General de Gaulle offered to free

French Canada recently he offered to

free the Scots - that didn't make the

press quite as excited as it should have

I didn't dream of freeing the Irish said

I think there would have been a storm

but the goal is you know a new

lalibertĂŠ huh but as a result of paying

attention to grievances I've discovered

to play quite a batch of jokes and I pay

special attention to media jokes like

the one of the teachers speaking to a

class and saying now class what does

this century almost - Thomas Edison and

the hand went up and said teacher if it

weren't for Thomas Edison we would be

watching TV by candlelight

the French Canadians raveling jokes like

the one about the president of Canadians

shell mmm chatting on the phone with the

president of American shell couple years

hence and the Canadian present president

is saying Diamond Lee and we must have a

big personnel program in Sherbrooke and

the total reorganization see whole

sheltered suite was a pause and voice

from the American end says hey

well thank you thank you talking to

white boy

it was quite it was quite recently that

I began to pay a little attention to the

effect of radio on the huntys and as you

know it brought in the Jazz Age and the

jazz babies it brought in Hitler that is

Hitler as a man who played it by ear and

who will I was a region a retry belies

man who had a new message to offer to

the Germans by way of their Ruggeri

gaining their tribal identity the other

night the CBS show on Germany was

terrifying it revealed that the Germans

are desperately seeking for a new tribal

identity it was Ray Bradbury who pointed

out maybe others too but I just happened

to hear him say this violence is the

quest for identity and whether you do it

a lie John Wayne or Ella Negro riots

whether you do it individually or

corporately the quest for identity can

only be satisfied by violence doesn't

have to be punch in the face it can be

violence violence one does to one's own

nature self-discipline asceticism and so

on it also forms a violent button the

twenties having them become alienated

from the visual world of goals and

simple directions began to live it up

they got turned on they began to live it

up in the Jazz Age that turned the negro

zone it was one of their great moments

not as great as their TV moment by any

means I'm glad to

the coming of this new tribal mentality

to the 1920s inspired Gertrude Stein to

point out to her group her age group you

were all a lost generation this is the

condition of the twenty ones and over

right now lost generation because - they

were too old to tribal eyes to get the

jazz baby message of involvement in

tribal form the twenty ones and over

today are much too old to get the TV

tribal message of involvement and they

are we are a lost generation in that

sense expendable but to come back for a

moment in the 1920s when those jazz

babies reached the job plateau and

fifteen years later they arrived with

this total involved habit without any

specialized directions or preferences

off the old fashioned say John Wayne

variety and then knew exactly what he

wanted and when you put the tribal man

in a decision-making area and he quickly

reveals his loss of direction and and

you get a slump literally when the man

of visual direction and specialism is

pushed aside by the electronic all round

turned on swinging prison I got plenty

of nothing and nothing is plenty for me

remember porgy and bess that was the

great message of the twenties when those

people reached the job plateau we had a

slump but it's nothing compared to the

slump that we're just about at my

five years the slump that's coming from

the TV generation will be on a much

greater scale unless we decide to

operate but the the German world

recovered direction and and identity by

violence by war and got into action

recovered itself and I suppose the same

war helped us to recover our sense of

direction in spite of the jazz babies

but this kind of use of the Airways or

the total human environment as a

teaching machine a programmed aging

machine is what it has become this

extension of our own nervous system as a

total infant environment of information

is in a sense an extension of the

evolutionary process and instead of it's

taking place biologically over many

thousands of years it is now possible in

fact it has happened to us in the last

few decades it is not possible to

traverse many millions of years in

seconds by putting evolutionary

extensions of ourselves outside as

environments as teaching machines the

man-made environments that are now

Planetary are in terms of evolutionary

development a greater step than anything

that ever happened to our biological

lives in the whole biological past just

because they are environments they're

invisible and this is a peculiarity

that's one answer the meaning of that

message to the fish or the we don't know

who discovered water but we're sure it

wasn't efficient one thing that is

always invisible to occupants is the

environment what stands out loud and

clear is the

old environment where view mirror so

that to the TV operator is the movie

world is very visible TV is invisible

the TV TV world is an x-ray world TV is

an x-ray device the viewer of TV is

being x-rayed at all times the radiation

goes right through them the children get

this message at once and they carry the

message out into the schoolroom where

they find no resemblance to TV x-ray

where subjects are laid out in little

classified forms algebra and history and

such no depth no involvement so our

children are teeny boppers and the

under-20 ones utterly confused by the

discrepancy between the environment they

encounter is entertainment and the

environment of the schoolroom this

confusion is on a bigger scale if you

like repeated in the Vietnam business

Vietnam is getting a Western treatment

it's getting a thoroughly massive

educational program we put our whole

mechanical industrial environment around

them as an educational machine this is

what Julius Caesar did with the Huns

Alexander the Great did war as an

educational institution is the most

powerful because it bill deals with the

whole environment in action as an

educational teaching machine and

somebody or other gets the message but

what we are doing in Vietnam is using

the old 19th century machine program for

the Orient what we're doing to ourselves

is orientalizing ourselves by our own

latest technology instead of the Eldar

trip

the integer instead of individual

specialism integral organic involvement

the TV world and the lake world of

electric circuitry automatically ensures

that the orientalizing off the whole of

the human population exposed to it no

when the Negro experiences our new

electric environment he is turned on as

never before black power just surges up

as he feels this involvement and

congenial hospitality of the electronic

environment and he looks around and he

sees the old literate mechanical

environment which had always rejected

him degraded him alienated him and this

naturally enrages him he destroys it if

possible the enemy India and China and

Africa will do this on a much bigger

scale as soon as they encounter an

electronic environment up til now

they're getting the 19th century not the

20th the 19th century was the old

machine age of fragmentation literacy

and specialism the one that the liberal

mind has never got beyond it's never

studied the layered environment its

literate visual detached non-involved

the visual man is the only detached

human being that ever lived on this

planet all the other senses except sight

smell hearing touch movement these are

involving and they are discontinuous and

unconnected

only the electronic permits a total

encounter with the discontinuous the

disconnected the world of the

discontinuity came in most vividly with

the Telegraph in the newspaper the

stories in the newspaper are completely

discontinuous because they're

simultaneous they're all under one

Dateline but there's no storyline to

connect them TV is like that of course

it's a it's a an x-ray mosaic screen

with the light charging through the

screen at the viewer Joyce called it the

charge of the Light barricade in fact

Finnegan's Wake is the greatest guide to

the media ever devised on this planet

and is a tremendous study of the action

of all media upon the human psyche and

sensorium but it's difficult to read but

it's worth it now as we move our

evolutionary process out into the

environment itself and instead of

putting something inside the Darwin

thought of man as inside an environment

it never occurred to Darwin that it

would be possible to program the

environment itself as evolutionary

Darwin is a literate 19th century man

and never he had no information of the

electronic information circuit or in

total human environment of information

so where I are dejardines a little more

aware of the meaning of the electronic

then Darwin could possibly have been but

that's a perfect example of the rear

view mirror this Darwinian obsession

with men's thumbs fingers and appendages

as biological evolution

this had right in the midst of the great

evolutionary step into the electronic

circuitry Darwin has remains obsessed

with this content of this old

environment what we of course saying

here is that if man is now in a position

to program the total human environment

as a teaching machine for the first time

in human history he's also in a position

to exercise some reasonable choice and

preference over the programming of that

environment that rational man may really

get his first innings out of this

computerized university up till now he's

been a kind of little straw blown around

by the technology one of the reasons why

we can now notice these environments

generated by new technologies is that

they yield to one another so rapidly

that it's almost impossible not to

notice the changing of the scene or the

guard or something but no previous human

age ever understood the effect of these

human endeavors on the environment as

they affected that age they always

understood the effect on the previous

age but never the effect on themselves

the history of utopias is the history of

rearview mirrors every utopia is a

picture of the preceding age like

Bonanza land there is never a utopia

that copes with the present any present

man seems to have this built-in device

of rearview mirror ISM because he fears

this confrontation with the total human

environment the only person who seems to

have virtually encounter and report on

the new

present is the artist and whenever he

passes in his report he is at once

branded as a cook because the present is

always unrecognizable because it is not

safe to look at when one understands the

operation of these new environments on

our human equipment it then becomes easy

to predict and to forecast the changes

that will take place in many levels of

programming of even of entertainment the

end of the star system is automatic with

TV the end of baseball it's a star

system you can like prizefighting won't

work for TV it's cool it's involving it

doesn't permit the flashy blazing-hot

star cooperation the young kids today

are not interested in stars less mothers

brothers are not stars in the old sense

at all but the kids are very interested

in the techniques used by the smothered

brothers they're very interested in late

processes how things are done and how

things happened or do happen this

following of complex processes is part

of the involvement need of an electric

agent Expo at in Montreal is a has been

a great success for the simple reason

that pulled the storyline off the whole

show like a Fellini movie no storyline

the storyline hots it up and leaves the

spectator outside looking on helplessly

without involvement Expo is a mosaic

without connections just like page 1

total involvement results everybody

wants to go back again and again to

follow through

that pavilions activities the New York

World Fair relative plot too much

storyline too many connections no room

for involvement or participation you can

fill in from your experience with

countless examples but this happens to

be the reason why the examples occurred

and Expo is exactly like the TV screen

it's a mosaic it's not a picture there

are no pictures on TV even when you put

a movie on TV those are not pictures it

still comes through as a charge of the

Light Brigade it's a an involving mosaic

situation in which the storyline or

connected spaces are not there the

viewer has to supply them that's how he

gets involved however I'm not trying to

present any programs of action or any

directions of action

I'm really trying to suggest ways of

perceiving the situation we have

developed for ourselves I have them as I

listen to Ralph

I was recalled another communication

starting about the two Navajo Indians

who are having a little chat across a

Arizona Valley by smoke signal and

midway through their chat the AEC

released an atomic charger and when the

big mushroom cloud cleared away one of

the Indians sent up little smoke signal

to the effect gee I wish I'd said that

the world of communication stories is

very rich a sort of old-fashioned one is

about the two goats at the back of

Hollywood studio an old MGM studio where

there are masses of old throwaway film

and one of the goats kicked open a can

containing picture of Gone with the Wind

and having nibbled a bit eagerly signal

to its companion to come on got a bite

of this when the companion arrived and

nibbled the other one say how about it

no I don't know I I think I liked the

book better

Media stories can be very useful though

for studying media and I heard one about

the two mice in a nose cone moving

around the planet one says to the other

how do you like this kind of work

another one says all well better than

cancer research you can see the

grievances sticking out a mile but good

old Steve Allen and his observation if

jokes arise from grievances and

irritation then perhaps they serve as a

release or catharsis of the same I'm

rather puzzled I'm sure there's a

reasonable cause I I haven't heard a

story in the last a funny story since I

came to New York two or three weeks ago

don't hear any ah well it isn't

repeatable that's like grievance for the

day but I am have this uneasy feeling

that I've released a number of these

atomic charges and predicting the next

depression is not far off once our TV

kids reach the job plateau they don't

want jobs the next phase is the dropout

executive

all the reason for that is very simple a

big exact doesn't have a job he has 60

jobs that's a role a mother doesn't have

a job she's 40 or 50 jobs that's a role

in the electronic age where everything

becomes associate all activities become

associated and interrelated you can't

have jobs you can only have roles so the

whole job structure is a storyline that

just or an organization chart just has

to be yanked out if business is to

survive now the organization charges is

as a dentist as baseball and for the

same reasons one thing at a time

baseball can't live in a TV age because

there's one play at a time one pitch one

hit one catch won't work in an all at

once world one thing at a time won't

work on the job front or on the sports

player but them or the educational front

I'm trying to be helpful here I'm not

trying to just put on an act I wish

somebody had told me some of these

things a few years ago it's been

exciting to discover them but also feel

I feel is a bit of waste for example in

the PV generation there ought to be

studies made and heaven knows we're

trying to do a few of them this year

there ought to be studies made of the

difference between those who saw TV

after they learn to read and write and

those who first began to watch TV before

they learn to read and write I think

you'll find is a big watershed they're

two totally different kinds of human

beings are coming on oncoming traffic

two totally different kinds the kids who

learn to read and write before they saw

TV had a kind of immunity a cushion for

their senses that made the TV impact

very much less and I think there are

those exact

dates and age groups ought to be

carefully ascertained and studies made

because the whole future programming of

work and education depends on it

again Vietnam is our first TV war that's

why people won't buy it it's into

involving all the previous wars were

fought on hot media like movies pictures

are photographs and press and now people

experience the war as something it

involves them profoundly and they don't

want to have anything to do with it it

isn't a question of a trying to

ascertain the pros and the cons the

rights and the wrongs of the Cong or

whoever that is nothing to do with it

it's just this new phase of total

involvement and participation that is

unthinkable so the new gang coming on

the kids who are really turned on will

find that war much less tolerable or any

other war much less tolerable than the

present generation no comparison here it

seems to me that we do waste an awful

lot of time assigning fanciful reasons

for these events and also in selecting

very unfortunate and wasteful goals for

our energies when we do after all have a

rather deep desire to work out a livable

equilibrium for the human community we

do go to so much trouble to create

violent upsets and disequilibrium I'm

glad I know I'm not sure how successful

a reprogramming could be in our say our

life our lifetime

I'm just going to check whether I have

omitted some crucial funny stories and

then probably not but the no none none

of them repeatable last thing I see are

one hint there Columbus went too far

it's like that similar observation

Plymouth Rock should have landed on the

pilgrims but in our present world there

cannot be a Columbus how X t-rex ternal

exploration has ended and the future of

exploration is necessarily internal

whether in medicine or in entertainment

a film since I feel you are in good

humor at this moment I am I think I will

hold my dents like the arts and quietly

steal off thank you very much

dr. McLuhan you are a seer thank you

very much doctor and dr. Ralph Baldwin

you've added immeasurably to our to to a

seminar and we thank you