Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 23:31:02 +0500 From: mclr@inforamp.net (Robert Appel) To: mcluhan-list@inforamp.net Cc: Subject: McLuhan List Post #3 (Mini-Post) Sender: owner-mcluhan-list@inforamp.net Precedence: bul Status: Project McLuhan "Mini-Post" March 1994 Third Posting In Sequence 1. Intro Once again, we appreciate your support and encouragement. As regula readers know, the purpose of Project McLuhan is to update and revitalize McLuhan theories and techniques (more on "techniques" below!). We look a this elist as a "feedback mechanism" of sorts, to see how people from various countries and backgrounds "react" to our work. So far comments have been overwhelmingly positive and subscriptions have continued past th 1200 mark. As always, copyright is waived in all material posted, so re-posting is permitted and encouraged as long as credit is given t Project McLuhan. We acknowledge and thank those who are reposting our material on their own web pages. (Reminder -- our web page is http://www.vyne.com, and scroll to "mcluhan"). 2. Processes? In his later works, McLuhan demonstrated a form of thinking or analysis that he used in his private consulting assignments. We call this "McLuha Process Analysis," and it uses key techniques and tools (including Gestalt analysis) to distinguish patterns. Patterns are key -- if you ca distinguish a pattern you are no longer forced to rely on "rear view mirror" thinking, or history, to extrapolate what is coming next. Or, as we sometimes like to say, "don't merely count the arrows, DUCK!". In the material below, we include an extract from an article in a Canadian periodical which quotes Nelson Thall, our President and director of McLuha Research, on the world financial markets. We are not especially interested -- or disinterested -- in the financial markets. However, we noticed that in the last 12 months in particular, virtually all the major Wall Street advisories have gone "quietly mad" because the action of the world markets has broken all established patterns going back to the turn of the century. The "experts" don't know what to do anymore. Perhaps the answer is that "the future doesn't always go where it has been; sometimes it goes where it is going." 3. The Markets (excepted from Success InSight Magazine (quote) Is there any explanation for this (market action)? An answer could come from the prestigious think tank The Marshall McLuhan Center on Global Communications, a group with a very respectable record at "projecting" the future. According to president Nelson Thall, "the global economic paradig irrevocably shifted in the early 90's with the advent of the so-called emerging markets, all hungry for both "capital-ism" as well as raw capital itself. These countries are re-writing the economic roadmap even as we, the established countries, continue to travel it. These countries, collectively, can be described, as "the elephant," thereby bringing a third jungle animal to the traditional bull-bear equation. When the elephant walks, both bulls and bears had better stay clear! These countries, with their own individual agendas, are directly responsible for keeping the price of capital (and interest rates) high; and their unsatiable thirst for goods and services is no doubt responsible for extending th otherwise-tired bull runs in the financial markets of established nations Left to their own devices, the established nations, with their near-mindless borrowing and spending patterns, may well have run into the so-called "wall of debt," or deflation, but this will not happen while th emerging nations are still hungry and materialistically unfed. As Marshall McLuhan often noted, if you drive full-speed ahead with only the rear-view mirror as your guidepost, you are likely to get very lost indeed! This is why so many of the major 'forecasters' have lost their way!" If Thall is correct, the market of 95-97 may be one of the few times this century in which equity markets have done well even in a high interest rate environment...(unquote 4. Disneyland Meets The X-Files (excerpted from our own internal publication, The McLuhan Analyst) (quote) Did you ever ask yourself how long a government secret would "stay" a secret if one of the largest private corporations in the US set out to unravel that secret? No need -- if you watched the TV presentation ALIEN ENCOUNTERS (aired in most areas March 1995) then you know the answer. To promote its upcoming alien-themed "Tomorrowland" attraction at Disneyworld, the Disney corporation unveiled the sort of investigative muscle not seen since "Arnold" went bare-butted in the original Terminator. UFO buffs were astounded -- repeat, astounded! -- to see hard-to-get classified documents and footage fully revealed in this prime time pseudo-documentary ("an Informercial on Steroids"). My, but what you can do with a blank check an autographed pair of mouse ears! Media watchdogs -- if we had any! we don't! -- could spend years pouring over the impact of the show on young, and not so young, minds. The interview sequences with children who claim to hav been "abductees" -- and provide graphic detail to back it up -- makes shooting Old Yeller look like a cakewalk. Insiders tell us that if (we said "if," not "when") aliens ever do "make contact," the gang at Disney have more secret info, and of course products, to release! (unquote) 5. Interview With Nelson Thall, Dir. of Research, Proj. McLuhan (3/15/95 PROJ McL: What is the connection between female dominance in a culture and the dominant media in that same culture? THALL: Right hemisphere technologies evoke passive users. Traditionally this is the woman s role, i.e., she "stoops to conquer." Today, under discarnate electric conditions, the users are neither male nor female in instinct because they have no "bodies" in daily life. Female dominance is at best a nostalgic retrieval. As an aside, let me remind the reader that the Godfather movies were mistitled! PROJ McL: McLuhan s most complex work was reflected in his last book, The Laws of the Media, in which he created the notion of Tetrad Management as a method of understanding the effects of technology on culture. Can you do a Tetrad on, for example, hi-rise buildings? THALL: The hi-rise "amplifies" privacy "Retrieves" the catacomb. The catacomb is a sort of underground community. It tends to "obsolesce" community. Can you think of other features of human existence that have been brought back into play by high rise buildings? Do they resemble something else that we once had around that we no longer have? You tell me what the missing ingredient of this Tetrad is! PROJ McL: What is the connection between "cyberspace" and Forrest Gump? THALL: Cyberspace is a consensual hallucination that electronic technology has created. It is an extension of our collective subconsciousness. Its no really a place. It s not really a space. It's a notional space which paradoxically dissolves national spaces. Cyberspace is where you are when you are talking on the telephone. To what degree can we enter cyberspace and still remain "human?" Cyberspace can cast a spell of passivity on our lives. We talk to the system, telling it what to do, but the system language and processes ultimately come to govern our own psychology. Dog wags tail. Tail eats dog. Turnabout is foul play. We begin as voyeurs and end by abandoning our identity to the systems themselves. All new technologies bring on the "cultural blues," just as the old ones evoke "phantom pain" after they have disappeared. Most people are still blissfully ignorant of what the day-to-day media do to them; unaware that because of the pervasive effects of these transmissions on man, it is the medium itself that is the message, not the content; and also unaware that the medium literally works us over, saturates us, molds us, and transform every sense ratio we have. The content of the medium has about as much importance as the casing on an atomic bomb. As television seeps ever more deeply into our consciousness, it weakens our capacity to differentiate between reality and the "representation" of reality. Representation is never a replica, unfortunately. Represented experience is rapidly replacing direct experience as the defining sensibility in western life. Reality is no longer what it used to be! Reality loses its "hardware character" when one lives at the speed of light. When the real is no longer "what it used to be," nostalgia assumes its full meaning and potential. Madison Avenue knows this all too well. The movie Forrest Gump is all about the role nostalgia plays in the life of the electronically X-rayed (simple) robotized man.It is the ultimate effect of technology replayed on itself. We long for the humanity we no longer have. Gump is the 'sentimenta favorite' for the Osacar because the sentiment is for our own lost identity. It is a loss we all feel and all share 6. Boilerplate To unsubscribe, send message "unsubscribe mcluhan-list" to majordomo@inforamp.net. This is a moderated low-frequency list. All other requests: . Members of the press, we are archived on th Quadnet service as well. Copyright waived in all material posted. For information on commercial services, fax request to 905-764-2669 (Canada). ___________endit___________