| The New Science Via Marshall McLuhan |
Page 2 of 6 Literary Review "McLuhan has not had the impact on the social sciences that his ideas warrant partly because he did not establish a research tradition of the sort developed by Levi-Strauss, Piaget, or Chomsky." (Olson, 1981, p.140) Laws of Media and The Global Village, both published posthumously, attempt to address this criticism. The Global Village address the left-right brain assumption by including nineteen pages in the endnotes dedicated to this criticism. It was Jonathan Miller who suggested that McLuhan made up this science. (Cooper, 1991, p.240) Bruce Powers, along time collaborator of McLuhan, crafted the arrangement of material in The Global Village. He included 38 pages of Dissatisfactions of Global Robotism in an attempt to address those issues raised by Ellul and Mumford. Both books offer a model for systematic analysis called a tetrad. The tetrad is a four part model for analyzing the impact of technology. A technology can enhance, reverse into, retrieve or obsolesce. In Laws of Media a chapter lists various tetrads and it states that they are tentative and open to modification. The four elements of the tetrad operate simultaneously. McLuhan describes the tetrads as an "all at onceness" experience. In 1968 the Apollo crew set up video cameras aimed at earth. Those on earth saw a picture of themselves. McLuhan says that we "outered" and "innered" at the same time. We were simultaneously at two places at once, both on earth and in space. This is a most dramatic example of a resonance level.(McLuhan, 1989, p.4) McLuhan by using this particular example seeks to demonstrate that even a trip to outer space leaves us looking at ourselves. "We'er in an age of implosion after 3000 years of explosion"(McLuhan, 1969, p.35). Human development up to creation of electric technologies has been one of creating extensions of physical being. Since the development of electronic technologies humankind has begun the exploration of non-linear thought or the imagination. McLuhan when speaking of the "Electronic Man" states that: "His information environment is his own nervous system."(McLuhan, 1969, p.36)
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