McLuhan Interview

Throughout the interview McLuhan reiterates that technology is an extension of our own bodies.  He does this in many different ways with different examples of how this applies to the relationship of humans and the media.  McLuhan states in a response that “media is the extension of the human nervous system.”  He continues to says the our brains protect or numb us from the exposure of media, seemingly similar to when someone goes under stress shock or a state of repression, which he calls Narcissus Narcosis.  However, McLuhan’s statement can also been seen like the relationship between an artist and a painting. Another interpretation of the statement by McLuhan is that the painting or media could not existence without the existence of its creator, humans, and human beings and the technologies provide a basis for the availability of media.  Media is an extension of our bodies can literally be seen today with cell phones and addiction to social media such as Facebook and Twitter, that being without a phone is seen as irregular or a societal outcast. 

Another aspect of McLuhan’s interview is the definitions of hot and cool media he describes.  He says that “hot mediums exclude and a cool medium includes.”  McLuhan goes on to continue this and relate to the use of television and other forms of media and politics, primarily in America.  He states that presidential candidates that seem more cool when viewing them on the television allows people to relate to them and seem more inviting and friendlier, compared to someone who is considered hot has strong standpoints and meaner and strict.  One example he states is the 1960 presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy vs Richard Nixon.  Due to Kennedy’s background it allowed him to adapt to the television medium more easily then Nixon allowing him to come off cool to the voters of the time.  However, Nixon allowed viewers to fill in gaps with their on perspectives, and sharply defined image ultimately led to people calling him a phony and creating a hot medium for Nixon. 

The last and interesting aspect of McLuhan’s interview is between the relationship between learning and the “TV Children” generation.  First McLuhan says that educational systems, such as public schools, need to recognize there are doing it the wrong way.  In an answers to one of the questions McLuhan says that schools are “intellectual penal institutions” and that “few young minds can survive the intellectual tortures of our educational systems.”  That in order for this generation of children to learn and comprehend materials in school, it has to evolve to the changes in media along with the children entering these schools.  McLuhan says that due to parenting and TV children, children absorb information that has not been taught in school due to the media and its pervasiveness.  Also that schools and the education they provide teach us about the past, while the media such as the television provide information that is relevant and occurring now.  He says that the “TV can deeply involve youth in the process of learning, illustrating, and school subjects such as biology, geography, mathematics and languages.”