| The New Science Via Marshall McLuhan |
Page 3 of 6 John Perry Barlow is a major proponent of computer freedom and one of the co-founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. EFF is a lobbying group in Washington D.C. He defends constitutional right as applicable to the Internet, the international computer network, through his writings and efforts with EFF. In one of his electronic writings from EFFector Online he professes: Earlier in this century, the French philosopher and anthropologist Teilhard de Chardin wrote that evolution was an ascent toward what he called "The Omega Point," when all consciousness would converge into unity, creating the collective organism of Mind. When I first encountered the Net, I had forgotten my college dash through Teilhard's Phenomenon of Man. It took me a while to remember where I'd first encountered the idea of this immense and gathering organism. Whether or not it represents Teilhard's vision, it seems clear we are about some Great Work here...the physical wiring of collective human consciousness. (Barlow, 1992) The doctines and propaganda of EFF were created under the assumptions of the New Science. Individuals carrying on McLuhan's research appear to be more numerous outside the traditional scholastic field. The most recent addition is the magazine WIRED. Not only does the style of this magazine appear to follow McLuhan's montage format, but the content does to. The most obvious clue to this is when one looks at the list of contributors and reads: Patron Saint:Marshall McLuhan. The cover begins with: "The Medium... , the rest of the quote is continued across six pages. The Magazine's contributors are respected columnists and authors in the information business, such as faculty from MIT's media lab, a senior scientist at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, columnists from New York Times, The Economist and other publications. The magazine claims to avoid the typical "PCInfoComputingCorporateWorld iteration of its ad sales formula cum parts catalog to discuss the meaning or context of social changes so profound their only parallel is probably the discovery of fire." (Rossetto [Ed.], 1993, p.11) The premier issue contianed an interview with Camille Paglia, a "bad girl of feminism, has a knack for outraging listeners one moment, and then having them nod their heads in agreement the next." Paglia questions why the French structuralist such as Lacan or Foucault, or the School of Saussure are used to analyzed the media. She believes that they have no reference to media, especially when placed against a figure such as McLuhan. "Our culture is a pop culture. Americans are the ones who have to be interpreting the pop culture reality."(Rossetto [Ed.], 1993, p.53) WIRED's premier issue also offers an alternative to McLuhan's hot and cold medium, a graphic charting various technologies according to vividness and interactivity.
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