McLuhan’s message still ‘cool’

17Oct10

Winnipeg Free Press McLuhan’s message still ‘cool’ Conference examines work of Winnipeg-raised media guru By: Carol Sanders Posted: 15/10/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 1   Marshall McLuhan was a leading 20th-century thinker on the impact of communications media on society. Thirty years after his death, Marshall McLuhan’s message haunts the tweets and emails of his hometown’s teens today. The medium’s still the message. “We’re not kidding when we say his work was prescient,” said Jaqueline McLeod Rogers, an organizer of the Marshall McLuhan in the Post Modern World conference at the University of Winnipeg. McLuhan, who obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Manitoba in the 1930s, helped shape 20th-century thinking about technology and communication. It took another generation for people to comprehend what he meant and to see its profound effect, said McLeod Rogers, associate professor in the department of rhetoric, writing and communication. The McLuhan conference taps into a resurgent interest in his work and ideas as media and messaging technology take off, said McLeod Rogers. Her presentation, dubbed Teen (Girls), Technology and Tribes in Television and Internet Times: Surviving Global ‘Cooling,’ says McLuhan’s insights into media-related behaviour continue to resonate. His phrases like “global village” and predictions about new media making old media obsolete and the rise of tribalism have become a reality. In the digital era, people all over the world are connected by the internet and Facebook and Twitter . “It’s a way of life,” said McLeod Rogers. But girls still don’t ask their moms for advice, said the U of W prof who interviewed five young women aged 14 to 20 and their moms about their Internet activity and how they perceive it. The girls go online looking for information and don’t see it as a “virtual” activity as a opposed to a real activity, as their moms do. The daughters said they use the Internet to get information that complements their “real-world” activities, like hobbies. It’s not a primary source of advice. For that, they go to their friends with similar experience. When it comes to actual help with something, they’d go to a parent. Their moms, in their late 40s and early 50s, recalled they had to leave their homes to learn about life, sex and other taboo subjects. Today, their daughters can Google it. The mothers claimed to be more open with their daughters and to know more about what their kids are up to than their own mothers did. Their daughters, however, say the “Don’t tell mom” rule still applies. “Ironically, the one thing the two generations shared was their disinclination to turn to their mothers for advice,” said McLeod Rogers. The previous generation, in the print-dominant era, viewed adults as role models, McLuhan said. In the electronic era, that changed. McLuhan called TV a “cool medium” with successful performers looking like everyone else. The moms McLeod Rogers talked to recalled watching Saturday morning teen dance shows on TV for the latest fashions and phrases. People developed a “tribal sensibility more enthused to be with friends who are like them than their mom,” said McLeod Rogers. “The Internet is cooler still,” she said. Watching others, looking like others, and being dedicated to branded commodities and celebrity culture shows the shift from the individual to the tribal that McLuhan predicted. Fifty years ago, the new medium — a black-and-white TV — was a huge console that took up prime real estate in the living room, said McLeod Rogers. The same was true with the first home computers, which dominated living space with big monitors, hard drives, clunky keyboards and jumbo mousepads. Today, the old media are becoming obsolete just as McLuhan predicted, with TVs nearly disappearing and slimmer, faster, laptop computers taking over. McLuhan’s overall attitude toward technology–his wary watchfulness — rings true today, said McLeod Rogers. Tonight, Douglas Coupland, the author credited with shaping the way we think about demographics and “Generation X” and “McJobs,” is the keynote speaker. Coupland, whose biography of McLuhan was published this summer, speaks at 7:30 p.m. in Riddell Hall. carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

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