TheyCallMePastorBryan

This is the second in a series of posts looking at some quotes from Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage. Previous Post: As We Begin So Shall We Go

This post will be broken into looking at three smaller quotes from The Medium is the Massage. All three quotes center around aspects of how technology has effected the way we perceive the world.

The goose quill put an end to talk. It abolished mystery; it gave architecture and towns; it brought roads and armies, bureaucracy. It was the basic metaphor with which the cycle of civilization began, the step from the dark into the light of the mind. The hand that filled the parchment page built a city.

In this example, we see how the idea of writing lead to applying an organized stance to many other parts of civilization. I think this example and the second serve a double purpose, while showing how technology has reshaped the way we perceive the world, it could also be argued that the way we view the world has shaped our technology.  In this case, consider the current trend of social media – has/is social media changing the way we view the world? or has/is the way we view the world shaped our idea of including social media? The truth probably lies somewhere in between, but also explains why stories revolving around technology getting out of hand is horrifying: our technology shapes us. (consider for instance The Matrix, the storyline of Battlestar Galactica or Dollhouse as some easy examples of our wariness towards technology)  This next example as well could be interpreted in this double nature of us shaping technology and technology shaping us.

Like easel painting, the printed book added much to the new cult of individualism. The private, fixed point of view became possible and literacy conferred the power of detachment, non-involvement.

Once again we see how technology, in this case easel painting and the printed book, have the power to reshape how we view the world.  This once again brings forth the question though about whether we shape our technology or our technology shapes us.  The third example is the strongest in terms of Marshall McLuhan’s stance that our technology has the power to change us.

The railway radically altered the personal outlooks and patterns of social interdependence. It bred and nurtured the American Dream. It created totally new urban, social and family worlds. New ways of work. New ways of management. New legislation.

This is perhaps the most well documented of McLuhan’s observations which I have quoted here. When the railway was established (and later the invention of the automobile, and the telephone) it reshaped the way we consider the family and how we are related, because for the first time we could have more distance from each other while still having the possibility of connectedness.  It has led to the ability of families to be more distanced from each other while still being connected, but has invariably reshaped the way we think about where we live and the sort of considerations that would go forth in such a decision.

In all three of these examples though, we can see an illustration of one of McLuhan’s classic statements “we become that which we behold.”

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One of my biggest complaints with Buzz as I was playing around with it was that it felt like it was missing a context for being able to have a message that is only able to be seen between a handful of people.

It turns out this is due to my own shortsightedness of not playing around with the public/private settings. By setting a Buzz to private, you have the option of a buzz just showing up to those who are your contacts, or you can use defined groups for a more limited exposure. In my case, I’m thinking of experimenting with Buzz as a communication tool for the leadership team of our church plant. Here’s how I went about doing so.

I started by entering some text and selecting private on the public/private dropdown.  I created a group called church plant and added my contacts and then made sure to check the box.

Voila, I can now do filtered social media sharing that is accessible only to a small group that I have defined. (Screenshot below) I think that this could be perfect for a scenario when you have an idea or something that you want to discuss in a medium other than email, but don’t want to be open to everybody.  In a sense, I’m already finding this to be greater potential than my use of twitter or facebook, in that I can very easily and quickly limit the scope of who can read something I’m writing and looking for comments on.

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Google has started rolling out support of Google Buzz in Gmail this morning. So far, I am liking it, though I’ll see as I use it a little more.

I thought I would post a couple quick tips that I’ve found/figured out to make it more managable.

The first thing I did was go in and configure my account to link my twitter feed to my Buzz, I figure I might as well have them converge. To do so, on the Buzz section of gmail, there’s a link that says “xx Connected Sites.” Clicking on it allows you to configure a few things into it. You can set up your Google Reader shared items, Twitter, Google Chat Statuses, Flickr, Picasa, Youtube, and Blogspot. I have Google Reader, Google Chat and Twitter enabled on mine.

The second thing I noticed was that when you get a follow up comment to one you’ve posted, it appears as a new message in your inbox. I do my best to keep my inbox uncluttered and use filters to do so. Lifehacker has already posted a filter option to help you out in this regard, you can easily created a filter by clicking “Create a Filter” in the top right corner and typing “label:Buzz” in the “Has the Words” field. This is great, because it skips the inbox, but still shows up on the Buzz filter as an unread update.

I like the potential of Buzz as long as it stays with useful social media and doesn’t get inundated in Farmville, Mafia Wars or some other sort of game invite the way that Facebook has (the primary reason I loathe Facebook).

If you decide you absolutely hate Google Buzz though, it’s easy to disable, if you scroll to the bottom of your gmail, there’s a text link that says “turn off Buzz” to easily disable it.

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You may have noted I’ve been referring quite a bit to Marshall McLuhan lately. I’m going to add to that a bit more, with a series of posts based on some quotes I highlighted while reading The Medium is the Massage.

The line, the continuum -this sentence is a prime example- became the organizing principle of life. “As we begin, so shall we go.” “Rationality” and logic came to depend in the presentation of connected and sequential facts or concepts.

For many people rationality has the connotation of uniformity and connectiveness. “I don’t follow you” means “I don’t think what you’re saying is rational.”

Visual space is uniform, continuous, and connected. The rational man in our Western culture is a visual man. The fact that most conscious experience has little “visuality” in it is lost on him.

Rationality and visuality have long been interchangable terms, but we do not live in a primarily visual world any more.

McLuhan rightly noted that the ways we organized things around us reshaped how we think of rationality.  As the printed text became our primary medium, the sequential became the basis for rationality.  In terms of the Myers-Briggs typology the dominant trait would be Sensing over iNtuition.  The intuitive has had a tentative place, because their ability to draw connections from seemingly unconnected places is viewed as irrational by those accustomed to needing everything presented in a sequential manner.

As an illustration of this, in seminary I had a class where the professor would not offer outlines and would teach by facilitating dialog rather than going through from point a to point b and so on.  For the more intuitive inclined, like myself, this approach was refreshing and helpful to how I learn. Yet to more sensing types this style of teaching was perceived as almost irrational, and at least unhelpful.  Why is this so? Because for the modern era, we have been shaped by the medium of the printed text and its sequential manner.

In the broad sense, this is the illustration of McLuhan’s statement “as we begin, so shall we go.”  What we start with will shape how we continue to understand. That means for those of us who have grown up with television and the internet, that this is being reshaped.  In The Medium is the Massage, McLuhan states that the television is leading to us having a much more eastern, connected sort of approach to how we see the world.  At the least, the prevalence of the internet and television is reordering how we perceive the world.  I sense that this movement is towards a more intuitional approach of viewing information, as both internet and television thrive on juxtaposition of objects that don’t necessarily belong together.

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