Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work!
Author: Douglas Coupland
Release: November 30, 2010
Publisher: Atlas
Genre: Biography, Communication
ISBN-10: 1935633163
ISBN-13: 978-1935633167
Declassified by Agent Palmer: A Canadian So Nice, Coupland Covered Him Twice
Quotes and Lines
…the one thing we can all agree on is that the future has never happened so quickly to so many people in such an extreme way, and we really need a voice to guide us.
Instead of tending towards a vast Alexandrian library the world has become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence.
Ideas don’t happen when they’re supposed to.
In a way, McLuhan’s ideas become like a song we all know the tune of but not the full lyrics, and so we read into him whatever comes to mind.
A famous “Chestertonism” (Chesterton loved aphorisms and mangled puns as much as Marshall did): “The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.”
A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding. – M.M.
Art is anything you can get away with. M.M.
We look at the present through a rearview mirror. We march backwards into the future. M.M.
We shape our tools, and afterwards our tools shape us. M.M.
Mass transportation is doomed to failure in North America because a person’s car is the only place where he can be alone and think. M.M.
Being a cultural observer was a survival strategy and an artistic strategy.
Our “Age of Anxiety” is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s job with yesterday’s tools–with yesterday’s concepts. M.M.
Biology is not destiny, but it sure sets some boundaries.
Marshall gives comfort and helps us forward; Marshall lets us know that we, humanity, are part of something long and grand, that we’re not merely blips on a screen. He has helped us understand the current world and why it’s doing what it’s doing–and where it may be headed and why. With Marshall’s prodding, we can choose community over self, smart versus stupid, reason versus reflex, and, most importantly for Marshall, the soul over all.