What Coupland unfortunately misses there -- and I enjoyed and appreciated his McLuhan book quite a bit -- is the hope which did not die in the 50s but is consistent in his work up to and beyond the Playboy piece. Here's another passage from that excellent Playboy piece, which covers a lot of territory: his sense of hope and feeling that we're far from helpless or 'technological determinism', as well as the two-fold nature of technology's effects on us, the 'psychic (elsewhere 'personal') and the social':
"There are grounds for both optimism and pessimism. The extensions of man's consciousness induced by the electric media could conceivably usher in the millennium. But it also holds the potential for realizing the Anti·Christ -- Yeats' rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouching toward Bethlehem to be born. Cataclysmic environmental changes such as these are, in and of themselves, morally neutral; it is how we percieve them and react to them that will determine their ultimate psychic and social consequences. If we refuse to see them at all, we will become their servants. It is inevitable that the world-pool of electronic information movement will toss us all about like corks on a stormy sea, but if we keep our cool during the descent into the maelstrom, studying the process as it happens to us and what we can do about it, we can come through.
Personally. I have a great faith in the resiliency and adaptability of man, and I tend to look to our tomorrows with a surge of excitement and hope. I feel that we're standing on the threshold of a liberating and exhilarating- world in which the human tribe can become truly one family and man's consciousness can be freed from the shackles of mechanical culture and enabled to to roam the cosmos. I have a deep and abiding belief in man's potential to grow and learn, to plumb the depths of his own being and to learn the secret songs that orchestrate the universe.We live in a transitional era of profound pain and tragic identity quest. but the agony of our age is the labor pain of rebirth."
Great (and timely) quote! “ I see no possibility of a worldwide Luddite rebellion that will smash all machinery to bits, so we might as well sit back and see what is happening and what will happen to us in a cybernetic world. Resenting a new technology will not halt its progress.”
What Coupland unfortunately misses there -- and I enjoyed and appreciated his McLuhan book quite a bit -- is the hope which did not die in the 50s but is consistent in his work up to and beyond the Playboy piece. Here's another passage from that excellent Playboy piece, which covers a lot of territory: his sense of hope and feeling that we're far from helpless or 'technological determinism', as well as the two-fold nature of technology's effects on us, the 'psychic (elsewhere 'personal') and the social':
"There are grounds for both optimism and pessimism. The extensions of man's consciousness induced by the electric media could conceivably usher in the millennium. But it also holds the potential for realizing the Anti·Christ -- Yeats' rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouching toward Bethlehem to be born. Cataclysmic environmental changes such as these are, in and of themselves, morally neutral; it is how we percieve them and react to them that will determine their ultimate psychic and social consequences. If we refuse to see them at all, we will become their servants. It is inevitable that the world-pool of electronic information movement will toss us all about like corks on a stormy sea, but if we keep our cool during the descent into the maelstrom, studying the process as it happens to us and what we can do about it, we can come through.
Personally. I have a great faith in the resiliency and adaptability of man, and I tend to look to our tomorrows with a surge of excitement and hope. I feel that we're standing on the threshold of a liberating and exhilarating- world in which the human tribe can become truly one family and man's consciousness can be freed from the shackles of mechanical culture and enabled to to roam the cosmos. I have a deep and abiding belief in man's potential to grow and learn, to plumb the depths of his own being and to learn the secret songs that orchestrate the universe.We live in a transitional era of profound pain and tragic identity quest. but the agony of our age is the labor pain of rebirth."
Thanks for the interesting note, Noah and Colin.
All the more reason for EVERYBODY to read/digest every chapter of 1964 Understanding Media... and also subscribe to the McLuhan Institute susbtack.
Great (and timely) quote! “ I see no possibility of a worldwide Luddite rebellion that will smash all machinery to bits, so we might as well sit back and see what is happening and what will happen to us in a cybernetic world. Resenting a new technology will not halt its progress.”